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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When Rabbi Birnham lay dying,his wife burst into tears.He said, “What are you crying for?My whole life was only that I might learn how to die.”Life is in living. It is not a thing, it is a process. There is no way to attain to life except by living it, except by being alive, flowing, streaming with it. If you are seeking the meaning of life in some dogma, in some philosophy, in some theology, that is the sure way to miss life and meaning both.Life is not somewhere waiting for you, it is happening in you. It is not in the future as a goal to be arrived at, it is herenow, this very moment – in your breathing, circulating in your blood, beating in your heart. Whatsoever you are is your life, and if you start seeking meaning somewhere else you will miss it. Man has done that for centuries.Concepts have become very important, explanations have become very important – and the real has been completely forgotten. We don’t look to that which is already here; we want rationalizations.I have heard a very beautiful story:Some years ago a successful American had a serious identity crisis. He sought help from psychiatrists but nothing came of it, for there were none who could tell him the meaning of life – which is what he wanted to know. By and by he learned of a venerable and incredibly wise guru who lived in a mysterious and most inaccessible region of the Himalayas. Only that guru, he came to believe, would tell him what life means and what his role in it ought to be. So he sold all his worldly possessions and began his search for the all-knowing guru. He spent eight years wandering from village to village throughout the Himalayas in an effort to find him. And then one day he chanced upon a shepherd who told him where the guru lived and how to reach the place.It took him almost a year to find him, but he eventually did. There he came upon his guru, who was indeed venerable, in fact well over one hundred years old. The guru consented to help him, especially when he learned of all the sacrifices the man had made toward this end.“What can I do for you, my son?” asked the guru.“I need to know the meaning of life,” said the man.To this the guru replied, without hesitation, “Life,” he said, “is a river without end.”“A river without end?” said the man in a startled surprise. “After coming all this way to find you, all you have to tell me is that life is a river without end?”The guru was shaken, shocked. He became very angry and he said, “You mean it is not?”Nobody can give you the meaning of your life. It is your life; the meaning has also to be yours. Himalayas won’t help. Nobody except you can come upon it. It is your life and it is only accessible to you. Only in living will the mystery be revealed to you.The first thing I would like to tell you is: don’t seek it anywhere else. Don’t seek it in me, don’t seek it in scriptures, don’t seek it in clever explanations – they all explain away; they do not explain. They simply stuff your empty mind; they don’t make you aware of what is. And the more the mind is stuffed with dead knowledge, the more dull and stupid you become. Knowledge makes people stupid; it dulls their sensitivity. It stuffs them, it becomes a weight on them, it strengthens their ego but it does not give light and it does not show them the way. That is not possible.Life is already there bubbling within you. It can be contacted only there. The temple is not outside; you are the shrine of it. So the first thing to remember if you want to know what life is, is: never seek it without, never try to find out from somebody else. The meaning cannot be transferred that way. The greatest masters have never said anything about life – they have always thrown you back upon yourself.The second thing to remember is: once you know what life is you will know what death is because death is also part of the same process. Ordinarily we think death comes at the end, ordinarily we think death is against life, ordinarily we think death is the enemy. Death is not the enemy. And if you think of death as the enemy it simply shows that you have not been able to know what life is.Death and life are two polarities of the same energy, of the same phenomenon – the tide and the ebb, the day and the night, the summer and the winter. They are not separate and not opposites, not contraries; they are complementary. Death is not the end of life; in fact, it is a completion of one life, the crescendo of one life, the climax, the finale. And once you know your life and its process, then you understand what death is.Death is an organic, integral part of life, and it is very friendly to life. Without it life cannot exist. Life exists because of death; death gives the background. Death is, in fact, a process of renewal. And death also happens each moment, as life happens, because the renewal is needed each moment. The moment you breathe in and the moment you breathe out, both happen. Breathing in, life happens; breathing out, death happens. That’s why when a child is born the first thing he does is breathe in; then life starts. And when an old man is dying, the last thing he does is breathe out; then life departs. Breathing out is death, breathing in is life – and both are like two wheels of a bullock cart.You live by breathing in as much as you live by breathing out. The breathing out is part of breathing in. You cannot breathe in if you stop breathing out. You cannot live if you stop dying. The man who has understood what his life is allows death to happen; he welcomes it. He dies each moment and each moment he is resurrected. His cross and his resurrection are continuously happening as a process. He dies to the past each moment and he is born again and again into the future.If you look into life you will be able to know what death is. If you understand what death is, only then are you able to understand what life is. They are organic. Ordinarily, out of fear, we have created a division. We think that life is good and death is bad. We think that life has to be desired and death is to be avoided. We think somehow we have to protect ourselves against death. This absurd idea creates endless miseries in our lives, because a person who protects himself against death becomes incapable of living. He is the person who is afraid of exhaling, then he cannot inhale; then he is stuck. Then he simply drags; his life is no longer a flow, his life is no more a river.If you really want to live, you have to be ready to die. Who is afraid of death in you? Is life afraid of death? It is not possible. How can life be afraid of its own integral process? Something else is afraid in you. The ego is afraid in you. Life and death are not opposites; ego and death are opposites. Life and death are not opposites; ego and life are opposites. Ego is against both life and death. The ego is afraid to live and the ego is afraid to die. It is afraid to live because each effort, each step toward life, brings death closer.If you live you are coming closer to dying. The ego is afraid to die, hence it is afraid to live also. The ego simply drags.There are many people who are neither alive nor dead. This is worse than anything. A man who is fully alive is full of death also. That is the meaning of Jesus on the cross. Jesus carrying his own cross has not really been understood. And he says to his disciples, “You will have to carry your own cross.” The meaning of Jesus carrying his own cross is very simple, nothing but this: everybody has to carry his death continuously, everybody has to die each moment, everybody has to be on the cross because that is the only way to live fully, totally.Whenever you come to a total moment of aliveness, suddenly you will see death there also. In love it happens. In love, life comes to a climax – hence people are afraid of love.I have been continually surprised by people who come to me and say they are afraid of love. What is the fear of love? – because when you really love somebody your ego starts slipping and melting. You cannot love with the ego; the ego becomes a barrier. And when you would like to drop the barrier the ego says, “This is going to be a death. Beware!”The death of the ego is not your death. The death of the ego is really your possibility of life. The ego is just a dead crust around you, it has to be broken and thrown away. It comes into being naturally – just as when a traveler passes the dust collects on his clothes, on his body, and he has to take a bath to get rid of the dust.As we move in time the dust of experiences, of knowledge, of lived life, of the past, collects. That dust becomes our ego. Accumulated, it becomes a crust around you which has to be broken and thrown away. One has to take a bath continuously – every day, in fact every moment – so that this crust never becomes a prison. The ego is afraid to love because in love, life comes to a peak. But whenever there is a peak of life there is also a peak of death – they go together.In love you die and you are reborn. The same happens when you come to meditate or to pray, or when you come to a master to surrender. The ego creates all sorts of difficulties, rationalizations not to surrender: “Think about it, brood about it, be clever about it.” When you come to a master, again the ego becomes suspicious, doubtful, creates anxiety. Again you are coming to life, to a flame where death will also be as much alive as life.Let it be remembered that death and life both become aflame together; they are never separate. If you are very, very minimally alive, at the minimum, then you can see death and life as being separate. The closer you come to the peak, the closer they start coming. At the very apex they meet and become one. In love, in meditation, in trust, in prayerfulness, wherever life becomes total, death is there. Without death, life cannot become total.But the ego always thinks in divisions, in dualities; it divides everything. Existence is indivisible; it cannot be divided. You were a child, then you became young. Can you demark the line when you became young? Can you demark the point in time where suddenly you were no longer a child and you had become young? One day you became old. Can you demark the line when you became old?Processes cannot be demarked. Exactly the same happens when you are born. Can you demark when you are born? When life really starts? Does it start when the child starts breathing – the doctor spanks the child and the child starts breathing? Then life is born? – or is it when the child got into the womb, the mother became pregnant, the child was conceived? Did life start then? – or even before that? When does life exactly start?It is a process of no ending and no beginning. It never starts. When is a person dead? When the breathing stops? Many yogis have now proved it on scientific grounds that they can stop breathing and they are still alive and they can come back. So the stopping of the breathing cannot be the end. Where does life end?It never ends anywhere, it never begins anywhere. We are involved in eternity. We have been here since the very beginning – if there was any beginning – and we are going to be here to the very end, if there is going to be any end. In fact, there cannot be any beginning and there cannot be any end. We are life – forms change, bodies change, minds change. What we call life is just an identification with a certain body, with a certain mind, with a certain attitude, and what we call death is nothing but getting out of that form, out of that body, out of that concept.You change houses. If you get too identified with one house, then changing the house will be very painful. You will think that you are dying because the old house was what you were – that was your identity. But this doesn’t happen, because you know that you are only changing the house, you remain the same. Those who have looked within themselves, those who have found who they are, come to know an eternal, non-ending process. Life is a process, timeless, beyond time. Death is part of it.Death is a continuous revival, a help to life to resurrect again and again, a help to life to get rid of old forms, to get rid of dilapidated buildings, to get rid of old confining structures so that again you can flow and you can again become fresh and young, and you can again become virgin.I have heard:A man was browsing through an antique shop near Mount Vernon and ran across a rather ancient-looking axe.“That’s a mighty old axe you have there,” he said to the shop owner.“Yes,” said the man, “it once belonged to George Washington.”“Really?” said the customer. “It certainly stood up well.”“Of course,” said the antique dealer, “it has had three new handles and two new heads.”But that’s how life is – it goes on changing handles and heads. In fact it seems everything goes on changing and yet something remains eternally the same. Just watch. You were a child – what has remained of that now? Just a memory. Your body has changed, your mind has changed, your identity has changed. What has remained of your childhood? Nothing has remained, just a memory. You cannot even make a distinction between whether it really happened or you had seen a dream, or you had read it in a book, or somebody has told you about it – whether the childhood was yours or somebody else’s? Sometimes have a look at an album of old photographs. Just see, this was you. You will not be able to believe it, you have changed so much. In fact everything has changed – handles and heads and everything has changed. And still, deep down, somewhere, something remains a continuity; a witnessing remains continuous.There is a thread, howsoever invisible. Everything goes on changing. That invisible thread remains the same. That thread is beyond life and death. Life and death are two wings for that which is beyond life and death. That which is beyond goes on using life and death as two wheels of a cart, complementaries. It lives through life; it lives through death. Death and life are its processes, like inhalation, exhalation.But something in you is transcendental. That art thou… That is transcendental.But we are too identified with the form – that creates the ego. That’s what we call “I”. Of course the “I” has to die many times. It is constantly in fear, trembling, shaking, always afraid, protecting, securing.A Sufi mystic knocked at the door of a very rich man. He was a beggar and he wanted just enough so that he could have his meal.The rich man shouted at him and said, “Nobody knows you here!”“But I know myself,” said the dervish. “How sad it would be if the reverse were true. If everybody knew me and I was not aware of who I am, how sad it would be. Yes, you are right, nobody knows me here. But I know myself.”These are the only two situations possible. And you are in the sad situation – everybody may be knowing about you, who you are, but you yourself are completely oblivious of your transcendence, of your real nature, of your authentic being. This is the only sadness in life. You can find many excuses, but the real sadness is this: you don’t know who you are.How can a person be happy not knowing who he is, not knowing from where he is coming, not knowing where he is going? Then a thousand and one problems arise because of this basic self-ignorance.A bunch of ants came out of the darkness of their underground nest in search of food. It was early in the morning. The ants happened to pass by a plant whose leaves were covered with morning dew.“What are these?” asked one of the ants, pointing to the dewdrops. “Where do they come from?”Some said, “They come from the earth.”Others said, “They come from the sea.”Soon a quarrel broke out – there was a group who adhered to the sea theory, and a group who attached themselves to the earth theory.Only one, a wise and intelligent ant, stood alone. He said, “Let us pause a moment and look around for signs, for everything has an attraction toward its source. Or, as it is said, everything returns to its origin. No matter how far into the air you throw a brick it comes down to the earth. Whatever leans toward the light, must originally be of the light.”The ants were not totally convinced yet and were about to resume their dispute, but the sun had come up and the dewdrops were leaving the leaves, rising, rising toward the sun and disappearing into the sun.Everything returns to its original source, has to return to its original source. If you understand life then you understand death also. Life is a forgetfulness of the original source, and death is again a remembrance. Life is going away from the original source, death is coming back home. Death is not ugly, death is beautiful. But death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life unhindered, uninhibited, unsuppressed. Death is beautiful only for those who have lived their life beautifully, who have not been afraid to live, who have been courageous to live – who loved, who danced, who celebrated.Death becomes the ultimate celebration if your life is a celebration. Let me tell you in this way: whatsoever your life is, death reveals only that. If you have been miserable in life, death reveals misery. Death is a great revealer. If you have been happy in your life, death reveals happiness. If you have lived only a life of physical comfort and physical pleasure, then of course death is going to be very uncomfortable and unpleasant because the body has to be left. The body is just a temporary abode, a serai in which we stay for the night and have to leave in the morning. It is not your permanent abode, it is not your home.So if you have lived just a bodily life and you have never known anything beyond the body, death is going to be very, very ugly, unpleasant, painful. Death is going to be an anguish. But if you have lived a little higher than the body – if you have loved music and poetry, and you have loved, and you have looked at the flowers and the stars, and something of the non-physical has entered into your consciousness – death will not be so bad, death will not be so painful. You can take it with equanimity, but still it cannot be a celebration.If you have lived something of the transcendental in yourself, if you have entered your own nothingness at the center, the center of your being – where you are no longer a body and no longer a mind; where physical pleasures are completely left far away and mental pleasures also: the pleasures of music and poetry and literature and painting – then death is going to be a great celebration, a great understanding, a great revelation. Everything is left far away; you are simply just pure awareness, consciousness.If you have known anything of the transcendental in you, death will reveal to you the transcendental in the universe – then death is no more a death but a meeting with existence, a date with existence.So you can find three expressions about death in the history of human mind. One expression is of the ordinary man who lives attached to his body, who has never known anything greater than the pleasure of food or sex, whose whole life has been nothing but food and sex, who has enjoyed food, has enjoyed sex, whose life has been very primitive, whose life has been very gross, who has lived in the porch of his palace, never entered it, and who had been thinking that this is all life is. Then at the moment of death he will try to cling. He will resist death, he will fight death. Death will come as the enemy.Hence, all over the world, in all societies, death is depicted as dark, as devilish. In India they say the messenger of death is very ugly – dark, black – and comes sitting on a very big, ugly buffalo. This is the ordinary attitude. These people missed, they have not been able to know all the dimensions of life. They have not been able to touch the depth of life and they have not been able to fly to the height of life. They missed the plenitude, they missed the benediction.Then there is a second type of expression. Poets, philosophers, have sometimes said that death is nothing bad, death is nothing evil, it is just restful – a great rest, like sleep. This is better than the first. At least these people have known something beyond the body, they have known something of the mind. They have not had only food and sex, their whole life has not been only in eating and reproducing. They have a little sophistication of the soul, they are a little more aristocratic, more cultured. They say death is like great rest; one is tired and one goes into death and rests. It is restful. But they too are far away from the truth.Those who have known life in its deepest core say that death is godliness; not only a rest, but a resurrection, a new life, a new beginning; a new door opens.When a Sufi mystic, Bayazid, was dying, people who had gathered around him – his disciples – were suddenly surprised, because when the last moment came his face became radiant, so powerfully radiant. It had such a beautiful aura. Bayazid was a beautiful man, and his disciples had always felt an aura around him, but they had not known anything like this; so radiant.They asked, “Bayazid, tell us what has happened to you. What is happening to you? Before you leave us, give us your last message.”He opened his eyes and he said, “Existence is welcoming me. I am going into its embrace. Good-bye.”He closed his eyes, his breathing stopped. But at the moment his breathing stopped there was an explosion of light, the room became full of light, and then the light disappeared.When a person has known the transcendental in himself, death is nothing but a face of existence. Then death has a dance to it. And unless you become capable of celebrating death itself, remember, you have missed life. The whole life is a preparation for this ultimate.This is the meaning of this beautiful story:When Rabbi Birnham lay dying,his wife burst into tears.He said, “What are you crying for?My whole life was only that I might learn how to die.”“My whole life has been just a preparation, a preparation to learn the secrets of dying.”All religions are nothing but a science – or an art – to teach you how to die. And the only way to teach you how to die is to teach you how to live. They are not separate. If you know what right living is, you will know what right dying is.So the first thing, or the most fundamental thing, is: how to live.Let me tell you a few things. First: your life is your life, it is nobody else’s. So don’t allow yourself to be dominated by others, don’t allow yourself to be dictated to by others; it is a betrayal of life. If you allow yourself to be dictated to by others – maybe your parents, your society, your education system, your politicians, your priests, whosoever they are – if you allow yourself to be dominated by others you will miss your life. Because the domination comes from outside and life is within you. They never meet.I am not saying that you should become a no-sayer to each and everything. That too is not of much help. There are two types of people. One is a very obedient type, ready to surrender to any and everybody. They don’t have any independent soul in them; they are immature, childish, always searching for a father-figure, for somebody to tell them what to do and what not to do. They are not able to trust their own being. These people are the greater part of the world, the masses.Then there are, against these people, a small minority who reject society, who reject the values of the society. They think they are rebellious. They are not, they are only reactionaries. Because whether you listen to society or you reject society, if society remains in either way the determining factor, then you are dominated by the society.Let me tell you an anecdote:Once Mulla Nasruddin had been away for a while and arrived back in town wearing a long beard. His friends naturally kidded him about the beard and asked him how he happened to acquire the fur-piece. The Mulla with the beard began to complain and curse the thing in no uncertain terms. His friends were amazed at the way he talked and asked him why he continued to wear the beard if he did not like it.“I hate the blasted thing!” the Mulla told them.“If you hate it, then why don’t you shave it off and get rid of it?” one of his friends asked.A devilish gleam shone in the eyes of the Mulla as he answered, “Because my wife hates it too!”But that does not make you free. The hippies, the yippies and others, they are not really rebellious people, they are reactionaries. They have reacted against the society. A few are obedient, a few are disobedient, but the center of domination is the same. A few obey, a few disobey, but nobody looks at his own soul.A really rebellious person is one who is neither for society nor against society, who simply lives his life according to his own understanding. Whether it goes against society or it goes with society is not a consideration, it is irrelevant. Sometimes it may go with the society, sometimes it may not go with the society, but that is not the point to be considered. He lives according to his understanding, according to his small light. And I am not saying that he becomes very egoistic about it. No, he is very humble. He knows that his light is very small, but that is all the light that there is. He knows that he may be wrong. He is not adamant, he’s very humble. He says, “I may be wrong, but please allow me to be wrong according to myself.”That is the only way to learn. To commit mistakes is the only way to learn. To move according to one’s own understanding is the only way to grow and become mature. If you are always looking at somebody to dictate, whether you obey or disobey makes no difference. If you are looking at somebody else to dictate and then you will decide for or against, you will never be able to know what your life is. It has to be lived, and you have to follow your own small light.It is not always certain what to do. You are very confused. Let it be so. But find a way out of your confusion. It is very cheap and easy to listen to others because they can hand over dead dogmas to you, they can give you commandments – do this, don’t do that. And they are very certain about their commandments. Certainty should not be sought; understanding should be sought. If you are seeking certainty you will become a victim of some trap or other. Don’t seek certainty, seek understanding. Certainty can be given to you cheap, anybody can give it to you. But in the final analysis you will be a loser. You lost your life just to remain secure and certain, and life is not certain, life is not secure.Life is insecurity. Each moment is a move into more and more insecurity. It is a gamble. One never knows what is going to happen. And it is beautiful that one never knows. If it was predictable life would not be worth living. If everything was as you would like it and everything was certain you would not be a man at all, you would be a machine. Only for machines everything is secure and certain.Man lives in freedom. Freedom needs insecurity and uncertainty. A real man of intelligence is always hesitant because he has no dogma to rely upon, to lean upon. He has to look and respond.Lao Tzu says, “I am hesitant, and I move alertly in life because I don’t know what is going to happen. And I don’t have any principle to follow. I have to decide every moment. I never decide beforehand. I have to decide when the moment has come!”Then one has to be very responsive. That’s what responsibility is. Responsibility is not an obligation, responsibility is not a duty – it is a capacity to respond. A man who wants to know what life is has to be responsive. That is missing. Centuries of conditioning have made you more like machines. You have lost your manhood, you have bargained for security. You are secure and comfortable and everything has been planned by others. And they have put everything on the map, they have measured everything. This is all absolutely foolish because life cannot be measured, it is immeasurable. And no map is possible because life is in constant flux, everything goes on changing. Nothing except change is permanent. Says Heraclitus, “You cannot step in the same river twice.”And the ways of life are very zigzag. The ways of life are not like the tracks of a railway train. No, it does not run on tracks. And that’s the beauty of it, the glory of it, the poetry of it, the music of it – that it is always a surprise.If you are seeking for security, certainty, your eyes will become closed and you will be less and less surprised, and you will lose the capacity to wonder. Once you lose the capacity to wonder, you have lost religion. Religion is the opening of your wondering heart. Religion is a receptivity for the mysterious that surrounds us.Don’t seek security; don’t seek advice on how to live your life. People come to me and they say, “Osho, tell us how we should live our lives.” You are not interested in knowing what life is, you are more interested in making a fixed pattern. You are more interested in killing life than in living it. You want a discipline to be imposed on you.There are, of course, priests and politicians all over the world who are ready, just sitting waiting for you. Come to them and they are ready to impose their disciplines on you. They enjoy the power that comes through imposing their own ideas upon others.I’m not here for that. I am here to help you to become free. And when I say that I am here to help you to become free, I am included. I am to help you to become free of me also. My sannyas is a very paradoxical thing. You surrender to me in order to become free. I accept you and initiate you into sannyas to help you to become absolutely free of every dogma, of every scripture, of every philosophy – and I am included in it. Sannyas is as paradoxical as life itself is – it should be. Then it is alive.So the first thing is: don’t ask anybody how you should live your life. Life is so precious – live it! I am not saying that you will not make mistakes; you will. Remember only one thing: don’t make the same mistake again and again. That’s enough. If you can find a new mistake every day, make it. But don’t repeat mistakes; that is foolish. A man who can find new mistakes to make will be growing continuously – that is the only way to learn, that is the only way to come to your own inner light.I have heard:One night the poet, Awhadi of Kerman, a very great Muslim poet, was sitting on his porch bent over a vessel. Shams e-Tabrizi, a great Sufi mystic, happened to pass by.Shams e-Tabrizi looked at the poet, at what he was doing. He asked the poet, “What are you doing?”The poet said, “Contemplating the moon in a bowl of water.”Shams e-Tabrizi started laughing, with an uproarious laughter, a mad laughter. The poet started feeling uncomfortable; a crowd gathered. And the poet said, “What is the matter? Why are you laughing so much? Why are you ridiculing me?”Shams e-Tabrizi said, “Unless you have broken your neck, why don’t you look directly at the moon in the sky?”The moon is there, the full moon is there, and this poet was sitting with a bowl of water and looking into the bowl of water at the reflection of the moon!Seeking truth in scriptures, seeking truth in philosophies, is looking at the reflection. If you ask somebody else how you should live your life you are asking for misguidance, because that man can only talk about his own life. And never, never, are two lives the same. Whatsoever he can say or impart to you will be about his own life – and that too only if he has lived. He may have asked somebody else, he may have followed somebody else, he may have been an imitator himself; then it is a reflection of a reflection. And centuries pass and people go on reflecting the reflection of the reflection of the reflection – and the real moon is always there in the sky waiting for you.It is your moon, it is your sky, look directly. Be immediate about it. Why borrow my eyes or anybody else’s eyes? You have been given eyes, beautiful eyes to see, and to see directly. Why borrow understanding from anybody? Remember, it may be an understanding to me, but the moment you borrow it, it becomes knowledge to you – it is no longer understanding.Understanding is only that which has been experienced by the person himself. It may be understanding for me, if I have looked at the moon, but the moment I say it to you it becomes knowledge, it is no longer understanding. Then it is just verbal, then it is just linguistic. And language is a lie.Let me tell you an anecdote:A chicken farmer, dissatisfied with the productivity of his flock, decided to use a bit of psychology on his hens. Accordingly he purchased a gay-colored, talking parrot and placed him in the barnyard. Sure enough, the hens took to the handsome stranger immediately, pointed out the best tidbits for him to eat with joyous clucks, and generally followed him around like a bevy of teenage girls following a new singing star sensation. To the delight of the farmer, even their egg-laying capacities improved.The barnyard rooster, naturally jealous of being ignored by his harem, set upon the attractive interloper, assailed him with beak and claws, pulling out one green or red feather after the other. Whereupon the intimidated parrot cried out in trepidation, “Desist sir! I beg of you, desist! After all, I am only here in the capacity of a language professor!”Many people live their life as language professors. That is the falsest kind of life. Reality needs no language; it is available to you on a non-verbal level. The moon is there; it needs no bowl and no water, it needs no other medium. You have just to look at it; it is a non-verbal communication. The whole of life is available – you just have to learn how to communicate with it non-verbally.That’s what meditation is all about – to be in such a space where language does not interfere, where learned concepts don’t come in between you and the real.When you love a woman, don’t be bothered about what others have said about love because that is going to be an interference. You love the woman, the love is there, forget all that you have learned about love. Forget all Kinseys, forget all Masters and Johnsons, forget all Freuds and Jungs. Please don’t become a language professor. Just love the woman and let love be there, and let love lead you and guide you into its innermost secrets, into its mysteries. Then you will be able to know what love is.What others say about meditation is meaningless. Once I came upon a book about meditation written by a Jaina saint. It was really beautiful, but there were a few places by which I could see that the man had never meditated himself – otherwise those places could not be there. But they were very few and far between. The book on the whole, almost ninety-nine per cent, was perfect. I loved the book. Then I forgot about it.For ten years I was wandering around the country. Once in a village of Rajasthan, that saint came to meet me. His name looked familiar, and suddenly I remembered the book. And I asked the saint why he had come to me. He said, “I have come to you to know what meditation is.”I said, “I remember your book. I remember it very well, because it really impressed me. Except for a few defects which showed that you have never meditated, the book was perfectly right – ninety-nine percent right. And now you come here to learn about meditation. Have you never meditated?”He looked a little embarrassed because his disciples were also there. I said, “Be frank. Because if you say you know meditation, then I am not going to talk about it. Then finished! You know; there is no need. If you say to me frankly – at least be true once – if you say you have never meditated, only then can I help you toward meditation.”It was a bargain, so he had to confess. He said, “Yes, I have never said it to anybody. I have read many books about meditation, all the old scriptures. And I have been teaching people, that’s why I feel embarrassed before my disciples. I have been teaching meditation to thousands, and I have written books about it, but I have never meditated.”You can write books about meditation and never come across the space that meditation is. You can become so efficient in verbalizing, you can become so clever in abstraction, in intellectual argumentativeness, and you can forget completely that all the time that you have been involved in these intellectual activities has been a sheer wastage.I asked the old man, “How long have you been interested in meditation?”He said, “My whole life.” He was almost seventy. He said, “When I was twenty I took sannyas, I became a Jaina monk, and those fifty years since then I have been reading and reading and thinking about meditation.”Fifty years of thinking and reading and writing about meditation, even guiding people into meditation, and he has not even tasted once what meditation is!And this is the case with millions of people. They talk about love, they know all the poetries about love, but they have never loved. Or even if they thought they were in love, they were never in love. That too was a “heady” thing, it was not of the heart. People live and go on missing life. It needs courage. It needs courage to be realistic; it needs courage to move with life wherever it leads. The paths are uncharted, there exists no map. One has to go into the unknown.Life can be understood only if you are ready to go into the unknown. If you cling to the known you cling to the mind, and the mind is not life. Life is non-mental, non-intellectual, because life is total. Your totality has to be involved in it, you cannot just think about it. Thinking about life is not life; beware of this “about-ism.” One goes on thinking about and about: there are people who think about God, there are people who think about life, there are people who think about love. There are people who think about this and that.Mulla Nasruddin became very old and he went to his doctor. He was looking very weak so the doctor said, “I can say only one thing. You will have to cut your love life to half.”The Mulla said, “Okay. Which half? Talking about it or thinking about it?”That’s all. Don’t become a language professor, don’t become a parrot. Parrots are language professors. They live in words, concepts, theories, theologies, and life goes on passing, slipping out of their hands. Then one day suddenly they become afraid of death. When a person is afraid of death, know well that that person has missed life. If he has not missed life there cannot be any fear of death. If a person has lived life, he will be ready to live death also. He will be almost enchanted by the phenomenon of death.When Socrates was dying he was so enchanted that his disciples could not understand what he was feeling so happy about. One disciple, Credo, asked, “Why are you looking so happy? We are crying and weeping.”Socrates said, “Why should I not be happy? I have known what life is, now I would like to know what death is. I am at the door of a great mystery, and I am thrilled! I am going on a great journey into the unknown. I am simply full of wonder! I cannot wait!” And remember, Socrates was not a religious man; Socrates was not in any way a believer.Somebody asked, “Are you so certain that the soul will survive after death?”Socrates said, “I don’t know.”To say “I don’t know” is the greatest courage in the world. It is very difficult for the language professors to say “I don’t know.” It is difficult for the parrots. Socrates was a very sincere and honest man. He said, “I don’t know.”Then the disciple asked, “Then why are you feeling so happy? If the soul does not survive, then…?”Socrates said, “I have to see. If I survive there can be no fear about it. If I don’t survive, how can there be fear? If I don’t survive, I don’t survive. Then where is the fear? There is nobody there, so fear cannot exist. If I survive, I survive. There is no point in getting afraid about it. But I don’t know exactly what is going to happen. That’s why I am so full of wonder and ready to go into it. I don’t know.”To me, this is what a religious man should be. A religious man is not a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Buddhist, or a Mohammedan. All these are ways of knowledge. A Christian says, “I know.” And his knowledge comes from the Christian dogmas. The Hindu says, “I also know.” And his knowledge comes from the Vedas and the Gitas and his dogmas. And a Hindu is against the Christian, because he says, “If I am right, you cannot be right. If you are right, then I cannot be right.” So there is great argument and there is much dispute and much debate and unnecessary conflict.A religious man, a really religious man – not the so-called religious people – is one who says “I don’t know.” When you say “I don’t know,” you are open, you are ready to learn. When you say “I don’t know,” you don’t have any prejudice this way or that, you don’t have any belief, you don’t have any knowledge. You have only awareness. You say, “I am aware and I will see whatsoever happens. I will not carry any dogma from the past.”This is the attitude of a disciple, the attitude of one who wants to learn. And discipline simply means learning. A disciple means a learner, one who is ready to learn, and discipline means learning.I am not here to teach you any dogmas; I am not imparting any knowledge to you. I am simply helping you to see that which is. Live your life whatsoever the cost. Be ready to gamble with it.I have heard about a business man. He was walking from his office to a restaurant for lunch when he was stopped by a stranger who said to him, “I don’t think that you remember me, but ten years ago I came to this city broke. I asked you for a loan and you gave me twenty dollars because you said you were willing to take a chance to start a man on the road to success.”The business man thought for a while and then he said. “Yes, I remember the incident. Go on with your story.”“Well,” remarked the stranger, “are you still willing to gamble?”Life asks you the same question again and again and again: “Are you still willing to gamble?” It is never certain. Life has no insurance in it; it is simply an opening, a wild opening, a chaotic opening. You can make a small house around you, secure, but then that will prove to be your grave. Live with life.And we have been doing that in many ways. Marriage is man-created; love is part of life. When you create marriage around love you are creating security. You are making something which cannot be made – love cannot be made legal. You are trying to do the impossible, and if in that effort love dies, it is no wonder. You become a husband, your beloved becomes a wife. You are no longer two alive persons; you are two functionaries. The husband has a certain function, the wife has a certain function; they have certain duties to fulfill. Then life has ceased to flow. They are frozen.Watch a husband and wife. You will always see two persons frozen, sitting side by side, not knowing what they are doing here, why they are sitting here. Maybe they have nowhere to go.When you see love between two persons something is flowing, moving, changing. When there is love between two persons they live in an aura, there is a constant sharing. Their vibrations are reaching to each other; they are broadcasting their being to each other. There is no wall between them, they are two and yet not two – they are one also.The husband and wife are as far away as it is possible to be, even though they may be sitting by the side of each other. The husband never listens to what the wife is saying; he has become deaf long ago. The wife never sees what is happening to the husband; she has become blind to him. They take each other absolutely for granted; they have become things. They are no longer persons because persons are always open, persons are always uncertain, persons are always changing. Now they have a fixed role to fulfill. They died the day they got married. Since that day they have not lived.I’m not saying not to get married, but remember that love is the real thing. And if it dies then marriage is worthless.And the same is true about everything in life, about everything. Either you can live it – but then you have to live with this hesitation, not knowing what is going to happen the next moment – or you can make everything certain about it. There are people who have become so certain about everything that they are never surprised. There are people whom you cannot surprise. And I am here to deliver to you a message which is very surprising – you will not believe it, I know. You cannot believe it, I know. I am here to tell you something which is absolutely unbelievable – that you are gods and goddesses. You have forgotten.Let me tell you an anecdote:Harvey Firestone, Thomas A. Edison, John Burroughs and Henry Ford stopped at a rural service station on their way to Florida for the winter.“We want some bulbs for our headlights,” said Ford. “And by the way, that is Thomas Edison sitting there in the car, and I am Henry Ford.”The fellow at the service station did not even look up, just spat out some tobacco juice with obvious contempt.“And,” said Ford, “we would like to buy a new tire if you have any Firestone tires. And that other fellow in the car is Harvey Firestone himself.”Still the old fellow said nothing. While he was placing the tire on the wheel, John Burroughs, with his long white beard, stuck his head out the window and said, “How do you do, stranger?”Finally the old man at the service station came alive. He glared at Burroughs and said, “If you tell me you are Santa Claus I will be damned if I don’t crush your skull with this lug wrench.”He could not believe that Harvey Firestone, Thomas A. Edison, John Burroughs and Henry Ford were all traveling in one car. They were all friends and they used to travel together.When I say to you, you are gods and goddesses, you will not believe me because you have completely forgotten who is traveling within you, who is sitting within you, who is listening to me, who is looking at me. You have completely forgotten. You have been given some labels from the outside and you have trusted those labels – your name, your religion, your country – all bogus! It does not make any sense if you are a Hindu or a Christian or a Mohammedan if you don’t know yourself. These labels make no sense at all. Maybe they are of a certain utility. What sense does it make whether you are a Hindu, or a Christian, or a Mohammedan, or an Indian, or an American, or Chinese? How does it make sense, how does it help you to know your being? All are irrelevant – because the being is neither Indian, nor Chinese, nor American; and the being is neither Hindu, nor Mohammedan, nor Christian. The being is simply a pure “is-ness.”The pure “is-ness” is what I call godliness. If you can understand your inner divinity you have understood what life is. Otherwise you have not been able yet to decode life. This is the message. The whole life is pointing at one thing, continuously – that you are gods. Once you have understood it, then there is no death. Then you have learned the lesson. Then in death gods will be returning back to their homes.When Rabbi Birnham lay dying,his wife burst into tears.He said, “What are you crying for?My whole life was only that I might learn how to die.”The whole life – just a training: how to go back home, how to die, how to disappear. Because the moment you disappear, godliness appears in you. Your presence is the absence of godliness; your absence is the presence of godliness.Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,How can we prepare ourselves for death?Don’t accumulate anything whatever: power, money, prestige, virtue, knowledge, even the so-called spiritual experiences. Don’t accumulate. If you don’t accumulate you are ready to die any moment, because you have nothing to lose. The fear of death is not really fear of death; the fear of death comes out of the accumulations of life. Then you have too much to lose. You cling to it. That is the meaning of Jesus’ saying: Blessed are the poor in spirit.I don’t mean become a beggar, and I don’t mean renounce the world. I mean be in the world, but don’t be of the world. Don’t accumulate inside, be poor in spirit. Never possess anything – and then you are ready to die. Possessiveness is the problem, not life itself. The more you possess, the more you are afraid to lose. If you don’t possess anything, if your purity, if your spirit is uncontaminated by anything, if you are simply there alone, you can disappear any moment; whenever death knocks on the door it will find you ready. You are not losing anything. By going with death you are not a loser. You may be moving into a new experience.And when I say don’t accumulate, I mean it as an absolute imperative. I’m not saying don’t accumulate things of this world and go on accumulating virtue, knowledge, and so-called spiritual experiences, visions – no. I am talking in absolute terms: don’t accumulate. There are people, particularly in the East, who teach renunciation. They say, “Don’t accumulate anything in this world because it will be taken away from you when death comes.” These people seem to be basically greedier than the ordinary, worldly people. Their logic is: don’t accumulate in this world because death will take it away, so accumulate something that death cannot take away from you – accumulate virtue, punya; accumulate character, morality, knowledge; accumulate experiences, spiritual experiences, experiences of kundalini, meditation, this and that; accumulate something that death cannot take away from you.But if you accumulate, with that accumulation comes fear. Each accumulation brings fear in its own proportion; then you are afraid. Don’t accumulate and fear disappears. I don’t teach you renunciation in the old sense; my sannyas is an absolutely new concept. It teaches you to be in the world and yet to be not of it. Then you are always ready.I have heard about a great Sufi mystic, Abraham Adam. Once he was the Emperor of Bokhara, then he left everything and became a Sufi beggar. When he was staying with another Sufi mystic he was puzzled because every day the man was continuously complaining of his poverty.Abraham Adam said to him, “The way you abuse it, it may be that you have bought your poverty cheaply.”“How stupid you must be!” the man retorted, not knowing to whom he was talking, not knowing that Abraham was once the emperor. He said, “How stupid you must be to think that one buys poverty.”Abraham replied, “In my case, I paid my kingdom for it. I would even give away a hundred worlds for a single moment of it, for every day its value becomes more and more to me. No wonder then that I give thanks for it while you lament it.”The purity of the spirit is the real poverty. The word sufi comes from an Arabic word safa. Safa means purity. Sufi means one who is pure in the heart.And what is purity? Don’t misunderstand me, purity has nothing to do with morality. Don’t interpret it in a moralistic way. Purity has nothing to do with puritans. Purity simply means an uncontaminated state of mind, where only your consciousness is and nothing else. Nothing else really enters into your consciousness, but if you hanker to possess, that hankering contaminates you. Gold cannot enter into your consciousness. There is no way. How can you take gold into your being? There is no way. Money cannot enter into your consciousness. But if you want to possess, that possessiveness can enter into your consciousness. Then you become impure. If you don’t want to possess anything you become fearless. Then even death is a beautiful experience to pass through.A man who is really spiritual has tremendous experiences, but he never accumulates them. Once they have happened he forgets about them. He never remembers, he never projects them into the future. He never says that they should be repeated or that they should happen again to him. He never prays for them. Once they have happened they have happened. Finished! He is finished with them and he moves away from them. He is always available for the new, he never carries the old.And if you don’t carry the old you will find life absolutely new – incredibly, unbelievably new at each step. Life is new, only the mind is old; and if you look through the old mind life also looks like a repetition, a boring thing. If you don’t look through the mind… Mind means your past, mind means the accumulated experiences, knowledge and everything. Mind means that through which you have passed, but which you are still hanging onto. Mind is a hang-over, dust from the past covering your mirrorlike consciousness. Then when you look through it everything becomes distorted. Mind is the faculty of distortion. If you don’t look through the mind you will be ready for death. In fact not looking through the mind you will know that life is eternal. Only mind dies – without mind you are deathless. Without mind nothing has ever died; life goes on and on and on forever. It has no beginning and no end.Accumulate – then you have a beginning, and then you will have an end.This is the way, how to prepare yourself for death. When I say “how to prepare for death,” I don’t mean preparing for the death that will come in the end – that is very far away. If you prepare for it you will be preparing for the future and again the mind will come in. No, when I say prepare for death, I don’t mean the death that will come finally; I mean the death that visits you every moment with each exhalation. Accept this death each moment and you will be ready for the final death when it comes.Start dying each moment to the past. Clean yourself of the past each moment. Die to the known so that you become available to the unknown. With dying and being reborn each moment you will be able to live life and you will be able to live death also.And that’s what spirituality is really all about: to live death intensely, to live life intensely; to live both so passionately that nothing is left behind unlived, not even death. If you live life and death totally, you transcend. In that tremendous passion and intensity of life and death, you transcend duality, you transcend the dichotomy, you come to the one. That one is really the truth. You can call it godliness, you can call it life, you can call it truth, samadhi, ecstasy, or whatsoever you choose.The second question:Osho,At times you seem to intend to confuse us about love and meditation. Sometimes you stress the ultimate futility of love; on other occasions you pronounce meditation as being useless. And sometimes you say both love and meditation are fundamental paths of enlightenment.The questioner says, “At times you seem to intend to confuse us.” No, you have not listened to me well. I am always confusing, not only at times. Confusion is my method.What I am trying to do by confusing you is to uproot you from your mind. I would not like you to have any roots in the mind in the name of love or in the name of meditation or in the name of God. Your mind is very cunning. It can thrive on anything; on meditation, on love, it can thrive. The moment I see that your mind is thriving on anything, I immediately have to uproot you from it. My whole effort is to create a no-mind state in you. I am not here to convince you about anything. I am not here to give you a dogma, a creed to live by. I am here to take all creeds away from you because only then will life happen to you. I am not giving you anything to live by, I am simply taking all props away from you, all crutches.The mind is very clever. If you say, “Drop money,” the mind says, “Okay. Can I cling to meditation?” If you say to the mind, “Renounce the world,” the mind says, “Okay. Can I now possess spiritual experiences?” If you say, “Renounce the world,” the mind says, “I can renounce the world, but now I will cling to the idea of God.” And nothing is a greater barrier to godliness than the idea of God.The word God has become a great barrier, the belief in God has become a great barrier. If you want to reach to godliness you will have to drop all ideas about God, all beliefs about God – Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan. You will have to be absolutely silent, unclinging, not-knowing. In that profound ignorance godliness reveals itself to you – only in that profound ignorance.My effort is totally different from your effort. What you are doing here is diametrically opposite to what I am doing here. My effort is to create a profound ignorance in you, so I will have to confuse you. Whenever I see that some knowledge is being gathered, I immediately jump on it and destroy it. By and by you will learn – being close to me you are bound to learn – that it is futile to accumulate because this man will not leave you in peace. If you cling to something he is going to take it away, so what is the point? One day you will simply listen to me, not clinging, not making any belief out of it, not creating a philosophy, a theology out of it; simply listening as you listen to the birds, as you listen to the wind passing through the pines, as you listen to the river rushing toward the ocean, as you listen to the wild roar of the ocean waves. Then you don’t create a philosophy, you simply listen.Let me be a wild ocean roaring in front of you, or a wind passing through the trees, or birds singing in the morning. I am not a philosopher, I am not imparting knowledge to you. I am trying to point to something which is beyond knowledge.So the moment I see that you are nodding, the moment I see that you are saying, “Yes, this is true,” the moment I see that you are accumulating something, immediately I have to jump upon it and contradict it to confuse you. Confusion is my method; I am doing it all the time. I will not leave you to rest unless you drop that whole effort of philosophizing, unless you start listening to me without any mind – out of the sheer joy of it, as you listen to music. When you start listening to me in that way then you will never feel confused. You feel confused because first you cling to something, then in the next step I destroy it. You feel confused. You were making a house and again I come there and destroy it.Your confusion is in fact created by yourself. Don’t create that house, then I cannot destroy it. If you create, I am going to destroy. If you stop creating houses – card-houses, they are – if you stop creating houses, if you say, “This man will come and destroy,” if you simply wait and listen and you don’t bother to make any house to live in, then I cannot confuse you. And the day I cannot confuse you will be a great day of rejoicing for you because that very moment you will be able to understand me, not by your intellect but by your being. It will be a communion, not a communication. It will be a transfer of energy, not of words. You will have entered into my house.I will not allow you to create any house because that will be a barrier. Then you will start living in that house and I am trying to bring you into my house. Jesus says to his disciples, “In my God’s house there are many mansions.” I also say to you, “I am taking you on a journey to where a great palace is waiting for you.” But I see you making houses by the side of the road and I have to destroy them, otherwise your journey will be destroyed and you will never reach the goal. You start worshipping anything. You are in such a hurry, you are so impatient, that whatsoever I tell you, you simply grab it.I am not going to allow it to happen. So, be alert. If you are alert there will be no need to confuse you. In fact, if you are alert, whatsoever I do I cannot confuse you. The day you can say, “Now, Osho, you cannot confuse me. Whatsoever you say I listen, I rejoice in it, but I don’t make any conceptualization” is the day I cannot confuse you. Until that moment I am going to confuse you again and again and again.The third question:Osho,As sex is closely related to death, what is the meaning of spontaneous celibacy?Sex is more closely related to birth than to death. Birth is out of sex; birth is a sexual phenomenon. Naturally, sex is also closely related to death – but as a by-product. Because birth is out of sex, death is also going to be out of sex. Hence the nonsensical idea arose in the East that if you remain celibate, if you remain a brahmachari, if you go beyond sex, you will never die – you will become an immortal. That is foolish, because death is not something that is going to happen in the future, it has already happened with birth. You cannot avoid it. You can indulge in sex or you can indulge in celibacy, it is going to make no difference.Mulla Nasruddin had completed his hundredth year, and a few journalists came to interview him. He was the first citizen of his town who had become a centenarian. They asked how he had attained to such great age.He said, “I never touched wine, I was never interested in women. That must be the reason for it.”Immediately something in the next room fell very loudly and there was a racket. The journalists became very alert. They said, “What is going on?”Mulla said, “It must be my dad. It seems he is again running after the maid, and he seems to be drunk.”The old man must be one hundred and twenty-five. Mulla had said, “I have attained to this age because of celibacy and because I never touched any wine, I have remained away from women,” but here is his father still rushing, drunk, trying to catch hold of a woman.Death has already happened the moment you became incarnated in the body. The moment you entered the womb, death has already happened. Your clock, the clock of your life, can run only so far – seventy years, eighty years – it depends on a thousand and one things. But your clock can only run so far. It makes no difference how you live your life, death is going to happen. Death cannot be avoided.The questioner has asked: “As sex is closely related to death what is the meaning of spontaneous celibacy?”The first thing is: birth and death are both related to sex, but just by becoming celibate you are not going to transcend death. Death has already happened in birth, there is no way to transcend it. It is going to happen because in fact it has already happened. It is only a question of time unfolding. You are rushing toward it each moment.So don’t try to be celibate just to avoid death, because that too again is fear. The people who try to become celibate are afraid of death, and one who is afraid of death can never know what death is, can never know what deathlessness is. So don’t be afraid.And celibacy can only be spontaneous. You ask: “What is the meaning of spontaneous celibacy?” Celibacy can only be spontaneous; there is no other type of celibacy. If it is not spontaneous, it is not celibacy. You can force it, you can control your sexuality, but that is not going to help. You will not be celibate, you will be only more and more sexual. Sex will spread all over your being. It will become part of your unconscious. It will move your dreams, it will become your motivation in dreams, it will become your fantasy. In fact, you will become more sexual than you were ever before. You will think more about it and you will have to repress it again and again. And whatsoever is repressed has to be repressed again because the victory is never complete.There is no way to destroy sex by force, by violence. There is no way to control and discipline it. The people who have tried to control and discipline it have made the whole world very pornographic. Your so-called saints have a very pornographic mind. If a window can be created and a hole can be made in their heads, you will be able to see just sex, pornography. It is bound to be so. It is natural.Never enforce any celibacy on yourself. Try to understand what sexuality is, go deep into it. It has a tremendous beauty of its own. It is one of the profoundest mysteries of life. Life comes out of it – it has to be a great mystery. Sex is not sin; repression is a sin. Sex is very natural, very spontaneous. You have not done anything to have it, it is inborn, it is part of your being. Don’t condemn it, don’t judge it, don’t fear it, don’t fight with it. Simply go into it more – more meditatively. Let it happen in such silence, in such deep acceptance, that you can know the very core of it. The moment you penetrate to the very core of sexual orgasm, by and by you will see sex is losing its appeal for you, your energy is moving in a higher plane, you are becoming more loving and less sexual. And this happens spontaneously.I am not saying become more loving. I am saying that if you go deep into the mystery of sex, love arises out of it naturally. You become more loving and sexuality becomes less and less and less. And one day there is just a pure flame of love, all the smoke of sex has disappeared. The crude energy of sex has been transformed into a more subtle perfume – the perfume of love.Then I will say go deep into love. If you go deep into love, again you will come to the very core of it. And in that moment prayerfulness will arise. That too happens spontaneously. In sex you are more concerned with the body; in love you are more concerned with the psyche; in prayerfulness you suddenly become concerned with the soul. These are the three possibilities hidden in the seed of sex. And when sex has disappeared into love and love has disappeared into prayerfulness, there is a spontaneous celibacy.The Indian term for it is very beautiful. It is brahmacharya. The word literally means living like a god. Brahmacharya means living like a god. The whole energy is just prayerfulness, the whole energy is just a grace, a gratitude, a benediction. One becomes absolutely divine.But I am not saying that sex is not divine; it is the seed. Love is the tree, prayer is the flowering. Prayer arises out of sex energy. You have to be grateful toward it, you have to respect it. Sex should be respected because everything is going to happen out of it. Life has happened out of it; death is going to happen out of it; love, prayer and godliness are going to happen out of it. Sex carries the whole blueprint of your destiny. To me, sex is not just sex, sex is all.So if from the very beginning you take an “anti” attitude you will be missing the whole journey of life. And you will get involved in such a fight which leads nowhere, you will get involved in a fight in which your defeat is certain. You cannot defeat sexual energy because in sexual energy godliness is hidden, in sexual energy love and prayer are hidden. How can you defeat it? You are very tiny and sexual energy is very universal. This whole existence is full of sexual energy.But the word sex has become so condemned. It has to be taken out of the mud. It has to be cleaned. A temple has to be made around it. And remember, celibacy can only be spontaneous, there is no other type of celibacy. It is not a control, it is not a discipline; it is a tremendous understanding of your own energies and their possibilities.The fourth question:Osho,You said nobody should dictate what you should do with your life. How does that fit with being available and surrendering to you?In the first place I am a nobody. Now listen to the question again. “You said nobody should dictate what you should do with your life.” And the second thing: don’t surrender to me because I dictate to you. But if you feel like surrendering, what can I do? If you feel like surrendering, it is your feeling. If I am dictating to you to surrender to me, don’t listen to me. But if your heart is dictating, then what are you going to do? If I tell you to be available to me, don’t listen at all. But if your own understanding says, “Be available to this man,” then be.And here there is nobody. If you look deeply into me you will not find anybody there. The house is empty, the whole space is yours, just for the asking. I am just a space. The man you see here sitting in the chair died long before. There is no entity who can dictate anything to you.Just last night one woman seeker was saying, “I would like to do what other sannyasins are doing, but I cannot surrender. I cannot lose my freedom. I have lived in many confinements from my very childhood, in many disciplines. Now I am afraid to get involved in another imprisonment.” I said, “Don’t be worried. I confer freedom upon you, an absolute freedom.”Sannyas is freedom. If you understand rightly, it is absolute freedom. And the woman understood the point because I said, “Now you are afraid that you may get into another trap. But are you aware that your ego itself can become the trap, and the greatest of all?” You have lived within many other commitments and you found they all became imprisonments – but your own ego can become the imprisonment.When you surrender to a nobody he cannot imprison you, and the very danger of your own ego becoming an imprisonment for you disappears. When you surrender to me you are not really surrendering to me, because I am not here. And I’m not enjoying your surrender at all – whether you surrender or not makes no difference to me. In fact, when you surrender to me, you surrender yourself. You don’t surrender to me, you simply surrender your ego. I am just a device, an excuse. It will be difficult for you to go and surrender to the river, or to the sky, or to the stars – it will be very difficult and you will look a little ridiculous. So I pretend to be here just to help you so that you don’t feel ridiculous. You can put your ego here. There is nobody to receive it and nobody to be happy about it, but it helps.Buddha used to call such things devices – upaya. It is just an upaya, a device to help those who cannot put their egos down unless they find some feet. I make my feet available to you, but inside there is nobody.The fifth question:Osho,Why do you give us these religious titles? They seem absurd. Outside the ashram Indians seldom call me swami with a straight face.You must be hankering for it. I have not called you swami to be swami for others. The word swami means lord. Don’t hanker for others to call you lord. I have called you swami just to indicate your path – so that you become lord of yourself. It is not to make others slaves to you; it is just to make a master of you. The word swami is intended for self-mastery. So don’t feel frustrated if nobody calls you swami. In fact if somebody calls you swami be alert, because there is danger. You may start thinking that you are a swami, you may start thinking that you are some holy man or something. Don’t carry that type of nonsense. I am not here to make you holy or saintly or anything.You ask why I give you these religious titles because they seem absurd. They are! Really my whole intention is to make you so ridiculous, so absurd, that others laugh at you and you can also laugh at yourself. That is the whole trick in it.And also for another purpose I call you swami. I give you these religious titles because to me the profane and the sacred are not two separate things; the profane is the sacred, the ordinary is the extraordinary, and the natural is the super-natural.God is not somewhere away from the world. God is in the world, immanent. That’s my whole approach: that everything is divine as it is. The old concept of a religious man is that he is anti-life. He condemns this life, this ordinary life – he calls it mundane, profane, illusion. He denounces it. I am so deeply in love with life that I cannot denounce it. I am here to enhance the feeling for it.When I give you these religious titles I am not making you in any way superior to others. Don’t carry any idea of “holier than you,” don’t carry any idea of that sort. That is stupid.I give you these orange clothes. These clothes have been used for centuries down through the ages for a specific purpose – to make a demarcation between the ordinary life and the religious life. I want to dissolve all those differences. Hence I give you these robes and I don’t take you away from life.You will be sitting in ordinary life, working in ordinary life, walking in ordinary life. You will be in the marketplace, you will be in the shop or in the factory, you will be a laborer, a doctor, an engineer. I am not making you special in any way – because that very desire to become special is irreligious.And I have given you these robes to destroy the whole concept completely. That’s why the traditional sannyasins are very much against me. I am destroying their whole superiority. Now sooner or later there will be no distinction. My swamis are growing so fast that the old traditional swamis will be simply lost in the jungle of my swamis. And people will not know who is who. That’s the purpose behind it. I want to make religious life ordinary life, because this is the only life there is. All else is just an ego trip. And this life is so beautiful, there is no need to create another life superior to it.Go deeper into it, move deeper into it, and profounder depths will be revealed to you. This ordinary life is carrying tremendous possibilities. So I don’t want you to become religious in the sense that others are not religious. I want to drop all distinctions between the profane and the sacred, between the holy and the unholy. It is a great revolution. You may not even be aware of what is happening.And if the traditionalists are against me, I can understand. I am destroying their whole “holier than you” attitude. That’s why I have chosen the orange particularly. That has been the traditional dress for sannyasins. But I have chosen only the dress; nothing else is there in you – nothing else of the traditional discipline. There is just awareness, a love for life, a respect for life, a reverence for life. I have given you the orange robe. The day I see that now the traditional distinction has been destroyed, I will free you from the orange robe. There is no need then. But it will take time because they have been creating the distinction for centuries.You cannot conceive of what is happening. When an orange-robed sannyasin walks with his girlfriend on the street, you cannot conceive what is happening. It has never happened in India, not for ten thousand years. People cannot believe it – and you are expecting that they should call you swami? It is enough that they are not killing you! You are destroying their whole tradition. A sannyasin was one who would never look at a woman. Touching was out of the question – and holding the hand, impossible! That was enough to throw him into hell.I have made you a totally new kind of sannyasin. It is a neo-sannyas. And behind whatsoever I am doing there is a method. You may be aware of it or not. I want to destroy the whole traditional attitude. Life should be religious and religion should not have any other life. The distinction between the marketplace and the monastery should not be there. The monastery should be in the marketplace; the divine dimension should become part of everyday life.Somebody asked Bokoju, “What do you do? What is your religious discipline?”He said, “I live an ordinary life. That is my discipline. When I feel hungry I eat, and when I feel sleepy I sleep.”Yes, this is exactly how it should be.The questioner was puzzled. He said, “But I don’t see anything special in it.”Bokoju said, “That is the point. There is nothing special All hankering for the special is of the ego.”The questioner was still puzzled. He said, “But this is what everybody else is doing – when hungry they eat, when feeling sleepy they sleep.”Bokoju laughed. He said, “No, when you eat, you do a thousand and one things also. You think, you dream, you imagine, you remember. You are not there just eating. When I eat, I simply eat. Then there is only eating and nothing else. It is pure. When you sleep you do a thousand and one things – you dream, fight, have nightmares. When I sleep I simply sleep, there is nothing else. When sleep is there, there is only sleep. Not even Bokoju exists. When eating is there, there is only eating. Not even Bokoju exists. When there is walking, there is only walking – no Bokoju. There is walking, simply walking.”This is what I would like you to become. Be ordinary, but bring a quality of awareness to your ordinary life. Bring truth to your ordinary life, introduce godliness into your ordinary life. Sleep, eat, love, pray, meditate, but don’t think that you are making or doing something special. And then you will be special. A man who is ready to live an ordinary life is an extraordinary man. Because to be extraordinary, to desire to be extraordinary, is a very ordinary desire. To relax and to be ordinary is really extraordinary.The sixth question:Osho,Why is this life, which has no end and no beginning, so mysterious? Please explain.Now, not only do I give you absurd answers, you have started asking absurd questions. Why is this life so mysterious? How am I supposed to know? It is so! It is simply a fact. I am not talking about theories. I’m not saying that it is my theory that life is mysterious – then you could ask why. It is simply so. The trees are green. You ask why. The trees are green because they are green. There is no question of why.If you can ask why and the question can be answered, then life will not be a mystery. If the why can be answered, then life cannot be a mystery. Life is a mystery because no why is relevant.“Why is this life, which has no end and no beginning, so mysterious?”Now you make me feel guilty, as if I am responsible for life having no beginning and no end. It should have. I agree perfectly with you, but what to do? It has no beginning and no end.I have heard:Mulla Nasruddin was saying to one of his disciples that life is like a woman. I was surprised, so I listened attentively to what he was saying.He was saying, “The man who says he understands women is bragging. The man who thinks he understands them is gullible. The man who pretends to understand them is ambiguous. The man who wants to understand them is wistful. On the other hand, the man who does not say he understands them, does not think he understands them, does not pretend to understand them, does not even want to understand them – he understands them!”And that’s how life is also. Life is a woman. Try to understand life and you will become a mess. Forget all about understanding. Just live it and you will understand it. The understanding is not going to be intellectual, theoretical; the understanding is going to be total. The understanding is not going to be verbal; it is going to be non-verbal. That is the meaning when we say life is a mystery. It can be lived but it cannot be solved.You can know what it is, but you cannot say what it is. That is the meaning of mystery. When we say that life is a mystery, we are saying that life is not a problem. A problem can be solved. A mystery is that which cannot be solved; insolubility is inbuilt. And it is good that life cannot be solved, otherwise what would you do then? Just think of it. If life is not a mystery and somebody comes and explains it to you – then what will you do? There will be nothing left except to commit suicide. Even that will look meaningless.Life is a mystery; the more you know it, the more beautiful it is. But the less you know – a moment comes when suddenly you start living it, you start flowing with it. An orgasmic relationship evolves between you and life, but you cannot figure out what it is. That’s the beauty of it, that’s its infinite depth.And yes, there is no beginning and no end. How can there be any beginning to life and any end to life? Beginning will mean that something came out of nothing, and end will mean that something was there and went into nothing. That will be an even bigger mystery. When we say life has no beginning, we simply say it has always been there. How can there be a beginning? Can you mark a line and say that at this moment life started? – as Christian theologians used to say. Just four thousand years before Jesus Christ, they say, life started on a certain Monday. Of course, it must have been in the morning. But how can you call it Monday if there was no Sunday before it? And how can you call it morning if there was no night before it? Just think of it.No, you cannot make a mark – that is foolish. It is not possible to mark a line because even to mark a line something is needed. Something is needed to precede it, otherwise demarcation is not possible. You can mark a line if there are two things, but if there is only one thing, how can you mark a line? The fence around your house is possible because there is a neighbor. If there is no neighbor, nothing beyond your fence, the fence cannot exist. Just think of it. If there is absolutely nothing beyond your fence, your fence will fall down into nothing. How can it exist? Something is needed beyond the fence to hold it.If on a certain Monday life started, a Sunday is needed to precede it. Otherwise the Monday will fall, topple down and disappear. And in the same way there is no possibility of any end. Life is, life simply is. It has been, it will be. It is eternity.And don’t start thinking about it. Otherwise you will be missing it, because all the time that you waste in thinking about it, is simply waste. Use that time, use that space, use that energy to live it.The seventh question:Osho,Why do you prefer to call meditation the art of dying rather than calling it the art of growing?Because I know your ego will like it very much if I called it the art of growing. The art of dying comes like a shock.Let me tell you an anecdote:One day Mulla Nasruddin saw a crowd gathered around a pond. A Muslim priest with a huge turban on his head had fallen into the water, and was calling for help. People were leaning over and saying, “Give me your hand, Reverend, give me your hand!” But the priest didn’t pay attention to their offer to rescue him. He kept wrestling with the water and shouting for help.Finally Mulla Nasruddin stepped forward: “Let me handle this!” He stretched out his hand toward the priest and shouted at him, “Take my hand!” The priest grabbed Mulla’s hand and was hoisted out of the pond.People were very surprised and asked Mulla for the secret of his strategy. “It is very simple,” he said. “I know this miser would not give anything to anyone, not even his hand. So instead of saying, ‘Give me your hand’ I said, ‘Take my hand, your Reverence.’ And sure enough, he took it.”I know you would like it to be called the art of growing. Then your ego would feel perfectly good: “So it is a question of growth; so I am going to remain and grow.” That’s what the ego always wants.I have knowingly called it the art of dying. Meditation is the art of dying. Then your ego will be shocked.And it is also truer to call it the art of dying, because your ego is not going to grow, your ego is going to die in meditation. These are the only two possibilities: either your ego goes on growing more, it becomes stronger, or it disappears. If your ego goes on growing and becomes stronger and stronger, you are getting more and more into the mud. You are getting more and more into fetters, you are getting more and more into the imprisonment of it. You will be suffocated. Your whole life will become a hell.The growth of the ego is a cancerous growth. It is like cancer, it kills you. Meditation is not growth of the ego, it is death of the ego.The eighth question:Osho,The more you talk about death, the greater my desire for life. I have just realized that I have not really lived. While I can understand that life and death come together, there is a yearning inside me that cries out for life, love and passionate intensity. I have discovered I am anguished at the thought of surrendering my unfulfilled desires. Can one give up what one has never had? I feel I would only return to the body again. Illusion or not, to my great amazement I have to admit that I still desire, and I have never felt such hunger.When I say “to die” I really mean to live intensely; I really mean to live passionately. How can you die unless you have lived totally? In total life there is death, and that death is beautiful. In a passionate, intense life, death comes spontaneously – as a silence, as a profound bliss. When I say “to die”, I am not saying anything against life; in fact, if you are afraid of death you will be afraid of life also. That’s what has happened to the questioner.A man who is afraid of death will be afraid of life also, because life brings death. If you are afraid of the enemy and you close your door, the friend will also be prohibited. And you are so afraid of the enemy that you close the door; the enemy may enter so you close the door for the friend also. And you become so afraid that you cannot open for the friend, because who knows? The friend may turn out to be the enemy. Or, when the door is open, the enemy may enter.People have become afraid of life because they are afraid of death. They don’t live because at the highest points, peaks, death always penetrates into life. Have you watched this happening? Almost the majority of women have lived a frigid life – they are afraid of orgasm, they are afraid of that wild explosion of energy. For centuries women have been frigid; they have not known what orgasm is.And almost the majority of men suffer because of that fear too – ninety-five percent of men suffer from premature ejaculation. They are so afraid of orgasm, there is so much fear, that somehow they want to finish it, somehow they want to get out of it.Again and again they go into lovemaking and there is fear. The woman remains frigid and the man becomes so afraid that he cannot stay in that state any longer. The very fear makes him ejaculate sooner than is natural, and the woman remains rigid, closed, holding herself. Now orgasm has disappeared from the world because of the fear. In the deepest orgasm, death penetrates; you feel as if you are dying. If a woman goes into orgasm she starts moaning, she starts crying, screaming. She may even start saying, “I am dying. Don’t kill me!” That actually happens. If a woman goes into orgasm she will start mumbling, she will start saying, “I am dying! Don’t kill me! Stop!” A moment comes in deep orgasm where ego cannot exist, death penetrates. But that is the beauty of orgasm.People have become afraid of love because in love also, death penetrates. If two lovers are sitting side by side in deep love and intimacy, not even talking… Talking is an escape, an escape from love. When two lovers are talking that simply shows they are avoiding the intimacy. Words in-between give distance; with no words distance disappears, death appears. In silence there is death just lurking around – a beautiful phenomenon. But people are so afraid that they go on talking whether it is needed or not. They go on talking about anything, everything – but they cannot keep silent.If two lovers sit silently, death suddenly surrounds them. And when two lovers are silent you will see a certain happiness and also a certain sadness – happiness because life is at its peak, and sadness because at its peak death also comes in. Whenever you are silent you will feel a sort of sadness. Even looking at a roseflower, if you are sitting silently and not saying anything about the roseflower, just looking at it, in that silence you will suddenly feel it is there – death. You will see the flower withering, within moments it will be gone, lost forever. Such a beauty, and so fragile! Such a beauty, and so vulnerable! Such a beauty, such a miracle and soon it will be lost forever and it will not return again. Suddenly you will become sad.Whenever you meditate you will find death moving around. In love, in orgasm, in any aesthetic experience – in music, in song, in poetry, in dance – wherever you suddenly lose your ego, death is there.So let me tell you one thing. You are afraid of life because you are afraid of death. And I would like to teach you how to die so that you lose all fear of death. The moment you lose the fear of death you become capable of living.I am not talking against life. How can I talk against life? I am madly in love with life! I am so madly in love with life that because of it I have fallen in love with death also. It is part of life. When you love life totally how can you avoid death? You have to love death also. When you love a flower deeply, you love its withering away also. When you love a woman deeply, you love her getting old also, you one day love her death also. That is part, part of the woman. The old age has not happened from the outside, it has come from the inside. The beautiful face has become wrinkled now – you love those wrinkles also. They are part of your woman. You love a man and his hair has grown white – you love those hairs also. They have not happened from the outside; they are not accidents. Life is unfolding. Now the black hair has disappeared and the grey hair has come. You don’t reject them, you love them; they are a part. Then your man becomes old, becomes weak – you love that too. Then one day the man is gone – you love that too.Love loves all. Love knows nothing else than love. Hence, I say, love death. If you can love death it will be very simple to love life. If you can love even death, there is no problem.The problem arises because the questioner must have been repressing, must be afraid of life. And then repression can bring dangerous outcomes. If you go on repressing, repressing, one day you will lose all aesthetic sense. You lose all sense of beauty, sense of grace, sense of divinity. Then the very repression becomes such a feverish state that you can do anything which may be ugly.Let me tell you a beautiful anecdote. Chinmaya has sent this. He sends beautiful jokes:A marine is sent to a distant island outpost where there are no women, but there is a large monkey population. He is shocked to see that without exception his fellow marines all make love with the monkeys, and he swears to them that he will never get that horny. They tell him not to be closed-minded. But as the months passed by, the marine can hold out no longer. He grabs the first monkey he can and gets caught in the act by his buddies, who start laughing their heads off.Surprised, he says to them, “What are you guys laughing at? You keep telling me to do it!”They answer, “Yeah, but did you have to pick the ugliest one?”If you repress, the possibility is that you may choose the ugliest life. If you go on repressing, then the very fever is so much that you are not in your consciousness. Then you are almost in neurosis. Before the repression becomes too much, relax, move into life. It is your life! Don’t feel guilty. It is your life to live and love and to know and be. And whatsoever instincts existence has given to you, they are just indications of where you have to move, where you have to seek, where you have to find your fulfillment.I know that this life is not all – a greater life is hidden behind it. But it is hidden behind it. You cannot find that greater life against this life; you have to find that greater life only by indulging deeply in this life. There are waves on the oceans. The ocean is hidden just behind the waves. If, seeing the turmoil and the chaos and you escape from the waves, you will be escaping from the ocean and its depth also. Jump in; those waves are part of it. Dive deep and waves will disappear, and then there will be the depth, the absolute silence of the ocean.So this is my suggestion for the questioner. You have waited long, now no more. Enough is enough.Let me tell you an anecdote, an old Italian joke:The Pope’s personal waiter was delivering His Holiness’ breakfast, when he slipped and threw the food all over the floor. “Godammit!” he screamed as he fell.His Holiness came out of the door of his room and said, “No cursing in here, my son. Say instead, Ave Maria.”The following morning as he attempted to deliver His Holiness’ breakfast, the waiter slipped again, throwing the food on the floor. “Godammit!” screamed the poor man.“No, my son,” said the Pope. “Ave Maria.”On the third day the waiter was trembling with fear, but this time he remembered. “Ave Maria!” he yelled out as soon as he started falling with the breakfast on the floor.“No!” exclaimed the Pope. “Godammit! This is my third day of skipping breakfast! Enough is enough!”It is your life. There is no need going on skipping breakfast every day. And twice Ave Maria is good, but when it comes finally, it is Godammit!The last question:Osho,I am a piece of rock in the middle of the mountain. Even this I don't dare to realize. I dream instead. Osho, why did you tell me about rivers, the ocean and the sky? And how could you give me sannyas? I am a piece of rock in the middle of the mountain.Everybody is a piece of rock. Unless you attain to your uttermost glory, you are bound to be a piece of rock. But nothing is wrong in being a piece of rock. Because the piece of rock is nothing but existence fast asleep, snoring. A piece of rock is godliness asleep. Nothing is wrong in the piece of rock, it has to be awakened. Hence, I have given you sannyas.You say, “And how could you give me sannyas?”Sannyas is nothing but an effort to wake you, an effort to shake you, an effort to shock you into awareness. Sannyas is nothing but an alarm.“Even this I don’t dare to realize” – that I am a piece of rock in the middle of the mountain – “I dream instead.”That’s how the rock avoids its own growth, the rock avoids its own future – by dreaming. Dreaming is the barrier. By dreaming we are avoiding the reality, by dreaming we avoid the real. It is our escape. You don’t have any other escape. This is the only escape route – dreaming.When you are listening to me, you can dream also. Sitting here you can have a thousand and one thoughts roaming around in your mind. You can think of the future or of the past. You can be for and against what I am saying, you can argue, you can debate with me inside yourself, but then you are missing me. I am a fact here. You need not dream here, you can just be here with me. And tremendous will be the result of it.But we go on dreaming. People are dreamers, and that is their way. When they are making love to a woman, then they are dreaming; when they are eating, they are dreaming. When they are walking on the road – they have gone for a walk in the morning, the sun is rising, the day is beautiful, the people are getting up, the life is coming back again – they are dreaming. They are not looking at anything. We go on dreaming. Dreaming functions as a blindfold, and we go on missing the reality.“Osho, why did you tell me about rivers, the ocean and the sky?”Because those are your possibilities. The rock can fly; the rock can grow wings. I myself was a rock once, then I started growing wings – so I know. I know your possibility, you may not know it. Hence I talk about the rivers, the ocean and the sky. The rock can become a flower, the rock can become a river, the rock can become the ocean, the rock can become the sky – infinite are your possibilities! Your possibilities are as many as the possibilities of existence. You are multi-dimensional.That’s why I go on talking about the rivers and the ocean and the sky. Some day or other a great thirst will possess you, a new passion will arise for the impossible and you will be able to fly into the sky. It is yours, claim it! You only look like a rock. Rocks also only look like rocks. If they make a little effort, if they shake themselves a little, they will find wings are hidden there. They will find infinite possibilities opening, doors upon doors.But dreaming functions as the barrier. Being a rock is not the problem: being too much in dreams is the problem. Start dropping dreams. They are futile, meaningless, a wastage and nothing more. But people go on dreaming, go on dreaming… By and by people start thinking that dreaming is their only life. Life is not a dream and dreaming is not life. Dreaming is avoiding life.Let me tell you an anecdote:On his seventy-fifth birthday, Turtletaub rushed into a physician’s office. “Doctor,” he exclaimed, “I have got a date tonight with a twenty-two-year-old girl. You gotta give me something to pep me up.”The MD smiled sympathetically and supplied the old man with a prescription. Later that night, out of curiosity, the medical man phoned his elderly patient, “Did the medicine help?”“It’s wonderful,” replied Turtletaub. “Seven times already.”“That’s great,” agreed the doctor. “And what about the girl?”“The girl?” said Turtletaub. “She didn’t get here yet!”Don’t go on dreaming, otherwise you will miss the girl. You will miss life. Stop dreaming, look at that which is. And it is already in front of you. It is already around you, it is within and without. Godliness is the only presence if you are not dreaming. If you are dreaming, then your dreams occupy your inner space. They become the hindrances for godliness to enter into you. This dreaming we call maya. Maya means a magic show, a dream show. When you are not dreaming, when you are in a state of no-dream, the reality is revealed.The reality is already there, you are not to achieve it. You have only to do one thing: you have to put aside your dreams. And you will no more be a rock, you can fly with me to the very end of the sky.Receive my invitation, receive my challenge. That’s what sannyas is all about.Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/osho-the-art-of-dying-03/

Once, when the Hasidim were seated togetherin all brotherliness,pipe in hand, Rabbi Israel joined them.Because he was so friendly they asked him,“Tell us, dear Rabbi, how should we serve God?”He was surprised at the question,and replied, “How should I know?”But then he went on to tell them this story…There were two friends of the king,and both were proved guilty of a crime.Since he loved them the king wanted to show them mercy,but he could not acquit thembecause even a king’s word cannot prevail over the law.So he gave this verdict:A rope was to be stretched over a deep chasm,and, one after another, the two were to walk across it.Whoever reached to the other sidewas to be granted his life.It was done as the king ordered,and the first of the friends got safely across.The other, still standing on the same spot, cried to him,“Tell me, friend, how did you manage to cross?”The first called back,“I don’t know anything but this:Whenever I felt myself toppling over to one side,I leaned to the other.”Existence is paradoxical; paradox is its very core. It exists through opposites, it is a balance in the opposites. And one who learns how to balance becomes capable of knowing what life is, what existence is, what truth is. The secret key is balance.A few things before we enter into this story… First, we have been trained in Aristotelian logic – which is linear, one dimensional. Life is not Aristotelian at all, it is Hegelian. Logic is not linear, logic is dialectical. The very process of life is dialectic, a meeting of the opposites – a conflict between the opposites and yet a meeting of the opposites. And life goes through this dialectical process: from thesis to antithesis, from antithesis to synthesis – and then again the synthesis becomes a thesis. The whole process starts again.If Aristotle is true then there will be only men and no women, or, only women and no men. If the world was made according to Aristotle then there will be only light and no darkness, or only darkness and no light. That would be logical. There would be either life or death but not both.But life is not based on Aristotle’s logic, life has both. And life is really possible only because of both, because of the opposites: man and woman, yin and yang, day and night, birth and death, love and hate. Life consists of both.This is the first thing you have to allow to sink deep into your heart – because Aristotle is in everybody’s head. The whole education system of the world believes in Aristotle – although for the very advanced scientific minds Aristotle is out of date. He no longer applies. Science has gone beyond Aristotle because science has come closer to existence. And now science understands that life is dialectical, not logical.I have heard:Do you know that on Noah’s Ark, making love was forbidden while on board?When the couples filed out of the ark after the flood, Noah watched them leave. Finally the tomcat and the she-cat left, followed by a number of very young kittens. Noah raised his eyebrows questioningly and the tomcat said to him, “You thought we were fighting!”Noah must have been Aristotelian; the tomcat knew better.Love is a sort of fight, love is a fight. Without fight love cannot exist. They look opposite – because we think lovers should never fight. It is logical: if you love somebody how can you fight? It is absolutely clear, obvious to the intellect, that lovers should never fight – but they do in fact. They are intimate enemies; they are continuously fighting. In that very fight the energy that is called love is released. Love is not only fight, love is not only struggle, that’s true – it is more than that. It is fight too, but love transcends; the fight cannot destroy it. Love survives fight, but it cannot exist without it.Look into life: life is non-Aristotelian, non-Euclidean. If you don’t force your concepts on life, if you simply look at things as they are, then you will be suddenly surprised to see that opposites are complementaries, and the tension between the opposites is the very basis on which life exists – otherwise it would disappear. Think of a world where death does not exist. Your mind may say, “Then life will be there eternally,” but you are wrong. If death does not exist life will simply disappear. It cannot exist without death; death gives it the background, death gives it color and richness, death gives it passion and intensity.So death is not against life – the first thing – death is involved in life. And if you want to live authentically you have to learn how to continuously die authentically. You have to keep a balance between birth and death and you have to remain just in the middle. That remaining in the middle cannot be a static thing: it is not that once you have attained to balance, finished, then there is nothing to be done. That is nonsense. One never achieves balance forever; one has to achieve it again and again and again.This is very difficult to understand because our minds have been cultivated in concepts which are not applicable to real life. You think that once you have attained meditation then there is no need of anything more, then you will be in meditation. You are wrong. Meditation is not a static thing. It is a balance. You will have to attain it again and again and again. You will become more and more capable of attaining it, but it is not going to remain forever, like a possession in your hands. It has to be claimed each moment – only then is it yours. You cannot rest, you cannot say, “I have meditated and I have realized that now there is no need for me to do anything more. I can rest.” Life does not believe in rest; it is a constant movement from perfection to more perfection.Listen to me: from perfection to more perfection. It is never imperfect, it is always perfect, but always more perfection is possible. Logically these statements are absurd.I was reading an anecdote:A man was charged with using counterfeit money to pay a bill. At his hearing, the defendant pleaded that he didn’t know the money was phony. Pressed for proof, he admitted: “Because I stole it. Would I be stealing money that I knew was counterfeit?”After thinking it over, the judge decided that made good sense, so he then tossed out the counterfeit charge. But he substituted a new charge – theft.“Sure, I stole it,” the defendant conceded amiably. “But counterfeit money has no legal value. Since when is it a crime to steal nothing?”No one could find any flaw in his logic, so the man went free.But logic won’t do in life. You cannot go free so easily.You can come out of a legal trap legally and logically because the trap consists of Aristotelian logic – you can use the same logic to come out of it. But in life you will not be able to come out only because of logic, only because of theology, only because of philosophy, only because you are very clever – clever in inventing theories. You can come out of life or you can go beyond life only through actual experience.There are two types of people who are religious. The first type is childish, people who are searching for a father figure. The first type is immature; they cannot rely upon themselves, hence they need a god somewhere or other. The god may exist or not – that is not the point – but a god is needed. Even if the god is not there the immature mind will invent him, because the immature mind has a psychological need. It is not a question of truth whether God is there or not, it is a question of a psychological need.In the Bible it is said God made man in his own image, but the reverse is truer: man made God in his own image. Whatsoever is your need you create that sort of god; that’s why the concept of God goes on changing in every age. Every country has its own concept because every country has its own need. In fact, every single person has a different concept of God because his own needs are there and they have to be fulfilled.So the first type of religious person – the so-called religious person – is simply immature. His religion is not religion but psychology. And when religion is psychology it is just a dream, a wish-fulfillment, a desire. It has nothing to do with reality.I was reading:A small boy was saying his prayers and concluded with this remark, “Dear God, take care of Mommy, take care of Daddy, take care of baby sister and Aunt Emma and Uncle John and Grandma and Grandpa – and, please God, take care of yourself, or else we’re all sunk!”This is the God of the majority. Ninety percent of the so-called religious people are immature people. They believe because they cannot live without belief; they believe because belief gives a sort of security; they believe because belief helps them to feel protected. It is their dream, but it helps. In the dark night of life, in the deep struggle of existence, without such a belief they will feel left alone. But their God is their God, not the God of reality. And once they get rid of their immaturity, their God will disappear.That’s what has happened to many people. In this century many people have become irreligious – not that they have come to know that God does not exist, but only because this age has made man a little more mature. Man has come of age; man has become a little more mature. So the God of the childhood, the God of the immature mind has simply become irrelevant.That is the meaning when Friedrich Nietzsche declares that “God is dead.” It is not God that is dead, it is the God of the immature mind that is dead. In fact to say that God is dead is not right because that God was never alive. The only right expression will be to say that “God is no longer relevant.” Man can rely more upon himself – he does not need belief, he does not need the crutches of belief.Hence people have become less and less interested in religion. They have become indifferent to what goes on in the church. They have become so indifferent to it that they will not even argue against it. If you ask, “Do you believe in God?” they will say, “It’s okay whether he is or not, it doesn’t make any difference, it doesn’t matter.” Just to be polite, if you believe, they will say, “Yes, he is.” If you don’t believe, they will say, “Yes, he is not.” But it is no longer a passionate concern.This is the first type of religion; it has existed for centuries, down the centuries, down the ages, and it is becoming more and more outmoded, out of date. Its time is finished. A new God is needed – who is not psychological. A new God is needed – who is existential, the God of reality or God as reality. We can even drop the word God – “the real” will do, “the existential” will do.Then there is a second type of religious people for whom religion is not out of fear. The first type of religion is out of fear, the second type – also bogus, also pseudo, also so-called – is not out of fear, it is only out of cleverness. There are very clever people who go on inventing theories, who are very trained in logic, in metaphysics, in philosophy. They create a religion which is just an abstraction: a beautiful piece of artwork, of intelligence, of intellectuality, of philosophizing. But it never penetrates life, it never touches life anywhere, it simply remains an abstract conceptualization.Once Mulla Nasruddin was saying to me, “I have never been what I oughta been. I stole chickens and watermelons, got drunk and got in fights with my fists and my razor, but there is one thing I ain’t never done: in spite of all my meanness I ain’t never lost my religion.”Now what kind of religion is that? It has no impact on life.You believe, but that belief never penetrates your life, never transforms it. It never becomes an intrinsic part of you, it never circulates in your blood, you never breathe it in or breathe it out, it never beats in your heart – it is simply something useless. Ornamental maybe, at the most, but of no utility to you. Sunday you can go to the church; it is a formality, a social need. And you can pay lip service to God, to the Bible, to the Koran, to the Vedas, but you don’t mean it, you are not sincere about it. Your life goes on without it, your life goes on in a totally different way – it has nothing to do with religion.Watch: somebody says he is a Mohammedan, somebody says he is a Hindu, somebody says he is a Christian, somebody says he is a Jew – their beliefs are different, but watch their life and you will not find any difference. The Mohammedan, the Jew, the Christian, the Hindu – they all live the same life. Their life is not at all touched by their belief. In fact, beliefs cannot touch your life, beliefs are devices. Beliefs are cunning devices through which you say “I know what life is,” and you can rest at ease, you are not troubled by life. You hold a concept and that concept helps you to rationalize. Then life does not bother you much. You have all the answers to all the questions.But remember, unless religion is personal, unless religion is not abstract but real, deep in your roots, deep in your guts, unless it is like blood and bone and marrow, it is futile, it is of no use. It is the religion of the philosophers, not the religion of the sages.When the third type comes in… And that is the real type; these other two are the falsifications of religion, pseudo dimensions, cheap, very easy, because they don’t challenge you. The third is very difficult, arduous; it is a great challenge, it will create a turmoil in your life – because the third, the real religion, says existence has to be addressed in a personal way. You have to provoke it and you have to allow it to provoke you and you have to come to terms with it; in fact you have to struggle with it, you have to clash against it. You have to love it and you have to hate it; you have to be a friend and you have to be an enemy; you have to make your experience of existence a lived experience.I have heard about a small child – and I would like you to be like this small child. He was really smart:A little boy was lost at a Sunday school picnic. His mother began a frantic search for him, and soon she heard loud sounds in a childish voice calling, “Estelle, Estelle!”She quickly spotted the youngster and rushed up to grab him in her arms. “Why did you keep calling me by my name, Estelle, instead of Mother?” she asked him, as he had never called her by her first name before.“Well,” the youngster answered, “it was no use calling out ‘Mother’ – the place is full of them.”If you call “mother,” there are so many mothers – the place is full of them. You have to call in a personal way, you have to call the first name.Unless God is also called in a personal way, addressed with the first name, it will never become a reality in your life. You can go on calling “father” but whose father are you talking about? When Jesus called him “father” it was a personal address, when you call, it is absolutely impersonal. It is Christian but impersonal. When Jesus called him ”father” it was meaningful; when you call “father” it is meaningless – you have made no contact, no real contact with him. Only experience of life – neither belief nor philosophy – only experience of life will make you able to address him in a personal way. Then you can encounter him.And unless existence is encountered you are simply deceiving yourself with words – with words which are empty, hollow, with words which have no content.There was a very famous Sufi mystic, Shaqiq was his name. He trusted existence so deeply, so tremendously, that he lived only out of that trust.Just as Jesus says to his disciples, “Look at those lilies in the field – they labor not and yet they are so beautiful and so alive that not even Solomon was so beautiful in all his glory.” Shaqiq lived the life of a lily. There have been very few people who have lived that way, but there have been mystics who have lived that way. The trust is so infinite, the trust is so absolute that there is no need to do anything – existence goes on doing things for you. In fact even when you are doing them it is doing them; it is only that you think you are doing them.One day a man came to Shaqiq accusing him of idleness, laziness, and asked him to work for him. “I will pay you according to your services,” the man added.Shaqiq replied, “I would accept your offer if it weren’t for five drawbacks. First, you might go broke. Second, thieves might steal your wealth. Third, whatever you give me you will do so grudgingly. Fourth, if you find faults with my work, you’ll probably fire me. Fifth, should death come to you, I’ll lose the source of my sustenance.“Now,” Shaqiq concluded, “it happens that I have a master who is totally devoid of such imperfections.”This is what trust is. Trust in life then you cannot lose anything. But that trust cannot come by indoctrination, that trust cannot come by education, preaching, studying, thinking; that trust can only come by experiencing life in all its opposites, in all its contradictions, in all its paradoxes. When within all the paradoxes you come to the point of balance, there is trust. Trust is a perfume of balance, the fragrance of balance.If you really want to attain to trust, drop all your beliefs. They will not help. A believing mind is a stupid mind; a trusting mind has pure intelligence in it. A believing mind is a mediocre mind; a trusting mind becomes perfect. Trust makes perfect.And the difference between belief and trust is simple. I am not talking about the dictionary meaning of the words – in the dictionary it may be so: belief means trust, trust means faith, faith means belief – I am talking about existence. In an existential way belief is borrowed; trust is yours. Belief you believe in, but doubt exists just underneath. Trust has no doubt element in it; it is simply devoid of doubt. Belief creates a division in you: a part of your mind believes, a part of your mind denies. Trust is a unity within your being, your totality.But how can your totality trust unless you have experienced it? The God of Jesus won’t do, the God of my experience won’t do for you, the God of Buddha’s experience won’t do – it has to be your experience. And if you carry beliefs you will come again and again to experiences which don’t fit the belief, and then there is the tendency of the mind not to see those experiences, not to take note of them because they are very disturbing. They destroy your belief and you want to cling to your belief. Then you become more and more blind to life – belief becomes a blindfold on the eyes.Trust opens the eyes; trust has nothing to lose. Trust means whatsoever is real is real: “I can put my desires and wishes aside, they don’t make any difference to reality. They can only distract my mind from reality.”If you have a belief and you come against an experience which the belief says is not possible, or the experience is such that you have to drop the belief, what are you going to choose – the belief or the experience? The tendency of the mind is to choose the belief, to forget about the experience. That’s how you have been missing many opportunities when existence has knocked at your door.Remember it is not only you who are seeking truth – truth is also seeking you. Many times the hand has come very close to you, it has almost touched you, but you shrugged yourself away. It was not fitting with your belief and you chose to choose your belief.I have heard a very beautiful Jewish joke:There is a joke about a vampire who flew into Patrick O’Rourke’s bedroom one night for the purpose of drinking his blood. Remembering the stories his mother told him, O’Rourke grabbed a crucifix and brandished it frantically in the vampire’s face. The vampire paused for a moment, shook his head condolingly, clucked his tongue, and commented genially in the purest Yiddish, “Oy vey, bubbula! Have you ever got the wrong vampire!”Now, if the vampire is Christian, good! You can show the cross. But if the vampire is Jewish, then what? Then “Oy vey, bubbula! Have you ever got the wrong vampire!”If you have a certain belief and life does not fit with it, what are you going to do? You can go on showing your crucifix – but the vampire is a Jew. Then he is not going to take any note of your cross. Then what are you going to do?Life is so vast and beliefs are so small; life is so infinite and beliefs are so tiny. Life never fits with any belief and if you try to force life into your beliefs you are trying to do the impossible. It has never happened; it cannot happen in the nature of things. Drop all beliefs and start learning how to experience.Now this story:Once when the Hasidim were seated togetherin all brotherliness,pipe in hand, Rabbi Israel joined them.Because he was so friendly they asked him,“Tell us, dear Rabbi, how should we serve God?”A few things about Hasidism. First, the word hasid comes from a Hebrew word which means pious, pure. It is derived from the noun hased, which means grace.This word hasid is very beautiful. The whole standpoint of Hasidism is based on grace. It is not that you do something, life is already happening – you just be silent, passive, alert, receiving. Godliness comes through grace, not through your effort. So Hasidism has no austerities prescribed for you. Hasidism believes in life, in joy. Hasidism is one of the religions in the world which is life-affirmative. It has no renunciation in it; you are not to renounce anything. Rather, you have to celebrate. The founder of Hasidism, Baal Shem, is reported to have said, “I have come to teach you a new way. It is not fasting and penance, and it is not indulgence, but joy in God.”The Hasid loves life, tries to experience life. That very experience starts giving you a balance. And in that state of balance, some day, when you are really balanced, neither leaning on this side nor leaning on that side, when you are exactly in the middle, you transcend. The middle is the beyond, the middle is the door from where one goes beyond.If you really want to know what existence is, it is neither in life nor in death. Life is one extreme, death is another extreme. It is just exactly in the middle where neither death is nor life is, where one is simply unborn, deathless. In that moment of balance, equilibrium, grace descends.I would like you all to become Hasids, receivers of grace. I would like you to learn this science, this art of balance.The mind very easily chooses the extreme. There are people who indulge: they indulge in sensuality, sexuality, food, clothes, houses, this and that. There are people who indulge – they lean too much toward life, they fall down, they topple. Then there are people who, seeing people toppling down from the tightrope of existence into indulgence, falling into the abyss of indulgence, become afraid; they start leaning toward the other extreme. They renounce the world, they escape to the Himalayas. They escape from the wife, the children, the home, the world, the marketplace and they go and hide themselves in monasteries. They have chosen another extreme. Indulgence is extreme life; renunciation is extreme death.So there is some truth in Friedrich Nietzsche’s comment upon Hinduism – that Hinduism is a religion of death. There is some truth when Nietzsche says that Buddha seems to be suicidal. The truth is this: you can move from one extreme to another.The whole Hasidic approach is not to choose any extreme, just to remain in the middle, available to both and yet beyond both, not getting identified with either, not getting obsessed and fixated with either: just remaining free and joyously enjoying both. If life comes, enjoy life; if death comes, enjoy death. If out of its grace existence gives love, life – good. If it sends death, it must be good – it is its gift.Baal Shem is right when he says, “I have come to teach you joy in God.” Hasidism is a celebrating religion. It is the purest flowering of the whole Judaic culture. Hasidism is the fragrance of the whole Jewish race. It is one of the most beautiful phenomena on the earth.Once, when the Hasidim were seated together in all brotherliness… Hasidism teaches life in community. It is a very communal approach. It says that man is not an island, man is not an ego – should not be an ego, should not be an island. Man should live a life of community.We are growing a Hasidic community here. To live in a community is to live in love; to live in a community is to live in commitment, caring for others.There are many religions which are very, very self-oriented; they only think of the self, they never think of the community. They only think of how I am going to become liberated, how I am going to become free, how I should attain moksha – my moksha, my freedom, my liberation, my salvation. But everything is preceded by my, by the self. And these religions try hard to drop the ego, but their whole effort is based on the ego. Hasidism says if you want to drop the ego, the best way is to live in a community, live with people, be concerned with people – with their joy, with their sadness, with their happiness, with their life, with their death. Create a concern for the others, be involved, and then the ego will disappear on its own accord. And when the ego is not, one is free. There is no freedom of the ego, there is only freedom from the ego.Hasidism uses community life as a device. Hasids have lived in small communities and they have created beautiful communities, very celebrating, dancing, enjoying the small things of life. They make the small things of life holy – eating, drinking. Everything takes the quality of prayer. The ordinariness of life is no longer ordinary, it is suffused with divine grace.Once, when the Hasidim were seated together in all brotherliness… This is the difference. If you see Jaina monks sitting, you never see any brotherliness – it is not possible. The very approach is different. Each Jaina monk is an island. But the Hasids are not islands; they are a continent, a deep brotherliness.Remember it. The community I would like to grow here should be more like the Hasidim, less like Jaina monks, because a man alone, confined to himself, is ugly. Life is in love, life is in flow, in give and take and sharing.You can go to a Jaina monastery or a Jaina temple where Jaina monks are sitting – you can just watch. You will see exactly how everybody is confined to himself; there is no relationship. That is the whole effort: how not to be related. The whole effort is how to disconnect all relationship.But the more you are disconnected with community and life, the more dead you are. It is very difficult to find a Jaina monk who is still alive. And I know it very deeply because I was born a Jaina and I have watched them from my very childhood. I was simply surprised! What calamity has happened to these people? What has gone wrong? They are dead. They are corpses. If you don’t go near them already prejudiced – thinking that they are great saints – if you simply go, observing without any prejudice, you will be simply puzzled, confused. What illness, what disease has happened to these people? They are neurotic. Their concern about themselves has become their neurosis.Community has completely lost meaning for them – but all meaning is in community. Remember, when you love somebody, it is not only that you give love to them – in giving, you grow. When love starts flowing between you and the other you both are benefited, and in that exchange of love your potentialities start becoming actualities. That’s how self-actualization happens. Love more and you will be more; love less and you will be less. You are always in proportion to your love. The proportion of your love is the proportion of your being.Once, when the Hasidim were seated togetherin all brotherliness, pipe in hand… Can you think of any saint, pipe in hand? …pipe in hand, Rabbi Israel joined them. Ordinary life has to be hallowed, has to be made holy – even a pipe. You can smoke in a very prayerful way. Or, you can pray in a very unprayerful way. It is not a question of what you do. You can go into the temple, you can go into the mosque, but still you can pray in a very unprayerful way. It depends on you; it depends on the quality you bring to your prayer. You can eat, you can smoke, you can drink, and you can do all these small things, mundane things, in such gratitude that they become prayers.Just the other night a man came. He bowed down and touched my feet. But the way he was doing it was, I could see, very unprayerful. He was an Indian, so he was doing it just out of duty, it seemed. Or he was not even conscious of what he was doing; he must have been taught. But I could feel, I could see his energy was absolutely unprayerful. And I was wondering why he had come. He wanted to become a sannyasin. I never refuse, but I wanted to refuse him. I thought for a moment what to do. If I refuse, it doesn’t look good – and the man is absolutely wrong. Finally I said, “Okay, I will give you sannyas” – because I cannot refuse, I cannot say no. That word I feel very difficult to use.So I gave him sannyas, and then everything became clear. Immediately after sannyas he said, “I have come to your feet, now help me. I am posted” – he was in the army – “I have been posted somewhere in Palanpur. Now, Osho, with your spiritual power, help me to be transferred to Ranchi.”My spiritual power has to be used for his transfer to Ranchi! Now what type of concept does he have of spiritual power? Now everything was clear. He was not interested in sannyas – that taking sannyas was just a bribery. He must have thought that if he asks for the transfer without sannyas it won’t look good. So first become a sannyasin and then ask.Just to think in these terms is unprayerful, unspiritual. And that man thinks he is very spiritual. He says he is a follower of Paramahansa Yogananda and the way he said it was so egoistic, he felt so good, so superior – “I am a follower of Paramahansa Yogananda; I am a disciple. And I have been working on myself for many years, and that’s why I want to go to Ranchi.” Ranchi is the center of Paramahansa Yogananda’s disciples.Now this man is absolutely unspiritual. His whole approach is unspiritual, unprayerful.The point that I want to make clear to you is this: that it does not depend on what you do. You can touch my feet in a very unprayerful way – then it is meaningless; but you can smoke and you can do it in a prayerful way and your prayer will reach to existence.It is very difficult for people who have very fixed concepts about religion, spirituality, but I would like you to become more liquid. Don’t have fixed concepts. Watch.…pipe in hand, Rabbi Israel joined them. Because he was so friendly they asked him, “Tell us dear Rabbi, how should we serve God?” Yes, only in deep friendliness can something be asked. And only in deep friendliness can something be answered. Between the master and the disciple there is a tremendous friendship. It is a love affair. And the disciple has to wait for the right moment and the master has also to wait for the right moment; when the friendship is flowing, when there is no hindrance, then things can be answered. Or even, sometimes, without answering them, they can be answered; even without using verbalization the message can be delivered.He was surprised at the question,and replied, “How should I know?”In fact, that is the answer of all those who know: How should I know? “How to serve God? You are asking such a great question, I am not worthy to answer it,” said the master. “How should I know?”Nothing can be known about love; nothing can be known about how to serve God – it is very difficult.But then he went on to tell them this story…First he says, “How should I know?” First he says that knowledge is not possible about such things. First he says that he cannot give you any knowledge about such things. First he says that he cannot make you more knowledgeable about these things – there is no way. But then he tells his story.A story is totally different from talking in terms of theories. A story is more alive, more indicative. It does not say much, but it shows much. And all the great masters have used stories, parables, anecdotes. The reason is that if you say something directly, it kills much. A direct expression is too crude, primitive, gross, ugly. The parable is saying the thing in a very indirect way. It makes things very smooth; it makes things more poetic, less logical, closer to life, more paradoxical. You cannot use a syllogism for God, you cannot use any argument, but you can tell stories.And the Jewish race is one of the richest races on the earth for parables. Jesus was a Jew, and he has told a few of the most beautiful parables ever uttered. Jews have learned how to tell stories. In fact Jews don’t have much philosophy, but they have beautiful philosophical parables. They say much; without saying, without hinting anything directly, they create an atmosphere. In that atmosphere something can be understood. That is the whole device of a parable.But then he went on to tell them this story… First he said, “How should I know?” First he simply denies any knowledge or any possibility to know about it. A philosopher says, “Yes, I know” and a philosopher proposes a theory in clear-cut statements – logical, mathematical, syllogistic, argumentative. He tries to convince. He may not convince, but he can force you into silence.A parable never tries to convince you. It takes you unaware, it persuades you, it tickles you deep inside.The moment the master says, “How should I know?” he is saying to them, “Relax, I am not going to give any argument for it, any theory for it. And you need not be worried that I am going to convince you about something. Just enjoy a little parable, a little story.” When you start listening to a story, you relax; when you start listening to a theory, you become tense. And that which creates tension in you cannot be of much help. It is destructive.But then he went on to tell them this story…There were two friends of the king,and both were proved guilty of a crime.Since he loved them the king wanted to show them mercy,but he could not acquit thembecause even a king’s word cannot prevail over the law.So he gave this verdict:A rope was to be stretched over a deep chasm,and, one after another, the two were to walk across it.Whoever reached to the other sidewas to be granted his life.A parable has an atmosphere, a very homely atmosphere – as if your grandmother is telling you a story when you are falling asleep. Children ask, “Tell us stories.” It helps them relax and go into sleep. A story is very relaxing and does not create any pressure on your mind; rather, it starts playing with your heart. When you listen to a story, you don’t listen from the head – you cannot listen to a story from the head. If you listen from the head you will miss. If you listen from the head there is no possibility of understanding a story; a story has to be understood from the heart. That’s why races and countries which are very “heady” cannot understand beautiful jokes. For example, Germans! They cannot understand. They are one of the most intelligent races of the world, but they don’t have any good stock of jokes.A man was telling a German – I have just overheard this – a man was telling a German that he had heard a very beautiful German joke.The German said, “But remember, I am a German.”So the man said, “Okay, then I will tell it very, very slowly.”It is very difficult. Germany is the country of the professors, logicians – Kant, Hegel, and Feuerbach – and they have always been thinking through the head. They have cultivated the head, they have created great scientists, logicians, philosophers, but they have missed something.In India we don’t have many jokes; there is a great poverty of spirit. You cannot find a specifically Hindu joke, no. All the jokes that go on in India are borrowed from the West. No Indian joke exists. I have not come across any. And you can rely on me because I have come across all the jokes of the world! No Hindu joke, as such, exists. What is the reason? Again, very intellectual people; they have been weaving and spinning theories. From the Vedas to Sarvapalli Radhakrishnan they have been just weaving and spinning theories and theories and they have got into it so deeply that they have forgotten how to tell a beautiful story or how to create a joke.The Rabbi started telling this story – the disciples must have become relaxed, must have become relaxed and attentive. That’s the beauty of a story: when a story is told you are attentive and yet not tense. You can relax and yet you are attentive. A passive attentiveness arises when you listen to a story. When you listen to a theory you become very tense. If you miss a single word you may not be able to understand it. You become more concentrated. When you listen to a story you become more meditative – there is nothing much to be lost. Even if a few words are lost here and there, nothing will be lost because if you just have the feel of the story you will understand it, it does not depend so much on the words.The disciples must have relaxed, and the master told this story.So the king gave this verdict:A rope was to be stretched over a deep chasm,and, one after another, the two were to walk across it.Whoever reached to the other side was to be granted his life.Now, this sentence is very pregnant: Whoever reached to the other sidewas to be granted his life. Jesus says many times to his disciples, “Come unto me if you want life in abundance. If you want life in abundance, come to me.” But life in abundance happens only to people who go beyond birth and death, who go beyond duality, to the other shore. The other shore, the other side, is just symbolic of the transcendental. But it is just a hint. Nothing is particularly said, just a hint is given.And then the story moves on…It was done as the king ordered,and the first of the friends got safely across.Now these are the two types of people. The first simply got safely across. Ordinarily we would like to inquire how to go on a rope. A tightrope stretched over a chasm – it is dangerous. Ordinarily we would like to know the ways and means and method, how to go. We would like to know how. The technique – there must be a technique. For centuries people have walked on tightropes.But the first one simply walked without inquiring, without even waiting for the other. This is the natural tendency: to let the other go first. At least you will be able to watch and observe and that will be helpful for you. No, the first simply walked. He must have been a man of tremendous trust; he must have been a man of undoubting confidence. He must have been a man who has learned one thing in life: that there is only one way to learn and that is to live, to experience. There is no other way.You cannot learn tightrope walking by watching a tightrope walker – no, never. Because the thing is not like a technology that you can observe from the outside, it is some inner balance that only the walker knows. And it cannot be transferred. He cannot just tell you about it; it cannot be verbalized. No tightrope walker can tell anybody how he manages.You ride a bicycle. Can you tell anybody how you ride it? You know the balance; it is a sort of tightrope walking, just on two wheels, straight in one line. And you go fast and you go so trustingly. If somebody asks what the secret is, can you reduce it to a formula, just like H20? Can you reduce it to a maxim? You don’t say, “This is the principle, I follow this principle.” You will say, “The only way is for you to come and sit on the bike and I will help you to go on it. You are bound to fall a few times, and then you will know the only way to know is to know.” The only way to know swimming is to swim – with all the dangers involved in it.The first man must have come to a deep understanding in his life – that life is not like a textbook. You cannot be taught about it, you have to experience it. And the man must have been of tremendous awareness. He did not hesitate, he simply walked, as if he had always been walking on a tightrope. He had never walked before; it was for the first time.But for a man of awareness everything is for the first time, and a man of awareness can do things perfectly, even when he is doing them for the first time. His efficiency does not come out of his past; his efficiency comes out of his presence. Let this be remembered: you can do things in two ways. You can do something because you have done it before – so you know how to do it, you need not be present to it, you can simply do it in a mechanical way. But if you have not done it before and you are going to do it for a first time, you have to be tremendously alert because now you don’t have any past experience. So you cannot rely on the memory, you have to rely on awareness.So these are the two sources of functioning: either you function out of memory, out of knowledge, out of the past, out of the mind; or you function out of awareness, out of the present, out of no-mind.The first man must have been a man of no-mind, a man who knows that you can simply be alert and go on and see what happens, and whatsoever happens is good. A great courage.…the first of the friends got safely across.The other, still standing on the same spot, cried to him,“Tell me, friend, how did you manage to cross?”The second is the ordinary mind, the majority mind, the mass mind. The second wants to know first, how to cross it. Is there a method to it? Is there a technique to be learned? He is waiting for the other to say.“Tell me, friend, how did you manage to cross?” The other must be a believer in knowledge. The other must have been a believer in others’ experiences.Many people come to me. They say, “Osho, tell us. What happened to you?” But what are you going to do about it? Buddha has told it, Mahavira has told it, Jesus has told it – what have you done about it? Unless it happens to you it is futile. I can tell you one more story and then that story can also join your record of memories, but that is not going to help.Waiting for others’ knowledge is waiting in vain because that which can be given by others has no worth, and that which is of any worth cannot be given and cannot be transferred.The first called back,“I don’t know anything but this…”Even though he had crossed he still said: I don’t know anything but this… Because, in fact, life never becomes knowledge; it remains a very suffused experience, never knowledge. You cannot verbalize it, conceptualize it, you cannot put it into a clear-cut theory.“I don’t know anything but this:whenever I felt myself toppling over to one side,I leaned to the other.”“This much only can be said: that there were two extremes, left and right, and whenever I felt that I was going too much toward the left and the balance was getting lost, I leaned toward the right. But again I had to balance because then I started going too much to the right and again I felt the balance was getting lost. Again I leaned toward the left.”So he said two things. One, “I cannot formulate it as knowledge. I can only indicate. I don’t know exactly what happened, but this much I can give as a hint to you. And that is not much; in fact, you need not have it. You will come across the experience yourself. But this much can be said.”Buddha was asked again and again, “What has happened to you?” And he would always say, “That cannot be said, but this much I can say to you – in what circumstances it happened. That may be of some help to you. I cannot tell about the ultimate truth, but I can tell how, on what path, with what method, in what situation I was when it happened, when the grace descended on me, when the benediction came to me.”The man says, “…whenever I felt myself toppling over to one side, I leaned to the other.”“That’s all. Nothing much to it. That’s how I balanced, that’s how I remained in the middle.” And in the middle is grace.The Rabbi is saying to his disciples, “You ask how we should serve God?” He was indicating with this parable: remain in the middle.Don’t indulge too much and don’t renounce too much. Don’t be only in the world and don’t escape out of it. Go on keeping balance. When you feel that now you are falling into too much indulgence, lean toward renunciation, and when you feel that now you are going to become a renunciate, an ascetic, lean back again to indulgence. Keep in the middle.On the road in India you will find boards saying “Keep to the Left” – in America you will find “Keep to the Right”. In the world there are only two types of people: a few keep to the left, a few keep to the right. The third type is the very pinnacle of consciousness. And there the rule is “Keep to the Middle”. Don’t try it on the road, but on life’s way keep to the middle: never to the left, never to the right, just to the middle.And in the middle there will be glimpses of balance. There is a point – you can understand, you can feel it – there is a point when you are not leaning to either extreme, you are exactly in the middle. In that split second suddenly there is grace, everything is in equilibrium.And that’s how one can serve existence. Remain in balance and it becomes a service to existence; remain in balance and existence is available to you and you are available to existence.Life is not a technology, not even a science; life is an art – or it would even be better to call it a hunch. You have to feel it. It is like balancing on a tightrope.The Rabbi has chosen a beautiful parable. He has not talked about God at all; he has not talked about service at all; he has not really answered the question at all directly. The disciples must have themselves forgotten about the question – that’s the beauty of a parable. It doesn’t divide your mind into a question and an answer, it simply gives you a hunch that this is how things are.Life has no “know-how” about it. Remember, life is not American, it is not a technology. The American mind, or to be more specific, the modern mind, tends to create technologies out of everything. Even when there is meditation the modern mind immediately tends to create a technology out of it. Then we create machines, and man is getting lost, and we are losing all contact with life.Remember, there are things which cannot be taught, but which can only be caught. I am here, you can watch me, you can look into me and you will see a balance and you will see a silence. It is almost tangible, you can touch it, you can hear it, you can see it. It is here. I cannot say what it is, I cannot specifically give you techniques how to attain to it. At the most I can tell you a few parables, a few stories. They will be just hints. Those that understand will allow those hints to fall into their hearts like seeds. In their time, in the right season, they will sprout and you will understand me really only on the day you also experience the same that I am experiencing. I have crossed to the other shore, you are shouting from the other side: Tell me, friend, how did you manage to cross? I can tell you only one thing: “I don’t know anything but this: whenever I felt myself toppling to the one side, I leaned to the other.”Keep to the middle. Keep continuously alert that you don’t lose the balance, and then everything will take care of itself.If you can remain in the middle you remain available to existence, to its grace. If you can remain in the middle you can become a Hasid; you can become a receiver of grace. And existence is grace. You cannot do anything to find it, you can only do one thing: not stand in its way. And whenever you move to an extreme you become so tense that that very tension makes you too solid; whenever you are in the middle tension disappears, you become liquid, fluid. And you are no more in the way. When you are in the middle you are no longer in the way of existence – or let me tell you it in this way: when you are in the middle you are not. Exactly in the middle that miracle happens – that you are nobody, you are a nothingness.This is the secret key. It can open the lock of mystery, of existence, to you.Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Something has happened to me through you, but it is something which is inexpressible. What it is I don't know. But even then it is there.The human mind tends to convert every experience into a question. That is a very destructive step. Please avoid it. Here near me the whole purpose is to know that which is not knowable, to know that which is not expressible, to know that which cannot be put into words. When it starts happening don’t make a problem out of it, don’t create a question out of it, because your very questioning will become a stopping. Then your mind will have started something else. Then you are distracted.When it starts happening, enjoy it, love it, be nourished by it, savor it, dance it, sing it, but don’t make a question about it. Just be it. And allow it total space. It will grow. It needs space in you to grow.Don’t be in a hurry to make a theory out of it. Theories are very dangerous. They can kill the child in the womb. The moment you start thinking in terms of analyzing, knowing what it is and what it is not, comparing, labeling, you are moving toward an abortion. You will miss something that was going to grow – you killed it. Don’t be suicidal, don’t be analytical, just allow it. Feel its presence – but not with the mind. Feel its presence with your totality. Let your heart be open to it and it will grow.And in that very growth, by and by understanding will come. Understanding is not going to come through analysis, through thinking, through brooding, through logic. Understanding is going to come by deeper and deeper experience.You say something has happened to you through me, but it is something which is inexpressible. Let it be so. Be happy. You are blessed. When something inexpressible starts happening then you are on the right track, you are moving toward godliness, the ultimate mystery. Whenever you have something within you which you cannot understand, that simply shows something bigger than you has entered in you – otherwise you could have understood it, you could have figured it out. Something bigger than the mind has penetrated you, a ray of light in the dark soul, a ray of light in the dark night of the mind. The mind cannot comprehend it; it is beyond its understanding. But not beyond understanding, remember. Beyond the understanding that is possible for the mind, but not beyond understanding – because there is understanding which is not of the mind: the understanding of the total organism, of your total being, of your totality.But that comes not by analysis, not by dissection; it comes by absorbing the experience. Eat it! That which is inexpressible has to be eaten by you. Jesus says to his disciples, “Eat me.” That’s what he means: eat the inexpressible, eat the unknown. Digest it, let it circulate into your blood. Let it become part of you. And then you will know. And the knowing will arise as suddenly as the experience has arisen. Now a ray has entered in you. Allow it to become part of you – only then will you understand it.This understanding is not the understanding you have been acquainted with up to now. You have known only the mind and its ways. It labels things very immediately. Whenever you ask what is this, what are you asking really? You see a bush and a flower and you say, “What is this?” Somebody says “a rosebush,” and you think you have understood. Somebody has just uttered the word “rose” and you think you have understood.But if you don’t know the name you feel a little disturbed. That unknown flower confronts you, challenges you. You feel your prestige is at stake. Because that unknown flower continuously says, “You don’t know me, so what kind of knowledge is yours? You even don’t know me?” That flower goes on hitting hard at you and you start feeling disturbed. You want to know so that you can finish with this challenge. You go to the library, you look at the books, at the Encyclopedia Britannica; you find out what the name of this rose is. It is rose – okay, you have labeled it. Now you can be at ease.But what have you done? Just by putting a word to the rosebush do you think you have understood it? You have lost an opportunity of understanding. You have lost a great challenge. Because remember well – the name ‘rose’ is given by man to the rosebush, the rosebush does not know the name at all. If you talk about the rosebush to the rosebush, the rosebush will not understand it. What are you talking about? What nonsense are you talking about? The rosebush has no name as far as the bush itself is concerned – the name is given by others, given by people like you who cannot tolerate the unknowable anywhere.The unknowable is such an uneasy thing, it creates so much discomfort. You see somebody; you say, “Who is this man?” And then somebody says he is a Chinese, or an African, or a Japanese, and you feel at ease. What have you known? Just by saying that he is a Chinese… There are millions of Chinese – one billion – and no other Chinese is like him. In fact, nothing exists like the Chinese. There are millions and millions of Chinese; each individual is unique, different; each has his own signature, his own being. What have you understood by labeling a man as a Chinese? But you feel at ease.What religion does he belong to? He is a Buddhist. Another label has come into your hand. You know a little more now. To what party does he belong? He is a communist. Still a few more labels you gather – and then you think you have known the man.Is knowledge as cheap as the mind thinks? Labeling is not knowledge. Labeling is a way to avoid the opportunity that was open. You could have known the man if you had got involved with him. You could have known the rosebush if you had meditated alone with it, if you had allowed its fragrance to enter into your nostrils and into your heart; if you had touched it with love. If you had a communion with this rosebush you might have known something.I don’t say you can know the rosebush totally. If you can know a single rosebush totally then you have known the whole universe – because in the single rosebush the whole universe is involved: the sun and the moon and the stars and the past and the present and the future. All time and all space is converging on that small roseflower. If you can know it in its totality you will have known the whole universe. Then nothing is left behind. Each small thing is so great.And when something like an unknown flower starts blooming within you, don’t be in a hurry to dissect it; don’t put it on the table and cut it and start looking for the ingredients. Enjoy it. Love it. Help it to grow. A grace has descended upon you. You have become a Hasid.That is the meaning of hasid – grace.The second question:Osho,Lord Shiva disclosed many techniques of equilibrium unto Devi, his consort in Vigyan Bhairav Tantra. Will you please say something about those techniques in reference to the Hasidic art of equilibrium, balance?No, I will not say anything about those techniques – because Hasidism is absolutely non-technical. The whole approach is non-technical. Hasidism has no technique – just a sheer joy in life.Hasidism is not a path of meditation, it is a path of prayerfulness. Prayerfulness has no techniques. Meditation can have millions of techniques because meditation is a scientific approach to inner reality. Hasidism is not a science, it is an art. Hasidism does not believe in techniques, but in love.Remember well, the technological mind is a mathematical mind. The mind of the lover is non-mathematical; the mind of the lover is the mind of the poet. Love is a romance, not a technique. Love is a dream not a technique. Love has a totally different approach to life.Hasidism has no techniques; it has no yoga, no tantra in it. It simply says: trust life, trust existence, and whatsoever has been given to you, enjoy it. Enjoy it so deeply and with such gratitude that every ordinary thing becomes hallowed, becomes holy, each small thing in life becomes sacred. Transform everything into a sacred thing – the profane disappears. You bring your energy of love, grace, gratitude.Love is not a technique, so nobody can teach you how to love. And if you come across books which say that they can teach you how to love, beware of those books. If you once learn the techniques of love you will never be able to love again. Those techniques will become a barrier. Love is a natural spontaneous phenomenon. Even animals are loving – they don’t have Kinseys and Masters and Johnsons and they are achieving orgasm perfectly, without any scientific help. They don’t have any sex therapists and they don’t go to any guru to be taught how to love. It is an inborn quality. Each being born brings it with himself.There are a few things which you bring with your birth. A child is born; nobody can teach the child how to breathe. If it depended on teaching then nobody would be able to be alive, because time would be needed to teach the child. He would first have to be sent to school, taught language, disciplined, and then finally, after at least seven, eight or ten years, we would be able to teach him how to breathe – he doesn’t understand even the word breathe. No, it doesn’t depend on any teaching. The child is born with the capacity to breathe; it is inborn. It is as inborn as a flower on a bush. It is as inborn as water rushing toward the ocean – naturally.The moment a child is born the whole being of the child hankers, becomes hungry for breath – not knowing what is happening because the child has never breathed before. Nobody has ever taught him, he has never done it, he has no experience about it – it simply happens.In exactly the same way, one day, at the age of fourteen, the child starts feeling a tremendous attraction toward the other sex. Nobody has taught it; in fact, teachers have been teaching against it. The whole human history seems to be a teaching against sexuality, against sex energy. Religions, cultures, civilizations, priests and politicians – they have all been teaching how to suppress sex. But still it cannot be suppressed. It seems it is impossible to suppress it.It is a natural phenomenon. It arises. It arises even when you are against it – see the truth of it. Even when you are against it, it arises in spite of you. It is bigger than you. You cannot control it. It is natural.Hasidism says that if a man starts living a natural life, one day, suddenly, the love of existence arises as naturally as love for the woman or love for the man arises; as naturally as breathing arises after birth. That precious moment cannot be managed; you cannot plan for it, you cannot prepare for it, there is no need. You simply live a natural life. Don’t fight with nature, float with it, and one day suddenly you will see that the grace has descended on you. A tremendous urge has arisen in your being, a new love toward existence – call it godliness. Because when love arises, existence becomes personal. Then it is no more “it”; it becomes “thou”. Then it is a relationship between “I” and “thou”.Hasidism simply says don’t be unnatural and prayerfulness will be born on its own accord. It has no techniques. And that’s the beauty of it.If you have missed the natural flowering of prayerfulness – then techniques are needed. Meditation is a substitute for prayerfulness; it is second to prayerfulness. If you have missed prayer then meditation is needed, but if prayerfulness has arisen in you then there is no need for any meditation. Prayerfulness is spontaneous meditation; meditation is prayerfulness with effort. Prayerfulness with technique is meditation; meditation without technique is prayerfulness.Hasidism is the religion of prayerfulness, that’s why in Hasidism there is no renunciation. A Hasid lives the natural life that existence has conferred on him. Wherever existence has placed him, he lives, he loves; he enjoys the small pleasures of life. And once you start enjoying the small pleasures, the total accumulative effect is a great bliss in your being.This has to be understood. Don’t wait for some great bliss to descend on you. It never happens. Great bliss is nothing but small pleasures accumulating in your being. The total of all the small pleasures is the great bliss. Eating, enjoy it. Drinking, enjoy it. Taking a bath, enjoy it. Walking, enjoy it. Such a beautiful world, such a beautiful morning, such beautiful clouds… What else do you need to celebrate? The sky full of stars… What more do you need to be prayerful? The sun rising from the east… What more do you need to bow down? And amidst a thousand and one thorns a small roseflower arises, opening its buds, so fragile, so vulnerable, yet so strong, so ready to fight with the wind, with the lightning, with the thunder. Look at the courage. What more do you need to understand trust?Techniques are needed when you have missed these small openings toward godliness. If you go on looking in the small openings, the total effect is a great door. And suddenly you start seeing what prayer is. Not only seeing, you start living it.Hasidism is a totally different approach from Tantra. And Hasidism is far superior to any Tantra, because it is the natural Tantra, it is the natural way. It is the way of Tao.But the mind is very cunning. The mind wants to manipulate. The mind wants to manipulate even the relationship of love; the mind wants to manipulate even the mysterious phenomenon of prayerfulness. The mind is a great controller. The obsession of the mind is to control everything, not to allow anything beyond control – hence technique. The mind is always asking for techniques and the mind goes on planning for every possibility.If you plan for every possibility, if you manage for everything on your own, you never give a chance to existence to penetrate you, to take control onto his shoulders. You never allow existence to help you. You think you have to be independent; you think there is no other way than self-help. You remain unnecessarily poor.A small child was playing around his father, who was sitting in the garden, and the small child was trying to pull up a big rock. It was too big and he could not do it. He tried hard. He was perspiring.The father said, “You are not using all your energies.”The child said, “Wrong. I am using all my energy. And I don’t see what more I can do.”The father said, “You have not asked me to help. That too is your energy. I am sitting here and you have not asked me to help. You are not using all your energy.”A man who lives through techniques may think he is using all his energies, but he has not asked for existence’s help. A man who is simply meditating with a technique is a poor man. A Hasid is tremendously rich because he is really using all his energies. A Hasid is open; a technique-oriented mind is a closed mind. It goes on planning everything. If your plans are fulfilled then too you will not be happy, because they are your plans. They are as small as you are. Even if you succeed you will be a failure; even in your success you will have the taste of frustration. Because what will you get? Or, if you fail, you will of course be frustrated. When you fail you are frustrated, but when you succeed then you are frustrated too.Open yourself to the divine. You live naturally – not trying to improve, not living through ideals, not living through moral disciplines – just living a natural life. Nature should be your only discipline, and whatsoever is natural is good because that’s how existence wills it to be, wants it to be. If you can accept your life with such gratefulness, that this is how existence wants it to be. If it has given sex to you, it has given sex to you – it knows better. You need not try to enforce any celibacy on yourself. An enforced celibacy is ugly, uglier than natural sex. And if you accept natural sex you will find that beyond a certain point natural sex becomes natural celibacy. Then brahmacharya arises. Then you start living in a totally different way. But it comes floating with the river of life.Do you see? A river descends from the mountains, moves thousands of miles, then one day disappears into the ocean. If the river were a great thinker, and it started thinking, “This is going downward. I should not do that. My abode is on the mountains. A river is first just the snow peaks of the Himalayas – there is my abode. And I am falling. This is sin: falling down in a glacier, moving toward the earth from the height of the heaven.” If rivers were thinkers they would go crazy, because this is going down, descending into hell. But rivers are not thinkers, they are very fortunate. They accept it. It was the will of existence to be on the hilltop, it is its will now to explore the depths.And a person who really wants to know the height also has to know the depth, otherwise he will not be able to know. Depth is the other part of the height. The higher the peak of the mountain, the deeper the valley. If you want to know the tree, you have to know the roots also. The tree goes upward and the roots go downward. And the tree exists between this: the upward movement and the downward movement. This is the tension that gives life to the tree.The river moves, trusting, not knowing where she is going. She has never gone before and she has no road map available, no guide to guide. But she goes trusting: if this is how it is happening it must be good. She goes singing and dancing. And then one day every river – whether it runs toward the East or whether it runs toward the West or the South or the North, it makes no difference – every river finally, eventually, reaches the ultimate, disappears into the ocean. In the ocean she has attained the final depth.Now the journey is complete. She has known the peaks of the Himalayas, now she has known the depth of the ocean. Now the experience is total; now the circle is complete. Now the river can disappear into nirvana; now the river can disappear into moksha. This is what liberation is.A Hasid lives like a river. He trusts. A man who is too much obsessed with techniques is a non-trusting man, a doubting man. He cannot trust in life, he trusts in his own techniques.I have heard a very beautiful anecdote:A gorilla collector was anxious to collect some more gorillas, so he went to Africa. Soon he found himself in the hut of a Great White Hunter.“And how much do you charge for each catch?” asked the collector.“Well,” said the hunter, “I get five hundred dollars for myself, five hundred dollars for that little pygmy over there with the rifle, and five hundred dollars for my dog.”The collector couldn’t figure out why the dog should get five hundred dollars, but being a practical man he reasoned that fifteen hundred dollars was reasonable and he didn’t care how it got divided up.On safari, the Great White Hunter spied a gorilla up a tree, whereupon he climbed up the tree and hit the gorilla over the head. As the gorilla fell to the ground, the dog ran over and grabbed it by the testicles with his teeth, rendering it motionless. Meanwhile the hunter climbed down the tree, brought a cage over, and pushed the gorilla in it.The collector was flabbergasted. He said to the hunter, “This is simply fantastic! I have never seen anything like it in my life. You are certainly earning your five hundred dollars, and that dog – well, what can I say? – he’s simply terrific. But that pygmy with the rifle – he doesn’t seem to be doing a thing.”The hunter said, “Don’t you worry about the pygmy. He earns his money.”So on and so forth it went, catching gorilla after gorilla, until finally he came across a gorilla who had been watching the whole proceedings. The Hunter climbed up the tree, and just as he was about to bash the gorilla over the head, the gorilla turned and bashed him first.As the hunter was falling from the tree he yelled to the pygmy, “Shoot the dog! Shoot the dog!”Now this is the technique-oriented mind. It arranges for everything, for every possibility. It does not leave a loophole in a system.A religious man cannot be in such a planned way, it is not possible. He has to leave many loopholes for godliness to enter in. In fact, if you understand rightly, a religious man is one who plans nothing – because how can we plan? And what are our capacities for planning? We are limited. We have a small light of intelligence, but it is too tiny. Trusting it totally creates a very mediocre life. The vast never enters into this mediocre life; the infinite never enters into this mediocre life; the endless never enters into this mediocre life.Hasidism is a very revolutionary step – a great risk is involved. The risk is in dropping the mind which seems to be our only security; dropping the mind which seems to be our only certainty; dropping the mind which seems to be our only capacity. And then trusting the no-mind – call it godliness – trusting existence, not trusting oneself. Hasidism is a great surrender.The third question:Osho,Only one master at a time.I can understand and appreciate your difficulty. I am talking about too many masters and too many paths and too many doors – and it is natural that you may start getting confused.But you can get confused only if you cling to my words. If you don’t cling to my words I am saying the same thing again and again and again, even though the words may be different and I may be using different approaches. And when I use any approach, any path, I am totally with it. Then I don’t care about anything else. Even things that I have said before, I don’t care about.When I am talking about Hasids, I am a Hasid. And then I am totally involved in it. That’s the only way to reveal its secret to you. If I remain uninvolved, if I remain without any passion, if I am just a spectator, a professor just explaining things to you, it won’t give you the insight that is intended, it won’t give you the vision. Then you will collect information and you will go home – you will become more knowledgeable, but not wise.So whenever I am speaking about any master or any path or any scripture, I am totally with it, my involvement is absolute. In those moments nothing else exists for me because I am in a passion, I am passionately in love with that teaching.Of course, I can understand your difficulty, because when I say passionately that Hasidism is the way, you become disturbed because one day I was saying Tantra is the way, another day I was saying Zen is the way, and another day I was saying Tao is the way. So now what is the way?When I am talking about one way, I am that way. Don’t cling to my words, listen to the wordless message. And if it hits your heart, if it sings in your heart, then you have found your way. Then forget whatsoever I have said before or whatsoever I am going to say in the future. Then you need not worry. You have found your key. Now you can open the lock.I will go on talking because I am talking for millions. When you have found your key, enjoy whatsoever I say, but don’t get disturbed by it again and again. You have found your key; now I must be talking for somebody else who has not yet found his key. When you have found your peace, your silence, your bliss, you have got what you were needing, but there are many others who have not got it. I will be talking for them and I will be using all the possibilities.For example, when I am talking on Hasidism it may hit your heart deeply and your love may arise for this path. My passion may inflame you. That’s why I speak with passion. If I speak with indifference as professors do… I am not a professor. When I am speaking on Hasidism I am a Hasid rabbi. Then it is my path that I am talking about. It is not somebody else’s path that I am describing to you, it is my path that I have traveled, that I have loved, that I have known, that I have tasted. I am talking about my own experience, and if it hits and something clicks in your heart and prayer becomes your path, then forget whatsoever I am saying, then you need not reconsider again and again.If it has not happened then you have to consider. If it has not happened then don’t bother about it, forget all about it, I will be talking about something else, I will be opening another door – maybe that is the door for you. But when you have found the door then don’t be worried about other doors that I will be opening because all the doors lead to the same. Don’t you be worried that you should enter this door. “Maybe Osho is going to open another bigger and golden door.” But they are all the same, and the door that you have fallen in love with is the golden door for you.Now there is no other door if you have fallen in love with this door. And you will find others entering from other doors, but when you reach to the very center of existence, you will all be meeting there in tremendous love and brotherhood. Somebody will be a Hasid and somebody will be a Zen monk and somebody will be a Tibetan lama and somebody will be a Sufi and somebody has come through sitting silently and somebody has come dancing – but in deep brotherhood all seekers meet at the center.I know it is very difficult. If you start choosing two masters you will be in conflict. Never choose two masters – one is enough, more than enough.When Mulla Nasruddin was dying he called his son, told him to come close, and said to him, “My son, I have one thing to say to you – even though I know you will not listen, because I didn’t listen to my own father when he was dying. He told me, ‘Nasruddin, don’t chase women too much.’ But I could not resist; the temptation was too much. And I got involved with one woman, another woman…” He married nine women – the maximum that the Koran permits.And he said, “I have created a hell. I suffered much. I know you don’t listen, but still I am saying it, because now I am departing and there will be no chance to say it to you. I know you will fall in love with women, but at least remember one thing from your old man: My son, one at a time, one at a time. At least do that much.”One at a time. If you fall in love with two women at a time, what does it show? It shows you have a split personality. You are schizophrenic, you are not one, you are two. If you fall in love with three women at a time then you are three. And there are people who fall in love with any woman they see. Whosoever is passing, suddenly they are in love. Every woman is their love object. They are a crowd. You can count how many persons live in you by counting how many women you fall in love with simultaneously. That’s a very beautiful way to measure how many persons live in you, a very easy criterion.But to fall in love with one woman makes you a unity, gives you a unison, you become total. You become sane because then there is no conflict.I have heard:The bride and bridegroom stepped into the hotel elevator and the pretty girl operator said, “Hello, darling” to the bridegroom. Not another word was spoken until the couple alighted at their floor, when the bride exclaimed, “Who was that hussy?”“Now, don’t you begin anything,” said the bridegroom quite worriedly. “I’m going to have enough trouble on my hands explaining you to her tomorrow.”Even to fall in love with two women is dangerous – but to fall in love with two masters is a million-fold more dangerous. Because the love of the woman may be only of the body, so the spirit goes only that far. Or at the most, the love of the woman may be of the mind, and the spirit goes only that far. But the love of the master is of the soul, and if you fall in love with two masters your soul will be divided, you will be totally disintegrated, you will start falling in parts, you will not be able to remain together. You will simply lose all shape and all form, all integrity. And the whole point in being with a master is to attain to integration.Once you fall in love with a master, remain. I am not saying that even when you are disillusioned remain with him. When you are disillusioned, he is no longer your master. Then there is no point in remaining with him. Then seek another.But never be with two masters in your mind simultaneously. Be decisive about it – because this decision is no ordinary decision, it is very momentous. It will decide your whole being: its quality, its future.The fourth question:Osho,You are really mischievous. You tell us that you want to break our houses so that we can enter in your house, but I have seen it. Your house has no floor, no walls, no ceiling. So I go on looking from the porch grabbing onto a pillar, afraid to be sucked in.That’s true. My whole effort is to trick you in; to trick you in for something you have never desired.A disciple and the master are in a great conflict; a great struggle goes on. And the disciple can win only if he is unfortunate. If the master wins it, the disciple is blessed, very fortunate. The struggle is because the disciple has come to the master for wrong reasons; maybe he has come to seek some sort of spiritual ego. He has failed in life – money, power, prestige, respectability, success in the marketplace, ambitions in the political world – he has failed there. He could not attain to the very peak of his egoistic journey; he could not become a president or a prime minister. Now life is running out of his hands and he wants to be somebody. It is very, very uncomfortable to remain a nobody.Finally people start seeking and searching into the dimension of religion. There it seems easier. There it seems easier to attain to a certain ego, a certain crystallization of the ego. At least you can become an Osho sannyasin – so simple. And you can feel great. You can feel that you have become special.The so-called religious people are trying to attain something which they have not been able to attain in the world. Sometimes they try by austerities, asceticism. Somebody fasts for days together, he becomes special – nobody can fast that much. He may be a masochist, he may be a self-torturer – he has to be. Or he may be suicidal. He has to be. But he starts getting respect from people, he is a great mahatma. He fasts so much; he is against the body, he is against comfort. He can lie down on a bed of thorns, or he can stand for years. Or he can sit on a pillar in a desert for years – just sitting there on a pillar. Very uncomfortable. He cannot sleep, he cannot rest, but then he attracts people.Suddenly he has become very important. Even those prime ministers and presidents that he wanted to become and failed to, start coming to him because they think that if such a great ascetic can bless them, they can rise more in the world of power. He feels very gratified, contented. Now the ego is at the supermost. Even kings and prime ministers and presidents are coming to him.The disciple comes for wrong reasons. Or a disciple comes to attain a certain sort of peace because he is in much turmoil. Why does he want to attain to peace? He wants to attain to peace so that he can work out his ambitions in a better way.Just the other day I was looking at an advertisement for Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation. It promises everything: a good job, proficiency in your work, health – mental health, physical health – longevity; everything that a man can desire it promises. It is a long list: economic, spiritual, social, physical, psychological. All these benefits just for sitting for twenty minutes and repeating something stupid: “Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola,” or something like that.So simple! That’s why it is said that you should not tell your mantra to anybody – otherwise they will laugh! It has to be kept private. If you say to somebody that I repeat “Coca-Cola, Coca-Cola,” they will think you have gone mad. So a mantra has to be kept absolutely private. You will keep it private anyway because it will look so absurd to tell it to anybody.Just twenty minutes repeating any nonsense word and you get so many benefits? It appeals to the mediocre mind immediately. This Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s meditation is neither meditation nor transcendental; it is simply an effort to exploit the gullible, to exploit the people who are searching and seeking for everything, searching for a panacea, searching for a remedy.When you come to a real master he says there is no remedy, he says there is no panacea. And he does not say that he will make you peaceful and healthy and this and that and then you can go into the world and rush after your ambition in a more efficient way. No, he will say you are disturbed, you are in a turmoil because of the ambition. Drop the ambition! A real master can only promise you that he will take away your ambition, he will take away your ego. He can only promise that he will kill you. You have come to be protected, you have come to attain to some security, you have come to find some props – but a real master is one who takes your props, prop by prop, away from you. One day you simply collapse. And in that very collapse, out of the ashes, arises a new being. That new being has nothing to do with you. That new being is so new it is discontinuous with you. It has no past, it has no future, it has only a pure presence, herenow.The question is from Krishna Radha. She is right. “You are really mischievous.” I am. So beware of me. And if you can escape in time, good. Otherwise how long can you cling to the porch? If you have entered the porch it is not very far to the house.And the porch is also imaginary because the house has no floor, no roof, no walls – how can such a house have a porch? Just think about it. The porch is just imaginary.I help you to see the porch so you can at least enter the porch – then the journey becomes easier. I sometimes promise you things which you ask for, simply to help you to be here a little longer. Your very understanding will tell you by and by that you were asking for foolish things. And then one day suddenly you will find that the porch has disappeared and, of course, that the house had never existed.But the house that has no walls to it and no roof and no floor is the house of existence – because the very sky is its roof and the very earth is its floor and the no-boundaries are its boundaries.Yes, I am not taking you into any house which has boundaries because then that house will prove again another imprisonment, it will be another prison. Maybe a little more comfortable, a little more decorated, maybe furnished in a little more modern way and a modern style, but still a prison.My house is a house of freedom. It is exactly what Radha says “…Your house has no floor, no walls, no ceiling, so I am looking from the porch, grabbing a pillar.” Look again. The pillar exists not. Because you want to grab, you believe in the pillar. Look again. Open your eyes. There is no pillar and there is no point in grabbing. Relax. Let go. And suddenly you disappear and you become the infinity, you become the space. That is what godliness is – space with no boundaries.My house is the house of existence, it is not a man-made temple.I have heard an anecdote:Two office workers had a drink or two at a midtown bar after the labors of the day. One offered a third round, but his friend refused, saying he’d better get home and explain to his wife.“Explain what?” asked the friend.“How do I know? I’m not home yet.”Don’t go on standing on the porch. You will not know by standing on the porch. Come home. Disappear in this infinity that I am making available to you. Only then will you know. And there is no need for any explanation then, no need for any theory then, no need for any rationalization then – because the experience itself is self-evident proof. You have lived in small houses and small dark cells up to now and you cannot believe that one can live in such absolute freedom. You have lost the capacity to be free.That capacity has to be relearned, that capacity has to be reclaimed. I am not here to discipline you, I am not here to give you principles – my whole effort is to give you an unprincipled life, a spontaneous, undisciplined life. The only gift that I can present to you is freedom. And freedom has no walls to it, it is as infinite as the sky. Claim the whole sky – it is yours.The fifth question:Osho,Who can become a better disciple: a learned fool or an unlearned fool? And for the intelligentsia please explain your dictum: Blessed are the fools.I don’t see any intelligentsia here – except blessed fools. Maybe the questioner can be excluded – Pundit Swami Yoga Chinmaya. He can be excluded. But otherwise I don’t see any intelligentsia here.There is a very strange saying of Mohammed – that heaven is mostly occupied by fools. When I came across it even I was surprised. I had never expected Mohammed to be so revolutionary. A tremendous saying! What does he mean by it – that heaven is mostly occupied by fools? But by and by, looking at you, I felt that he is right! Here also it is mostly occupied by fools.Let me explain to you how many types of fools there are. The first: one who knows not, and knows not that he knows not – the simple fool. Then the second: one who knows not but knows that he knows. The complex fool, the learned fool. And the third: one who knows that he knows not – the blessed fool.Everybody is born as a simple fool – that is the meaning of simpleton. Every child is a simple fool. He knows not that he knows not. He has not yet become aware of the possibility of knowing – that is the meaning of the Christian parable of Adam and Eve.God said to them, “Don’t eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge.” Before that accident of eating the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge they were simple fools. They knew nothing. Of course, they were tremendously happy, because when you know not, it is difficult to be unhappy. Unhappiness needs a little training; unhappiness needs a little efficiency to create it; unhappiness needs a little technology. You cannot create hell without knowledge. How can you create hell without knowledge?Adam and Eve were like small children. Every time a child is born an Adam is born. And he lives for a few years, at the most four years; that time is becoming less and less every day. He lives in paradise because he knows not how to create misery. He trusts life; he enjoys small things: pebbles on the shore, or seashells, and gathers them as if he has found a treasure. Ordinary colored stones look like Kohinoors. Everything fascinates him – the dew-drops in the morning sun, the stars in the night, the moon, the flowers, the butterflies – everything is a sheer fascination.But then by and by he starts knowing: a butterfly is just a butterfly, a flower is just a flower. There is nothing much in it. He starts knowing the names: this is a rose, and that is a champa and that is a chameli and this is a lotus. And by and by those names become barriers. The more he knows, the more he is cut off from life as such. He becomes heady. Now he lives through the head, not through his totality. That is the meaning of “the fall”. He has eaten of the Tree of Knowledge. Every child has to eat of the Tree of Knowledge.Every child is so simple that he has to become complex – that is part of the growth. So every child moves from simple foolishness toward complex foolishness. There are different degrees of complex foolishness – a few people only matriculate, a few people become graduates, a few become postgraduates, a few become doctors and PhD’s – there are degrees. But every child has to taste something of knowledge because the temptation to know is great. Anything that is standing there unknown becomes dangerous, a danger. It has to be known because with knowledge we will be able to cope with it. Without knowledge how are we going to cope with it? So every child is bound to become knowledgeable.So the first type of fool necessarily, out of necessity, has to become the second type of fool. But from the second the third may happen or may not happen, there is no necessity. The third is possible only when the second type of foolishness has become such a burden: one has carried knowledge too much, to the extreme; one has become just the head and has lost all sensitivity, all awareness, all living; one has become just theories and scriptures and dogmas and words and words whirling around in the mind. One day, if the person is aware, he has to drop all that. Then he becomes the third type of fool – the blessed fool.Then he attains to a second childhood; again he is a child. Remember Jesus’ saying, “In my kingdom of God only those who are like small children will be welcomed.” But remember, he says like small children, he does not say “small children”. Small children cannot enter; they have to learn the ways of the world, they have to be poisoned in the world and then they have to clean themselves. That experience is a must.So he does not say “small children” he says those who are like small children. That word like is very significant. It means those who are not children and yet are like children. Children are saints, but their sainthood is only because they have not yet experienced the temptations of sin. Their saintliness is very simple. It has not much worth in it because they have not earned it, they have not worked for it, they have not yet been tempted against it. The temptations are coming sooner or later. A thousand and one temptations will be there and the child will be pulled in many directions. I am not saying that he should not go in those directions. If he inhibits himself, represses himself from going, he will remain always the first type of fool. He will not become part of Jesus’ kingdom, he will not be able to fill Mohammed’s paradise – no. He will simply remain ignorant. His ignorance will be nothing but a repression, it will not be an unburdening.First he has to attain to knowledge, first he has to sin, and only after sin and knowledge and disobeying God and going into the wildness of the world, going astray, living his own life of the ego, will he become capable one day to drop it all.Not everybody will drop it all. All children move from the first foolishness to the second, but from the second only a few blessed ones move to the third – hence they are called blessed fools.The blessed fool is the greatest possibility of understanding because he has come to know that knowledge is futile, he has come to know that all knowledge is a barrier to knowing. Knowledge is a barrier to knowing, so he drops knowledge and becomes a pure knower. He simply attains to clarity of vision. His eyes are empty of theories and thoughts. His mind is no more a mind; his mind is just intelligence, pure intelligence. His mind is no longer cluttered with junk, his mind is no longer cluttered with borrowed knowledge. He is simply aware. He is a flame of awareness.Tertullian has divided knowledge into two categories: one he calls “ignorant knowledge” – that is the second fool, the ignorant knowledge. The pundit knows and yet does not know, because he has not known it as his own experience. He has listened, memorized; he is a parrot, a computer at the most.Just yesterday I received a letter from a sannyasin, from America. He says, “Osho, I am very happy. And in the office where I work, the computer welcomes me every morning. The computer says, ‘Swamiji, Namaste.’” Now he is very happy. And he knows well it is a computer which is saying, “Swamiji, Namaste.” There is nobody. But even the word makes him happy. He knows it is just a machine – there is nobody, there is no heart in it. Nobody is saying it.When a pundit says something he is a computer. He says, “Swamiji, Namaste.” It is parrot-like. Tertullian says this is the knowledge which is really not knowledge, but ignorance in the garb of knowledge, ignorance in the disguise of knowledge. It is a fall, a fall from the childhood innocence. It is a corruption. It is a corrupt state of mind. Cunning, clever, but corrupt.Then, Tertullian says, there is another type of knowledge which he calls “knowing ignorance”. This is when a person drops all knowledge, theories, looks directly, looks into life as it is, has no ideas about it, allows reality as it is, encounters reality immediately, directly, with no knowledge about it, faces and encounters reality, allows that which is to have its flowering. He simply listens to reality, looks into reality – and he says, “I don’t know.” He is the child Jesus talks about – he is not really a child, he is like a child. And I say, “Yes, blessed are the fools because they shall inherit all the blessings of existence.”From the first, the second is automatic; from the second, the third is not automatic. From the second to the third the leap has to be a decision – that’s what sannyas is. You decide that you have had enough of knowledge; now you would like to be ignorant again, you would like to be a child again, reborn. I am a midwife here. I can help you to become fools. And remember, unless you have attained to the third, your whole life is a sheer wastage.Adam disobeyed God: every Adam has to disobey. Adam fell from grace: every Adam has to fall. Adam ate the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge: every Adam has to become knowledgeable, it is a natural process. I have come across thousands of parables, but nothing to compare with this parable of Adam’s fall. It is the most pregnant parable ever. That’s why I come to it again and again with new meanings; it goes on revealing new meanings.And when Adam turned into Christ he became the third type of fool. Christ is the third type of fool – the blessed fool. What Adam did, Christ undid. Christ returns back in tremendous obedience, innocence.The rabbis, the Jewish religious people, the priests of the temple of Jerusalem, they were learned fools. They could not tolerate Jesus. The learned fools are always disturbed by the blessed fools. They had to murder him because his very presence was uncomfortable; his very presence was such a pinnacle of peace, love, compassion and light, that all the learned fools became aware that their whole being was at stake. If this man lived then they were fools, and the only way to get rid of this man was to destroy him so they could again become the learned people of the race.Socrates was killed by knowledgeable people; Mansoor was killed by other knowledgeable people. There has always been a great conflict whenever the third type of fool arises in the world. All the pundits gather together; their whole business is at stake. All that they know, this man says is foolish. And they also know deep in their hearts that it is foolish because it has done nothing for them. No bliss, no benediction has come out of it. They are as they always have been – their knowledge has not touched their hearts, has not become a transformation at all. They know it deep in their hearts, that’s why they become even more uncomfortable. They want to destroy such men because with the very possibility of such a man they are nobodies. Without Jesus they were the great priests of the temple; with Jesus suddenly they were nobodies. In the presence of Jesus there was godliness itself and all the priests felt their glory had been taken away.Only very courageous people take the jump from the second to the third. It is a quantum leap. Religion is only for the very courageous, in fact, for daredevils. It is not for cowards.A few anecdotes:The elderly man who liked his drink, but was also learned and bookish, was hauled before the bar of justice in a country town.“You’re charged with being drunk and disorderly,” snapped the judge. “Have you any reason why sentence should not be pronounced?”“Man’s inhumanity to man makes countless thousands mourn,” began the prisoner in a flight of oratory. “I am not so debased as Poe, so profligate as Byron, so ungrateful as Keats, so intemperate as Burns, so timid as Tennyson, so vulgar as Shakespeare, so…”“That’ll do,” interrupted the judge. “Ninety days – and, officer, take down those names he mentioned and round up those guys also. They’re as bad as he is.”Now the judge is the first type of fool and the judged is the second type of fool. And the earth is mostly inhabited by these two types of fools. The third type – a Jesus, a Buddha – rarely happens.The Indian term for fool is buddhu – it comes from buddha. When Buddha renounced his kingdom and many, many people started following him, the whole country was in a turmoil. People started saying to others, “Don’t be a buddhu, don’t be a fool, don’t follow this man.” People started calling those who followed Buddha, buddhus. He is a buddhu, he is a fool, because he renounced the kingdom. Who else would renounce a kingdom? People hanker, desire, dream for the kingdom, and he has renounced it – he must be a fool.The third type is a very rare phenomenon. But it happens. And if you are courageous enough you can take the jump.The second anecdote:When somebody tells me that he did the best he could and I figure that it was not good enough, I put this fellow in the same class as the motorcycle cop who stopped a motorist and started to write a ticket.“Officer,” this motorist protested with great indignation, “I was not speeding! You are permitted to go fifty miles an hour, and I was only going forty.”“I know that,” the motorcycle cop answered defensively, “but I can’t catch up with the really fast ones.”The third fool is very fast. Where angels fear to tread, there too he goes unheeded. The third fool is very fast, that’s why I call his leap the quantum leap. The third fool rushes out of sheer courage and energy. The second fool is not so courageous. He goes on collecting pieces from here and there. He does not have that much courage or that great a speed. He borrows knowledge – rather than knowing it himself, he borrows knowledge. That way it is cheaper and he can purchase it wholesale.If you want to know reality directly, it is very arduous. It asks for total sacrifice. The second fool only tries up to a certain limit. The limit is: if he can get knowledge cheaply he is ready, but if there is anything to be put at stake then he recoils back.Be courageous. Unless you have infinite courage you will not be able to become the third type, the blessed fool.And the last anecdote. Wherever you are – because ordinarily nobody remains in the first state, that is only a theoretical state, everybody has to pass out of it, more or less – the difference is of degrees, of quantity but not quality, so people are almost always found in the second category. From the second to the third, wherever you are, remember this rule:Don’t have a closed mind. Be like the old maid who caught a burglar in her room. He pleaded with her, “Please, lady, let me go. I ain’t never did anything wrong.”The old maid answered him, “Well, it is never too late to learn.”And that’s what I would like to say to you. If you are in the second category, if you think you are the intelligentsia, then it is never too late to learn. Knowledge you have enough, now learn knowing. Knowledge clutters the mind as dust gathers on the mirror. Knowledge is not knowing – knowing has a totally different quality and flavor to it. It has the flavor of learning.Let me tell you the distinction. Knowledge means that you go on gathering information, experience, categorizing, memorizing; learning means you don’t gather anything, you simply remain available to whatsoever is happening or is going to happen. Learning is a state of open mind. The more you know, the more you become closed because then you cannot avoid the knowledge that you have, it always comes inbetween.If you are listening to me and you are a knowledgeable man, a pundit, then you cannot listen to me directly, simply. You cannot listen to me. While I am speaking, deep inside you are judging, evaluating, criticizing – there is no dialogue, there is a debate. You may look silent, but you are not silent, your knowledge goes on revolving. It destroys everything that I am saying. It distorts. And whatsoever reaches you is not the real thing, whatsoever reaches you is only that which your knowledge allows to reach to you.A learning mind is one which listens attentively with no interference from the past, which is just an opening, a mirrorlike phenomenon, which simply reflects whatsoever is. If you start learning, you will attain knowing. And knowing will help you to see that you don’t know at all. A person who has come to know reality becomes aware of his ignorance – he knows that he knows not. In this knowing, ignorance is the mutation, the transfiguration, the revolution.So take a jump from the second state of foolishness to the third state of being a blessed fool. All my blessings are for those who are blessed fools.Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Rabbi Visakhar Baer met an old peasantfrom the village of Oleshnyawho had known him when he was young.Not being aware of his rise in the worldthe peasant called to him, “Baer, what’s new with you?”“And what’s new with you?” asked the rabbi.“Well,” answered the other, “I shall tell you.What you don’t get by your own work, you don’t have.”From that time on, whenever Rabbi Baerspoke of the proper way to conduct one’s life,he added, “And the old man of Oleshnya said:‘What you don’t get by your own work, you don’t have.’”Consciousness has two dimensions: one is that of having and the other is that of being. And there are only two categories of human beings: one who is struggling hard to have more and more, and one who has understood the futility of it and has changed their life into the other direction, the direction of being. These people are trying to know who they are.In the world of having you only believe that you have something, but really you don’t have anything. You come alone empty-handed and you go alone empty-handed. And all that happens in between is almost like a dream. It appears to be true, while it is there it appears to be real, but once it is gone then you understand that nothing was really happening. The reality has remained untouched by your dreaming. The world of having is nothing but a world of dreaming.The religious person is one who has become aware of the futility of it all. You cannot have anything except yourself. And all that you have except yourself is a deception. It is an illusion. And, in fact that which you have possesses you more than you possess it. The possessor finally becomes the possessed. You think you have so many things – riches, power, money – but deep down you are being possessed by those same things, you are being encaged, enchained, imprisoned by those same things.Look at the rich people. They don’t possess riches – they are as poor as any other poor man in the world, they are as beggarly as any other beggar. In fact, whatsoever they possess possesses them. They are burdened by it.So the first thing to be understood is that these are the two doors: having, being. If you are still lost in the dream of having, you are in the world. You may be sitting in a cave in the Himalayas; that makes no difference – the world is still there because the world is in the very desire to possess. And nobody has ever possessed anything.Only one thing can be possessed and that you already have with you – your own self, your own consciousness. But to have that being, one has to work hard. You cannot get to it easily because first you will have to detach yourself from the world of having. That will be almost like a death because that’s where you have got identified – you are your car, you are your house, you are your bank balance. And when you start awakening out of this dream, you start feeling as if you are disappearing because all your old identities start disappearing. One identity disappears, one part of your being disappears. There is emptiness left behind.When all your identities disappear and you are simply left, there is only pure space – as pure as life, as pure as death, nothing else is there – that is your being. Only that being can be possessed because it is already there. You can possess only that which is already there; you cannot possess anything else. All desiring is desiring for the futile. It leads only into frustration.Ordinarily, even when people become religious, they go on thinking in terms of having – possessing heaven or possessing the pleasures of heaven – but still they go on thinking in terms of having. Their heaven is nothing but their projected desire of having everything. All that they have missed here they would like to have in the afterlife. But it is the same desire.The really religious person is one who has become aware of the futility of desiring, of the impossibility of having anything here in this world or thereafter in the other world. You can only possess yourself. You can only be the master of your own being. If you are not trying for that… It is hard work, there is no shortcut to it; notwithstanding what Timothy Leary says, there is no shortcut to it. Acid, drugs, are not going to help you there. That is very cheap, it is very cunning. It is a chemical deception. You want to get into the world of your innermost being without any effort. It is a dishonesty. You want to possess it without earning it.When a Mahavira possesses it he has worked hard for it; when a Baal Shem possesses it he has worked hard for it. He has sacrificed his whole being for it. His whole being has become just a prayer, a devotion, a sacrifice to the divine. He is not there, he has simply offered himself totally. Then he possesses. Or a Kabir or a Zarathustra: they have all worked the hard way. The hard way is the only way. There exists no shortcut.But man has tried to invent shortcuts always, in many ways. The drug trip is the latest invention of the cunningness of the human mind. Just by taking a tablet or injecting a certain chemical into your body you think you can become a buddha, you think you can attain to that total possession of your being. You will simply become a slave of the chemical, not the master of your being. Now there will arise a craving for the chemical – more and more, again and again. Bigger and bigger quantities will be needed. Soon you will be a wreck, soon you will be a wasteland, soon you will be deserted by all that is beautiful and true and all that is divine. But the lure is there. The human mind thinks it can find some shortcuts.You may all remember certain dreams. In dreams, if you are traveling in the train, you skip many stations. You are in London and then suddenly you are in Tokyo – you skip the whole journey. The unconscious continually craves shortcuts. In dreams it is okay, but in real life it is not possible – you cannot skip any stage and you cannot skip any station on the way. Howsoever fast you go, there is no way to skip anything. Faster or slower, it eventually does not make any difference. But you have to go all the way and you have to go the hard way.Acid and drugs have always lured man. It is nothing new. It is as old as man himself. In the Vedas they used to have soma. In India they have continued to use drugs down the centuries: charas and ganja and opium; they have tried everything. Now the madness is spreading all over the world. Now people are trying to find a shortcut – a very easy and cheap thing – that you can possess, that you can just swallow. Samadhi cannot be swallowed. And godliness is not a chemical phenomenon; you have to earn it, only then can you have it.Then there are others – there are other methods also. It is not only drugs that are a shortcut, there are other methods also. They all guarantee you that, with very little effort, in fact with no effort at all, you can reach to the goal – for example, just chanting a mantra a few minutes every day. Chanting a mantra can only dull your mind; all repetition dulls the mind, makes you silly and stupid. If you simply go on chanting a mantra it kills your sensitivity, it creates boredom, it brings a sort of slumber to your consciousness; you become more unconscious than conscious, you start slipping into sleep.That is why mothers have always known that when a child is restless and cannot go to sleep they must sing a lullaby. A lullaby is a mantra. The mother repeats something again and again and again and the child feels bored. The constant repetition creates a monotonous atmosphere. The child cannot escape anywhere – the mother is sitting by the side of the bed and repeating a lullaby. The child cannot escape; the child cannot say, “Shut up!” The child has to listen. The only escape available is to go into sleep. So he tries that – to avoid this lullaby and to avoid this mother.The mantra works in the same way: you start repeating a certain word and then you create a monotonous state for yourself. All monotony is deadening; all monotony dulls you, destroys your sharpness.It has been tried in many ways. In the old monasteries all over the world – Christian, Hindu, Buddhist – in all the monasteries they have tried the same trick on a bigger scale. The life of a monastery is routine, absolutely fixed. Each morning you have to get up at three o’clock or five o’clock, and then the same circle starts. Then you have to do the same monotonous activity the whole day for your whole life. This is spreading a mantra all over your life, making a routine.By and by, doing the same thing again and again, a person becomes more like a somnambulist. Whether he is awake or asleep makes no difference, he can simply go on making the empty gestures and empty movements. He loses all distinction between sleeping and waking.You can go to the old monasteries and watch monks walking in their sleep. They have become robots. Between when they get up in the morning and when they go to sleep there is no distinction – the territories are overlapping. And it is exactly the same every day. In fact, the word monotonous and the word monastery come from the same root. They both mean the same.You can create such a monotonous life that intelligence is not needed. When intelligence is not needed you become dull. And when you become dull, of course you start feeling a certain sort of peace, a certain silence – but it is not real, it is pseudo. The real silence is very alive, throbbing. The real silence is positive; it has energy in it, it is intelligent, aware, full of life and zest. It has enthusiasm in it.The false silence, the pseudo silence, is simply dull. You can see it. If a stupid person is sitting there – an idiot, an imbecile – you will feel a certain silence around him; it is the same silence as you can feel near a cemetery. He has a space around him which is very dull. He seems to be very indifferent to the world, not in contact at all, disconnected; he is sitting there like a lump of mud. There is no vibration around him of any life, of any energy; there is nothing streaming around him. This is not real silence. He is simply stupid.When you come close to a buddha… He is silent because of his intelligence, he is silent because of his awareness; he is silent, not because he has forced himself to be silent, he is silent simply because he has understood the pointlessness of being disturbed in any way. He is silent because he has understood that there is no point in being worried and there is no point in being tense. His silence is out of understanding. It is overflowing understanding. When you come near a buddha you will have a totally different fragrance – the fragrance of consciousness.And not only will you feel a freshness, a breeze around him, you will feel that you have also become more alive, aflame. Just by being close to him your own inner being is lit; a lamp starts burning within you. When you are close to him, with just the very affinity, the closeness, you suddenly feel you are no longer so depressed. His presence is pulling you out of the mud in which you had established yourself perfectly. His very presence is uplifting – you will feel life, love, compassion, beauty, reality.A person who goes on chanting a mantra and living a monotonous life of routine is dead; he just goes into the gestures and motions because he has to. And he has done the same things so many times that there is no need to be alert about it – he can do it in his sleep. He has become very efficient, but his efficiency simply means that he has become mechanical. That’s why he is silent. You will see this type of silence if you come across people who practice Transcendental Meditation. They have stilled themselves by repeating a certain mantra; they have forced their mind to keep quiet. But this is cheap and you cannot get the real with such cheap measures. The real becomes available only when you work for it with your totality.But remember, I am not saying that the real becomes available by your work. There is a paradox in it: you have to work hard, you have to work in a total, passionate way, and yet you have to remember that it does not happen by your work alone. It happens by grace. That is the message of Hasidism.You work hard – it never happens without you working hard, that is certain; it happens only when you have worked hard. But that only creates the situation for it to happen. It is not like cause and effect. It is not that you heat water to a hundred degrees and then it has to evaporate; it is not like that. It is not a natural law; it has nothing to do with the world of gravitation. It is a second law, a totally different law: the law of grace. You work hard, you come to a hundred degrees, then you wait there – throbbing, expectant, alive, happy, celebrating, singing, dancing. You wait there at the hundred-degree point. It is a must, you must come to the hundred-degree point – but now you have to wait, you have to wait patiently, lovingly.When the right moment comes, when your work is complete and your waiting is also complete, then the grace descends. Or, you can say that the grace ascends. Both mean the same because it comes from the deepest core of your being. It looks like it is descending because you have not known your innermost core up to now. It seems as if from somewhere above it is coming to you, but it really comes from somewhere within you. The within is also the beyond.Hard work is needed to attain to grace, but the real thing finally happens only because of grace. This is a paradox. It is difficult to understand it. Because of this paradox millions of people have lost their way. There are a few who say – and they are very logical, their logic is impeccable – there are a few who say that if it comes only by our effort then why bother about grace and godliness? If it happens only by our effort, then okay, they will make all the effort, they will make it happen. So they don’t talk about grace or godliness. They will miss, because it never happens only by your own effort.Then there are people who say that if it happens only by grace and never happens by our own effort, then why bother? We should wait – and whenever existence wills it, it is going to happen.They both miss. One misses because of egoism – “Only my effort is enough. Only I am enough” – the other misses because of laziness, lethargy. Both miss.The one who arrives home has to follow the paradoxical path. This is the paradox: I have to work hard, not only hard, I have to put myself totally at the stake – only then will I become capable of receiving grace. But it happens through grace. A moment comes when I have done all that I can do and then I pray that now no more is possible from my side, now something is needed from the other end, now you also do something. And existence starts working on you only when you have done all that you could have done. If something is still lacking and a part of your being is still not involved, then existence cannot come to your help. Existence helps only those who help themselves.This is the paradox of the Hasid. He works hard and still he trusts that the ultimate flowering is going to be only by his grace, by the grace of existence.And it is beautiful. We are very small. Our effort cannot create much. Our fire is very small – by this fire alone we cannot set the whole existence aflame. We are just drops. We cannot create oceans out of these drops. But if the drop can drop into a deep prayerfulness, the ocean becomes available. When the drop relaxes, it becomes capable of containing oceans in itself. It is small if you look only at its periphery; it is tremendously vast if you look at its center. Man is both, man is a paradox. He is the tiniest particle of consciousness, an atom, very atomic, and yet he contains the vast. The whole sky is contained in him.So first these two languages have to be understood: the language of having and the language of being. And you have to change your gears from the language of having to the language of being.Let me tell you a few anecdotes:A Japanese high official confronted his daughter, “I have been told that you are going out on dates with a foreigner. Furthermore, he is an American soldier, and what’s more, he is Jewish.”The girl shot back, “What schmuck told you that?”Now the word schmuck tells everything. There is no need for anybody to say anything anymore.The person who knows only the language of having has a totally different quality to his being: the way he walks, the way he sits. the way he talks, the words that he uses, the words that he avoids using, the people he mingles with and the people that he avoids, the places that he visits and the places that he does not visit – everything indicates something. Even single, ordinary words indicate something. Even if he comes to a master, a man who is always trying to have more and more and more can be seen by the way he comes, by the desire with which he comes. Even if he surrenders, in his very surrender you can find his language.A man came to see me. By the way he came, I could see that he was absolutely indifferent toward me. It was so clear, it was so loud. He was not flowing toward me, he had no flow in his being; he was a stagnant pool of energy.I was surprised. I wondered why he had come to me. And then he started talking about God. The word God was simply irrelevant on his tongue. It made no sense. He was speaking some language which he did not know how to use. I was waiting, because there must have been something else behind these words about God. He was saying, “I want to realize God and I want to realize myself.” But by the way he was saying it and by the way he was expressing it, it was absolutely clear that he had not come for these things. Maybe just to be polite toward me or just to start a dialogue, he was using these props.And then by and by he said, “I will come one day and become a sannyasin also.”So I said, “If you have come, and you are a seeker, and you want to realize godliness, then why waste any more time? As it is, you have wasted enough already.” He must have been almost sixty-five.He said, “That’s right. But right now I am contesting the election.” There was a by-election going on. “So I have come for your blessings.”I said, “Then why did you waste so much time talking about God, talking about the soul, talking about meditation?”Indians are very proficient about such things – just by tradition they have learned these words. These words are in the air, they have caught them. They don’t have any roots in their being, they just float in their heads. These words exist in them without any roots, unrelated to them.I said, “Why did you waste so much time talking about God and the soul? You should have said the real thing in the beginning.” He was a little embarrassed. And I told him, “From the very beginning I was wondering why you have come to me – because you were coming toward me and yet you were not coming toward me. Your language was clear and loud. You were sitting here and yet you were not sitting here, and I could see that your presence was false, only physical. And I could see the politician in you; in fact, you were talking about God as a political strategy. It was your politics.”There are those people who say, “Honesty is the best policy.” Even honesty they have made into a policy. Policy means politics. “It pays to be honest,” they say. So honesty is also a useful instrument to earn more money, to earn more prestige, to be more respectable. But how can honesty be a policy? Just to say such things – that honesty is the best policy – is to utter a profanity. It is almost saying that God is the best policy, or that meditation is the best policy, or that love is the best policy.If your language is of having, you can use God and meditation and things, but they will be just garbs, masks, and something else will be hidden behind them.“I’m afraid it’s bad news,” said the doctor to the husband of a nagging wife. “Your wife has only a few hours left to live. I hope you understand there’s nothing more to be done. Don’t let yourself suffer.”“It’s all right, Doc,” said the husband. “I’ve suffered for years – I can suffer a few more hours.”People have different languages. Even if they use the same words they don’t use them with the same meaning. Listen to the meaning and never listen to the words. If you listen to the words you will never understand people. Listen to the meaning – the meaning is a totally different thing.The woman lion tamer had her beasts under perfect control. At her summons, the fiercest lion came meekly to her and took a piece of sugar out of her mouth. The circus crowd marveled – all except one man, Mulla Nasruddin.“Anybody could do that,” he yelled from the audience.“Would you dare to do it?” the ringmaster yelled back scornfully.“Certainly,” replied Nasruddin, “I can do it just as well as the lion can.”Whenever you are listening, listen to the meaning. Whenever you are listening to a person, listen to his whole personality – and you will immediately be able to see whether the person lives in the dimension of having or in the dimension of being.And that will be very helpful for your own inner growth and your own change of gears. Just watch people. It is easier to watch people than to watch yourself in the beginning, because people are more objective, and there is a little distance between you and them. And you can be more objective about people because you are not involved in them. Just watch. Make it a point.Buddha used to say to his disciples, “Watch everybody passing by; coming and going in the streets, watch people.” See exactly what is happening. Don’t listen to their words because they are very cunning, they have become very deceptive. When somebody is saying something listen to his face, to his eyes, to his being, to the gesture, and you will be simply surprised how, up to now, you have lived only with words. A person may be saying, “I love you,” and his eyes may be simply denying it. A person may be smiling with his lips and his eyes may be ridiculing you, rejecting you. A person may be saying “Hello” and holding your hand, and his whole being may be condemning you.Listen to the language of the body, the language of the gesture – the language behind the language. Listen to the meaning. And first become alert about it in others. Let everybody who comes to you be an experiment of awareness. Then by and by you will become able to watch yourself. Then turn your whole flood of life upon yourself; then use the same with yourself. When you say to somebody “I love you,” listen to what you really are saying – not these words. Words are almost always fake.Language is very tricky and can garb things so beautifully that the container becomes so important and you lose sight of the content. People have become very sophisticated as far as their surface is concerned, but their innermost core remains almost primitive. Listen to the center of the circumference. Go into each word.First others have to be watched, then watch yourself. And then by and by you will see that there are a few moments when you also move into the dimension of being. These moments are the moments of beauty, the moments of happiness. In fact, whenever you see that you are feeling very happy, you have come in contact with the dimension of being – because there is no other happiness possible.But if you don’t observe it accurately, you may misunderstand it. You are sitting with a woman you love, or with a man you love, or with a friend, and suddenly you feel a deep well-being arising in you, a deep joy – for no reason at all, for no visible cause. You are just aglow. You start finding causes outside: you think maybe it is because the woman is sitting by your side and she loves you so much. Or it is because you have met the friend after so many years. Or it is because the full moon is so beautiful. You will start finding causes.But those who have become alert in listening to their heart, to their real meanings, will not be looking for causes outside. They will look inside. They have come in contact with their being. Maybe the woman you loved functioned as a situation, as a jumping-board, and you jumped into yourself.It is difficult to jump into yourself when there is some antagonism outside. You have to be outside then. When somebody loves you, you can drop all defense measures, you can drop all your strategies, you can drop your politics, you can drop your diplomacy. When somebody loves you, you can be vulnerable; you can trust that he or she is not going to take advantage of it, that you can be defenseless and you will not be killed and crushed, that you can be defenseless and the presence of your friend will be soothing, it will not be poisoning you.Whenever there is a situation where you can leave yourself defenseless and you can drop your strategies and your armors, suddenly you are in contact with your being – you have moved from the dimension of having to the dimension of being. Whenever it happens there is happiness, there is joy, there is rejoicing. Even if it is only for a split second, suddenly the doors of heaven are open. But again and again you lose it because you are not aware. It happens only accidentally.Remember, a religious person is one who has understood this accidental happening and who has understood the innermost key of it. And now he does not move into his dimension of being only accidentally, he has the key – and whenever he wants to move, he opens the door, he unlocks the door and goes into it.This is the only difference. In ordinary happiness and the happiness of a religious person, the only difference is this: that the religious person has become capable of moving any time, any place, into his being. Now he knows the direct route and he does not depend on outside props.You depend too much on outside props. Sometimes you are in a beautiful house; it feels good. You are traveling in a beautiful car – the car is humming and everything is going beautifully – it feels good. In that feeling you start coming closer to your being. But you misunderstand; you think it is because of this car, so you have to possess this car. Maybe the car functioned as a situation, but the car is not the cause. Maybe a beautiful house functioned as a situation, but it is not the cause.If you think it is the cause then you move into the world of having; then you must have the most beautiful car – you have to have it. Then you have to have the best house, you have to have the best garden, you have to have the best woman and the best man. And you go on collecting and collecting and collecting and one day suddenly you recognize or realize that your whole life has been a wastage. You have collected much, but you have lost all sources of happiness. You got lost in collecting things. The basic logic was that with whatever you felt good and happy, that thing had to be possessed.Listen to me: that thing need not be possessed. You just watch what is happening inside you and you can start having that happening without any outside help. That’s what a sannyasin is. It is not that you have to have all, that you have to possess all, but you have to remain alert that you cannot possess anything in this world. All that you possess can function only as a situation – it is not the cause. The cause is inside. And you can open the door without any outside prop at any time, in any place, and you can go in and you can rejoice.You are no longer attached. You can use things, they are useful; I am not against things, remember. Neither are the Hasids against things, remember. Use things, but don’t believe that things can cause you happiness. Use things, they have a utility, but don’t believe that they are the goals. They are not the ends, they are only the means. The goal is within you, and the goal is such that one can move directly into it without any outside help. Once you know it, you become a master of your being.This – whatsoever I am saying – has to be experienced by you. Just by my saying it and just by your listening to it and understanding it intellectually, it is not going to help much.Mulla Nasruddin refused the cow-puncher’s command to drink, for three reasons.“Name them!” roared the terror of the town.“First,” said the Mulla, “it is prohibited in my religion. Second, I promised my grandmother on her deathbed that I would handle not, touch not, taste not, the accursed stuff.”“And the other reason, the third?” insisted the bully, somewhat softened.“I have just had a drink,” said Nasruddin.If you only listen to me, if you only understand me intellectually and never experiment in your own inner lab of consciousness, whatsoever I am saying will remain just in your head. It will never become a lived experience. And unless it becomes a lived experience it is worthless knowledge, it is junk. Again you can start collecting knowledge, then again you are into the same trap – the dimension of having. And you can go on collecting as much knowledge as is available.It is one of the misfortunes of modern man that so much knowledge has become available. It was never so. The only thing that has proved the greatest calamity for modern man is the tremendous amount of knowledge which has become available. It was never available before. A Hindu used to live with Hindu scriptures; the Mohammedan used to live with Mohammedan scriptures; the Christian used to live with the Bible – and they were all secluded and nobody went into the other’s world of knowledge. Things were clear-cut; there was no overlapping.Now everything is overlapping and a tremendous amount of new knowledge has become available. We are living in a “knowledge explosion”. In this explosion you can start gathering information, you can become a great scholar very cheaply, very easily, but it is not going to transform you at all.Again, remember, knowledge belongs to the dimension of having; knowing belongs to the dimension of being. They look alike, but they are not. Not even are they not alike, they are diametrically opposite to each other. A man who goes on collecting knowledge goes on losing knowing. Knowing needs a mirrorlike mind: pure, uncorrupted. I am not saying that knowledge is useless. If you have your knowing – clear, mirrorlike, fresh – you can use your knowledge in a tremendously useful way. It can become beneficial. But the knowing has to be there in the first place.Knowledge is very easy; again, knowing is very difficult. For knowing you have to pass through many fires. For knowledge nothing is needed – as you are you can go on adding more and more knowledge to yourself.A jovial man-about-town, long on charm but short on cash, surprised his friends by his sudden marriage to an extremely ugly woman whose only virtue was her well-padded bankroll. After the marriage, his friends were doubly mystified by his insistence on taking his wife everywhere with him.“I can understand your marrying that painfully ugly woman for her money,” one of his close friends remarked frankly, “but why do you have to bring her with you every time you go out?”“It’s simple,” the husband explained. “It’s easier than kissing her good-bye.”It is easier to have knowledge – very cheap, costs nothing. It is very difficult, arduous, to attain to knowing. That’s why very few… Very rarely people try to meditate, very rarely people try to pray, very rarely people ever make any effort toward knowing what truth is. And whatsoever you have not known on your own is meaningless. You can never be certain about it, the doubt never disappears; the doubt remains like a worm underneath it, sabotaging your knowledge. You can shout loudly that you believe in God, but your shouting does not prove anything. Your shouting only proves one thing: that there is doubt. Only doubt shouts loudly. You can become a fanatic believer, but your fanaticism simply shows one thing: that there is doubt.Only a man who has doubt within himself becomes a fanatic. A fanatic Hindu means one who does not really trust that Hinduism is right. A fanatic Christian simply means one who has doubts about Christianity. He becomes fanatic, aggressive – not to prove anything to others, he becomes fanatic and aggressive to prove to himself that whatsoever he believes he really believes. He has to prove it.When you really know something, you are not a fanatic at all. A man of knowing, one who has come to know even glimpses of godliness, glimpses of his being, becomes very, very soft, sensitive, fragile. He is not fanatic. He becomes feminine. He is not aggressive. He becomes deeply compassionate. And, by knowing, he becomes very understanding of others. He can understand even the diametrically opposite standpoint.I have heard about a Hasid rabbi:He was saying, “Life is like a river.”A disciple asked, “Why?”The rabbi said, “How can I know? Am I a philosopher?”Another day the rabbi was saying, “Life is like a river.”Another disciple asked, “Why?”And the rabbi said, “Right you are. Why should it be?”This is tremendous understanding. No fanaticism. A man of knowing attains to a sense of humor. Let this always be remembered. If you see someone who has no sense of humor, know well that that man has not known at all. If you come across a serious man, then you can be certain that he is a pretender. Knowing brings sincerity, but all seriousness disappears. Knowing brings a playfulness; knowing brings a sense of humor. The sense of humor is a must.If you find a saint who has no sense of humor, then he is not a saint at all. Impossible. His very seriousness says that he has not achieved. Once you have some inner experiences of your own you become very playful, you become very innocent, childlike.The man of knowledge is very serious. The man of knowledge always carries a serious, gloomy atmosphere around him. Not only does he carry a serious atmosphere, he makes anybody he comes into contact with serious. He forces seriousness on them. In fact, deep down, he is worried that he does not know anything. He cannot relax, his seriousness is a tension. He is anguished. He knows that he knows only for its name’s sake, he knows that his knowledge is all fake – so he cannot laugh at it.Now listen to it:The rabbi said, “Life is like a river.”And a disciple asked, “Why?”And the rabbi said, “How can I know? Am I a philosopher?”And another day the rabbi said again, “Life is like a river.”Another disciple asked, “Why?”And the rabbi said, “Right you are. Why should it be?”You see the non-seriousness? You see the tremendous sense of humor?Hasidism has created a few of the greatest saints of the world and my respect toward them is immense because they are not serious people. They can joke and they can laugh – and they can laugh not only at others, they can laugh at themselves, that’s the beauty. If you go on collecting knowledge, you can have a great amount of knowledge, but it is not going to be of any help when the need arises. You can go on throwing it around and showing and exhibiting it, but whenever the need arises and the house is on fire you will suddenly see you have forgotten all that you knew – because you never knew in the first place. It was just in the memory.Wherever there is an emergency situation… For example, when a person is dying, he will forget all his knowledge. In that moment he will not remember that the soul is immortal. That was advice for others. In that moment he will not remember that he is going back to the source and that one should go happily, and dancing. In that moment he will start clinging to life; all his knowledge will be gone.I used to know a very learned man, a very intellectual man, famous all over the country. He was not only learned, he was a follower of J. Krishnamurti. He used to come to see me sometimes and he would say that there is no need for any meditation because Krishnamurti says so.I used to listen to him and laugh. He would ask me, “Why do you laugh whenever I say these things?”I told him again and again, “I listen to you, I don’t listen to what you say. Your being gives me a totally different message. If there is really no need for meditation, there is no need for scriptures, there is no need for any methods, there is no need even for prayer, and you have understood it, then this would have transformed you totally.”He would answer seriously, “That’s right. I have understood intellectually, but some day I will understand it non-intellectually also. I have taken the first step, the second will be coming.”Then one day his son came running to me to tell me, “Father is very ill, it seems like a heart attack and he remembers you.” So I rushed to him.He was lying on the bed repeating “Rama, Rama, Rama.”I shook his head and I said, “What are you doing? Your whole life you said there is no meditation – what are you doing repeating Rama, Rama, Rama…?”He said, “Now don’t disturb me at this moment. Death is at the door. I am dying. Who knows? – maybe God is. And who knows, maybe the people who have always said remember his name and he will forgive you, are right. This is no time to create a debate or an argument; let me repeat it.”For forty years he had not said a single mantra, but now, suddenly, forty years of knowledge is discarded, it is of no use. In this dangerous situation when death is there, he forgets Krishnamurti completely. He becomes again an ordinary Hindu. It was okay for an ordinary Hindu villager to repeat “Rama, Rama” – he can be forgiven – but this man? He had written books, he had lectured all over the country, he had helped many people to drop their mantras and to drop their meditations and their scriptures. And now suddenly he is repeating a mantra.But he survived the heart attack and he came to see me after two or three months – and again he was back to his knowledge. I said, “Now stop your foolishness. Death will come again and you will repeat ‘Rama, Rama, Rama’. So what is the point of it all?”A very rich old man had remained a bachelor. Now he was nearing seventy-five. Then suddenly a friend, a married friend, convinced him that he should get married. “You should not miss this pleasure,” he said.So he decided to get married. Because he had so much money he immediately found a beautiful girl. Off they went on their honeymoon.He took the married friend and his wife with him as guides in this new exploration. The next morning they met in the motel at breakfast. The friend had fed him every bit of information about sex and how to make love and what to do and what not to do. “What a fantastic time I had last night,” said the married man. “We went to bed last night. My wife was eager, I was eager, and we had a marvelous night of love. What about you, old man?”“Oh, my God!” said the old rich man. “I clean forgot about it!”After a whole life of bachelorhood, even if somebody guides you, tells you things and you memorize them, they don’t have any deep contact with your being, they simply float above your head. They don’t touch you.The old man said, “Oh my God! I clean forgot about it!” Seventy-five years of sleeping alone creates a mechanical habit of its own.If you go on accumulating knowledge, it creates a habit; it never gives you any knowledge, but it gives you a habit, a habit for accumulating more, a very dangerous habit. Even if you come across a Buddha or a Jesus you will miss, because there also you will be accumulating. You will be taking notes inside the mind – “Yes, this is right, worthy of being remembered.” Your accumulation will become bigger and bigger, but you will be just a dead museum, or a museum of dead things.And the more you are covered with this “having knowledge”, the less will be the possibility for the real knowledge to be there; the knowledge that comes by knowing being, by being, will be missed.Remember, the mind is nothing but that which you have collected up to now. The mind is all that you have inside your being. Beyond the mind is your real being, beyond having is your real being. Outside you have collected things, inside you have collected thoughts – both are in the dimension of having.When you are no longer attached to things and when you are no longer attached to thoughts – suddenly the open sky, the open sky of being. And that’s the only thing worth having and the only thing that you can really have.Now the story:Rabbi Visakhar Baer met an old peasantfrom the village of Oleshnyawho had known him when he was young.Not being aware of his rise in the world the peasant called to him, “Baer, what’s new with you?”“And what’s new with you?” asked the rabbi.“Well,” answered the other, “I shall tell you.What you don’t get by your own work, you don’t have.”A tremendously significant saying. Maybe the peasant hasn’t meant it in such a significant way, but the rabbi took it. It was a precious stone. Out of that ordinary peasant… He may not have meant it the way the rabbi understood it – you understand only in the way that you can understand.From that time on, whenever Rabbi Baerspoke of the proper way to conduct one’s lifehe added, “And the old man of Oleshnya said:‘What you don’t get by your own work, you don’t have.’”The old man must have meant it in the ordinary way. He was saying that in this life you can have only that which you have worked for. There is no other way. One has to work hard to have something.That is the experience of an ordinary farmer. The farmer was not a king; a king can have much that he has not earned by his own labor.A very great, rich man was once asked by a poor man, “What is the best way to get rich in the world?”The rich man said, “The best way is to find the right parents.”You can have much without ever having earned it if you were clever enough to find the right womb. Very few people are that clever. They simply rush into any womb available.You can rob, you can cheat, you can exploit; there are a thousand ways. But the farmer, the peasant really lived by his own earning. He was not a king, he was not a politician, he was not a rich man – whatsoever he earned, that’s all he had. The farmer must have said it in the very ordinary sense, but look at the beauty of it.Whatsoever you hear, you hear from your dimension. The rabbi heard it in a totally different way. It became a very illuminated saying in his being. It was a simple, ordinary statement, but the rabbi himself was in a deep meditation, the rabbi himself was in his other dimension – the dimension of being.When you are in the dimension of being, small things, ordinary pebbles, become precious stones. Ordinary things take on so much color, become so colorful. Ordinary events become so psychedelic. It depends on you, on your vision.From that time on, whenever Rabbi Baerspoke of the proper way to conduct one’s life,he used to add, “And the old man of Oleshnya said:‘What you don’t get by your own work, you don’t have.’”This is true. In the innermost world it is absolutely true – although it may not be so true in the outside world. In the outside world there are a thousand and one ways to be dishonest, to cheat, to rob, to steal, to exploit. In fact, in the outside world the workers don’t have much, only the cheaters. The cunning people have much. Those who work don’t have much. Those who don’t work, they have much.But in the inside world the statement is absolutely true. You cannot have anything there in your being that you have not earned. And it is earned the hard way; there are no shortcuts. So don’t try to cheat existence.A man who is deluded by having things, loses all opportunities of attaining to the state of being.I have heard:A husband took a shot at his mother-in-law, so she brought charges against him.“You were drinking,” said the judge, “so I must tell you something. It was liquor that inflamed you. It was liquor that made you hate your mother-in-law. It was liquor that got you to buy the revolver to shoot her. It was liquor that made you go to your mother-in-law’s house, point the revolver, pull the trigger and fire. And note, it was liquor that made you miss her!”It is the same story, the same liquor. Throughout your whole life it is your ambition to have, that functions like the liquor. So watch it. Beware of it. That is the only illusion in the world.One day when you will go, then you will realize – but then it will be too late.I have heard about a man. He went to Florida with his wife, and became fascinated by the spectacle of eight horses chasing each other around a track. He and his wife bet heavily, and after a few days they had only two dollars left between them. But he was a hopeful type and he convinced his wife that everything would be all right if she let him go out to the track alone.A friend drove him out. There was a forty-to-one shot in the first race, and he decided to bet on it. The horse came in.In every race the man backed the long shot, and in every race he won. By the end of the last race he had over ten thousand dollars, and he decided to press his lucky streak. On the way back to the hotel he stopped off at a little gambling club and ran his stake up to forty thousand on the roulette wheel. One more play, he decided, and he would leave. He put the entire forty thousand on black.The wheel spun. The croupier announced, “Number fourteen, red.”The man walked back to the hotel. His wife called him from the verandah. “How did you make out?” she asked eagerly.The husband shrugged: “I lost the two dollars.”In the end, when death comes, the whole game of thousands and thousands of dollars, achieving this, attaining that, becoming this, becoming that, the power, the prestige, the money, the respectability – nothing counts. Finally, you have only to say, “I have lost my being.”In running, rushing into the dimension of having, only one thing happens – you lose your being. Life is a great opportunity – a great opportunity. In fact, there are millions of opportunities in it to attain to yourself, to know who you are. But that comes the hard way. You have to work for it.Don’t try to borrow. Nothing can be borrowed in that inner world. And don’t try to become just knowledgeable. Attain to a clarity, attain to a vision where no thought exists in your mind. This is the hardest thing in the world. To drop thoughts is the hardest thing in the world, the greatest challenge. All other challenges are very small. This is the greatest adventure that you can take and those who are courageous, they accept the challenge and go into it.The greatest challenge is how to drop the mind, because only when the mind ceases, the godliness can be. Only when the known disappears, the unknown can be. Only when there is no mind, no you, nothing of you left, suddenly there is that which you have been seeking and seeking forever and forever. Godliness is when you are not. This is the hardest thing to do.The last anecdote:Rabbi Grossman and Father O’Malley were seated beside each other at a banquet.“Have some ham,” offered the priest.“I’m afraid not,” answered the rabbi.“C’mon, try some,” the priest encouraged. “It’s real good!”“Thanks, but I don’t eat that kind of meat because of my religion.”“It’s really delicious!” said Father O’Malley five minutes later. “You oughta try this ham, you’d like it.”“No thank you!” replied Rabbi Grossman.After dinner, the two men shook hands. “Tell me,” said the Jewish clergyman, “do you enjoy sex with your wife?”“Oh, Rabbi, you should know I’m not allowed to be married,” said the priest. “I can’t have sex.”“You ought to try it,” said the rabbi. “It’s better than ham.”That’s all that I can say to you. You ought to try the state of no-mind, the state of being. It is better than all the worlds put together.The world of being is the only real world, the world of truth. And unless you have come to it you go on wandering in foreign lands. You can never come home. You come home only when you have come into the innermost core of your being – which is possible. It is difficult, but not impossible; arduous, but not impossible. It is difficult certainly, but it has happened. It has happened to me, it can happen to you.But don’t cling to cheap remedies. Don’t try to cheat, chemically or otherwise. Don’t try to borrow knowledge. Don’t go on accumulating.It is already there, accumulations only hide it. It is already there. Once you stop accumulating and you drop all the junk you have accumulated inside you – that’s what your mind is, the junk. If you drop that junk, suddenly it is there in its absolute purity, in its absolute beauty, in its absolute benediction.A wise man, the wonder of his age, taught his disciples from a seemingly inexhaustible store of wisdom. He attributed all his knowledge to a thick tome that was kept in a place of honor in his room. The sage would allow nobody to open the volume.When he died, those who had surrounded him, regarding themselves as his heirs, ran to open the book, anxious to possess what it contained. They were surprised, confused and disappointed when they found that there was writing on only one page.They became even more bewildered, and then annoyed, when they tried to penetrate the meaning of the phrase that met their eyes. It was: “When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.”Let me repeat it: “When you realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.”The container is your consciousness, the content is your mind. The container is your being, the content is all that you have accumulated. When you realize the distinction between the content and the container, between the mind and the being, you will have knowledge. In a single split moment, when you remember and you recognize that you are not the content, you are the container, there is a mutation, there is a revolution. And that is the only revolution there is.Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Today at the lecture you extolled the virtues of Hasidism. But if they are so praiseworthy, so full of feeling of brotherhood, etc., why do they exclude women from their religious practices, and particularly their ecstatic religious dancing?A woman has asked the question. It is very relevant, and has to be understood. The first thing to remember, to always remember, is never to judge the past by present standards. That is not compassionate. For example, when Hasidism was arising, to allow women into an ecstatic religious dance would have been impossible. Not that Hasidic mystics were not aware, not that they would not have liked to allow it – they would have loved it – but it was impossible.Even Buddha was afraid to initiate women into his order. What was the fear? Was he an orthodox person? No, you cannot find a more revolutionary mind, but he insisted for many years on not allowing women into his order. The reason is to be found somewhere else.A religion has to exist in the society. If the society is too much against a certain thing, even the founder has to make a few compromises otherwise the religion as such will not exist at all. The society is not in a condition of perfection, the society is not yet as it should be, but a religion has to exist in this society, in the framework that this society allows it. Revolutionaries try to go a little further than the boundary, but even they cannot go too far. If they go too far they will be uprooted.For example, I have no objection if you go naked when meditating. I have no objection. In fact I will support it, because clothes are part of the repressive culture. I know it, but still I have to insist on you not being naked in the meditations because that creates such trouble that even meditation will become impossible. That will be too much. To destroy the whole possibility of meditation just for clothes or nudity would be foolish. It would have been good if I had been able to allow you to be absolutely free – free from clothes also. But then society will not allow us to exist at all, and we have to exist in society. So we have to choose the lesser evil.Or, take the question of drugs. I am not in support of drugs, but I am not against them either. I am not in support of Timothy Leary, I don’t think that you can attain samadhi by drugs – about that I am absolutely certain. No one has ever attained samadhi by drugs, notwithstanding what Aldous Huxley and others say. It is too cheap, and there is no possibility to attain the ultimate through chemicals. But I am aware that drugs can help in a certain way. They can give you a glimpse; they cannot give you the reality, but they can give you a glimpse of the reality, and that glimpse can become a breakthrough. That glimpse can uproot you from your past and can send you on a search for the real. Even if you have seen God, even in your dream, your whole life will be transformed. Of course, the God in a dream is a dream, but the next morning you will start looking into the world – where can you find this phenomenon that has happened in your dream?So many people start their journey toward godliness, truth, samadhi, because they have had a certain glimpse somewhere – maybe through drugs, maybe through sexual orgasm, maybe through music, or sometimes accidentally. Sometimes a person falls from a train, is hit on the head and he has a glimpse. I’m not saying make a method of that! But I know this has happened. A certain center in the head is hit by accident and the person has a glimpse, an explosion of light. Never again will he be the same; now he will start searching for it. This is possible. The improbable is no more improbable; it has become possible. Now he has some inkling, some contact. He cannot rest now.I am not for drugs, I am not against drugs. But still, in this community, in my commune, drugs cannot be allowed, because politicians have never been very intelligent and one should not expect too much from them. In fact, only stupid people become interested in politics. If they were intelligent they would not be in politics at all.So just for some ordinary, small thing the whole movement cannot be destroyed. That would be foolish. After a hundred years my attitude that drugs cannot be allowed in the Commune will be thought anti-revolutionary. Naturally, I know it is anti-revolutionary. So let it be on the record.The Hasidic masters knew it well. It is inhuman, anti-revolutionary, not to allow women to participate in ecstatic religious ceremonies, in ecstatic dances. But that society was very much against it. Because of this the whole movement would have died. So they had to prohibit it.Buddhism died in India. Do you know why? It was because Buddha finally allowed women into his order. He himself is reported to have said, “My religion would have lived at least five thousand years, but now it will not live more than five hundred, because I am taking a very great risk.” Just allowing woman into his order was such a risk that Buddha said, “The life of my religion is reduced by four thousand, five hundred years – at the most it will last only five hundred years.” And it happened exactly that way. Buddhism lived for only five hundred years, and that life was also not at the climax, not at the optimum. Every day the life was slowing down, every day death was coming closer and closer. What happened?The society. The society has long been male-dominated. To allow women into a religious order was to destroy the old hierarchy, the superiority of man. Even a man like Mahavira, a very revolutionary man, is reported to have said that women cannot enter moksha directly as women. First they will have to be born as men and then… So no woman has entered into the Jaina moksha, into nirvana, directly as a woman. First she has to change her body, take a male shape and form, and then she can enter.Why should Mahavira say this? Society, the politics of the country, the priests and the politicians, they were too male chauvinistic. Some compromise was needed, otherwise they would not allow anything. Mahavira lived naked, but he himself did not allow any women to go naked because the society was not ready to accept even him in his nudity. By and by people accepted him, grudgingly, reluctantly, but to accept the idea that women could go naked would have been too much.And because Mahavira said, “Unless you leave everything – even clothes – unless you are as innocent as a child, as you were on the first day you were born, you cannot enter into my kingdom of God,” he had to say that women could not enter directly. If he had said that women could enter directly then a few courageous women would have come forward and would have thrown off their clothes also, would have become naked. Just to avoid nude women he had to make a very false statement, untrue. And I know he knew that it was untrue – I know because I make many untrue statements.But we have to exist in a society, in a particular state, in a particular confused state, in a particular neurotic state. If you live with mad people you have to make a few compromises. If you live with mad people at least you have to pretend that you are also mad.Narendra is here. His father went mad thirty or forty years ago. He escaped from the house. After a few months he was caught in Agra and put into jail with mad people all around. There was a special jail in Lahore, only for mad people. He said that for nine months everything went okay because he was also mad.After nine months, just by accident, he drank a whole jug of phenol – a mad man, he found it in the bathroom and he drank it. That made him vomit, gave him nausea, diarrhea. Because of that diarrhea he was throwing things out for fifteen days continuously, and his madness also disappeared. It helped, it helped like a catharsis. When his madness disappeared then the real problem began, because he was among mad people.Now for the first time he became aware of where he was – somebody was pulling his leg, somebody was hitting him on his head, and people were talking and dancing. And he was no longer mad. Those three months when he was not mad and was living with mad people, were the most painful; they were deep anguish and anxiety. He couldn’t sleep.And he would go to the authorities and he would say, “Now let me out because I am no longer mad!” And they wouldn’t listen because every mad person says that – that he is no longer mad. So that was not proof. He had to complete his sentence of one year.He told me that he could never forget those three months; they were a continuous nightmare. But for nine months he was perfectly happy because he was also mad.You cannot conceive of what happens to a person when he becomes a Buddha or a Baal Shem in a country, in a world, which is absolutely mad. He is no longer mad, but he has to live with you, he has to follow your laws, otherwise you will kill him. He has to make compromises. Of course he cannot hope that you will make compromises with him. You are not in a state in which you can think. But he can think. Only the higher can make compromises with the lower, only the greater can make compromises with the lower, only the wise person can make compromises with stupid people.So it happened that women have never been accepted. It is only just in this century, very recently, that women are coming out of the dark night of the past history.I have heard:It happened that when Golda Meir was Prime Minister of Israel, Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India, went to Israel. And when Indira Gandhi visited Israel she was welcomed by Golda Meir.After seeing all the historical sights, Mrs. Gandhi said, “I would like to visit a synagogue.”“By all means,” answered the Israeli Prime Minister.Two weeks later, Mrs. Gandhi stood before her cabinet.“What did you learn in Israel?” asked one of the members.“Many things,” answered the Indian Prime Minister. “But most of all I learned that in Israeli synagogues the men pray on the first floor and the prime ministers worship in the balcony.”Two women, but she thought that prime ministers worship in the balcony and men on the floor. Once a thing settles it is very difficult to change it, even for a prime minister. Even for a prime minister it is difficult to change the traditional way.The Hasids were a wave; but rather than destroying the whole movement they chose to go with the society and its rules and its regulations. At least let the message reach to men. If it cannot reach to women right now, later on it will – but at least let the message be rooted on the earth.I exist here in a very alien and strange world. I would like to give you many things, but I cannot because you yourself will resist. I would like to make you aware of many things in your being, but you will be against me. I have to go very slowly, I have to be very roundabout; it cannot be done directly.Just see: I have done what the questioner was inquiring about in relation to Hasidism. I have done it. In my community, men and women are no longer separate. That’s why Indians have stopped coming to my ashram. They cannot come. When they used to come, their questions were more or less all concerned about what type of ashram this was – men and women mixing and meeting, holding each other’s hands, going together? Even after meditations hugging, kissing each other? What type of things were these? This is not good.They used to come to me and say, “This is not good, this should not be allowed. Osho, you should interfere.” I never interfered because to me there is nothing wrong – man and woman should not be made in any way distinct. They are not separate, nobody is higher and nobody is lower. They are different but equal. Difference is beautiful, it has to be there. The difference has to be enhanced, but the equality has to be saved. And to me, love is a way toward godliness.I didn’t listen to them. By and by they disappeared. Now only very courageous Indians can enter here. Now only a few Indians can enter here, those who have no repressed mind in them, who are post-Freudians – only they can enter here. But India as a whole is pre-Freudian. Freud is still unknown in India. Freud has not yet entered into the Indian soul.But I have done it. And I am a Hasid, so you can forgive the old Hasids. Time was not ripe at that time; even now it is very difficult. I have to encounter difficulties every day; for every small thing there are difficulties. Those difficulties could be avoided if I behaved in an orthodox way. I cannot behave in an orthodox way – because then there is no point in my being here, then I could not deliver the message to you – and I cannot be absolutely revolutionary because then there would be no possibility of something happening between you and me.And I am not in any way interested in being a martyr because that too seems to me to be a sort of masochism. People who are always seeking to become martyrs are not really aware of what they are doing – they are seeking suicide. I am not a martyr. I love life, I love all that is implied in life, and the original Hasid masters were as much in love with life as I am. That’s why I have chosen to talk about them. When I choose to talk about some path, I choose it only because that path appeals to me tremendously.The Hasids were not people who wanted to become political revolutionaries. They were not reformists. They were not trying to reform the society; they were trying to bring a mutation to the individual soul. And they had to exist in the society. Remember that always.But then what happens whenever a tradition gets settled? Now Hasidism is a settled tradition, now it itself has become an orthodoxy. Now the time is ripe. If the community exists in New York – a Hasidic community exists in New York – now the time is ripe, but now they themselves have become orthodox. They have their own tradition, they cannot go against Baal Shem. And these people who are now Hasids are not really masters, they are simply followers of the followers of the followers.You are here with me. You are face to face with something original. When you tell it to somebody else it will not be the original. You have heard it from me, then you will tell it to somebody else and much of it is lost – and then that person goes to somebody else and delivers the message. Again much is lost. Within a few years, within a few transfers, the truth is completely destroyed, only lies are left. And again a revolutionary movement becomes an orthodox tradition.The second question:Osho,Can't you do it for me? Can't you cut my head off?Because I can't drop it. I know that because I have tried.I can do that but there will be much trouble. Let me tell you an anecdote:St. Peter returned to the new arrival waiting impatiently outside the gates. “I can’t find your name,” he reported. “Would you please spell it for me?” The man did so, and St. Peter left to check his reservation lists again. In a few moments he returned, “Say, you are not due for ten years. Who is your doctor?”If I cut your head off, then St. Peter will ask you, “You are not due for many lives. Who is your guru?”It cannot be done by another. It is not something that can be done from the outside. In fact you also cannot do it. You have to grow into it. It is not something that you can do or force; it comes through deeper understanding.The dropping of the head is one of the most difficult things because you are identified with the head. You are the head! Your thoughts, your ideologies, your religion, your politics, your scriptures, your knowledge, your identity – everything is in your head. How can you drop it? Just think of dropping the head – then who are you? Without the head you are nobody.You have to grow into understanding. When you can grow a new head above this head, only then can you drop this head. That’s the whole effort of meditation – to help you grow a new head, a new head which does not need thoughts, does not need ideologies; which is pure awareness and enough unto itself; which needs no external influence to live; which lives from its own innermost core. When you have grown a new head, the old will be dropped very easily. It will drop on its own accord.If I force anything upon you, you will resist it, you will become afraid, you will be scared. And nobody wants to die. It is a great art to be learned.I have heard:It was the day of the hanging, and as Mulla Nasruddin was led to the foot of the steps of the scaffold, he suddenly stopped and refused to walk another step.“Let us go,” the guard said impatiently. “What is the matter?”“Somehow,” said Nasruddin, “those steps look mighty rickety. They just don’t look safe enough to walk up.”He is going to be hanged, but those steps look “mighty rickety” – not safe enough to walk on! Even at the moment of death a person goes on clinging – to the very end. Nobody wants to die, and unless you learn to die you will never be able to live, you will never be able to know what life is. A person who is able to die is a person who is able to live, because life and death are two aspects of the same coin. You can choose both or you can drop both, but they both come together in one parcel, they are not different things.Once you are afraid of death you are bound to be afraid of life. That’s why I am talking about this Hasidic approach. The whole approach consists of methods, ways and means of how to die – the art of dying is the art of living also. Dying as an ego is being born as a non-ego; dying as a part is being born as a whole; dying as man is a basic step toward being born as a god.But death is difficult, very difficult. Have you watched it? Except man, no animal can commit suicide. It is not possible for any animal even to think about committing suicide. Have you thought about it? Have you heard of any tree committing suicide, any animal committing suicide? No, only man, man’s intelligence, can make it possible that a man can commit suicide.And I am not talking about ordinary suicide – because that is not really suicide, you simply change the body – I am talking of the ultimate suicide. Once you die the way I am teaching you to die, you will never be born again in life. You will disappear into the cosmos, you will not have any form anymore, you will become the formless.I have heard:The man was charged with trespassing on the farmer’s property and shooting quail. The Counsel for Defense tried to confuse the farmer.“Now,” he asked, “are you prepared to swear that this man shot your quail?”“I didn’t say he shot them,” was the reply. “I said I suspected him of doing it.”“Ah, now we are coming to it. What made you suspect this man?”“Well,” replied the farmer, “firstly, I caught him on my land with a shotgun. Secondly, I heard a gun go off and saw some quail fall. Thirdly, I found four quail in his pocket, and you can’t tell me them birds just flew in there and committed suicide.”Only man is capable of committing suicide. That is the glory of man. Only man can be capable enough to think that life is not worth living, only man is capable enough to reflect that this life is simply futile. Ordinarily when people commit suicide, they don’t do it because they have understood life’s futility, they do it only because they have understood this life’s futility – and they are hoping that in another life somewhere else things will be better.The spiritual suicide means that a man has come to understand that not only this life is futile, but life as such is futile. Then he starts thinking of how to get rid of being born again and again, how to get rid of getting into the tunnel of the body and of being confined and encaged; then he starts thinking of how to remain absolutely free without any form. This is what moksha is, this is what liberation is – or you can call it salvation.A man can never be happy in the body because it is such a confinement. All around are walls; you are forced into a prison. It does not look like a prison because the prison walks with you – wherever you go it goes with you, so you don’t feel that it is like a prison. Once you have known a life without the body, once you have become capable of getting out of the body – even for a single split moment – then you will see how you are confined, how you are imprisoned.The body is a bondage, the mind is a bondage, but you have to understand, I cannot force you free. Remember one thing: you can be forced into bondage from the outside, but you cannot be forced into freedom from the outside. Somebody can force you into a prison cell, that can be done, but nobody can take you out of a prison cell. If you want to remain in a prison cell, you will find some other prison cell somewhere else. You may escape from one prison, but you will get into another – from the frying pan into the fire. You can easily change your prisons, but that doesn’t make any difference. That’s what everybody has been doing for millennia. Each life you have been in a prison – sometimes a man, sometimes a woman, sometimes black, sometimes white, sometimes Indian, sometimes Chinese, sometimes American. You have moved in all the forms possible.When people come to me and I look into them, it is a surprise in how many forms they have moved in, how many bodies, how many shapes they have lived in, how many names and religions and countries… And still they are not fed up. And they go on repeating the old circle again and again.Remember one thing more. Just as I said to you that suicide is absolutely human, no animal commits it, the same is true about boredom. Boredom is also absolutely human. A buffalo is never bored, a donkey is never bored – only man, only a highly evolved consciousness. If you are not bored with your life, it simply shows that you live in a very low state of consciousness.A Buddha is bored, a Jesus is bored, a Mahavira is bored – bored to death! Just repetition all around and nothing else. Out of boredom comes renunciation. A man who is bored with the world becomes a sannyasin. The search is not for another world, it is for an end of the search. It is suicide, total, ultimate.The third question:Osho,Listening to you I feel as if I am dying, as if you are continuously pushing me farther away. You are my peak, my Everest, so beautiful and so far away and yet incredibly close. Is there anything I can do to open myself to you?My whole purpose here is to push you toward death, to push you into the abyss of the unknown, to push you into a zero experience. We in India call it samadhi. It is a zero experience – where in a way you are and in a way you are not; where you are empty of all content, just the container has remained; where all writing from the book has disappeared, just the book remains, empty. That’s the real Bible, the real Veda. When all writing has disappeared and the book is absolutely empty; when all the content, all the thoughts, mind, emotions, desires, have disappeared and there is only a pure consciousness, empty of all content – this is what I call the abyss.You say, “You are my peak, my Everest…” Yes, that’s true, but the peak will come only later on. First comes the abyss. I am also your abyss. Let me tell you one very, very beautiful anecdote. Listen to it very attentively, and later on when you are sitting silently at home, meditate over it.A man went to a ranch to buy a horse, pointed at one and said, “My, that’s a beautiful pony right there. What kind is it?”“That’s a palomino,” said the rancher.“Well, any friend of yours is a friend of mine. I would like to buy that pony,” said the man.The rancher replied, “I gotta tell you sir, it was owned by a preacher-man. If you want the horse to move you say, ‘Good Lord’; if you want the horse to stop you gotta say, ‘Amen.’”“Let me try that horse,” said the buyer.He mounted and said, “Good Lord.” The horse promptly moved out and was soon galloping up in the mountains. The man was yelling, “Good Lord! Good Lord!” and the horse was really moving. Suddenly he came to the end of a cliff, and panic-stricken he yelled, “Whoa! Whoa!” That didn’t work and then he remembered and said, “Amen!” The horse stopped right on the end of the cliff.And wiping his brow with relief, the man said, “Good Lord!”You ask, “Is there anything I can do to open myself to you?” Say “Good Lord” and then all else will happen on its own accord.The fourth question:Osho,I love every time I hear you speak, but my favorite thing I ever heard you say was the other day when you asked us if we could hear you.I would like to ask it every day, every moment. Can you hear me? But just out of politeness I don’t ask it. That day the mike failed and I could gather courage. But remember, you lied to me. When I said, “Can you hear me?” you said, “No.” You lied. If you had not heard my question how could you answer it? Again because of politeness I remained quiet. I had to.A young lady went to Mulla Nasruddin for advice. She said to the Mulla, “Should I marry a fellow who lies to me?”“Yes, unless you want to remain unmarried forever,” said Nasruddin.I have to accept you liars as my disciples because there is no other way, unless I decide to remain a master without disciples. You lied to me absolutely that moment. You had heard me, you immediately said, “No.” Not only did you like my asking you, “Can you hear me,” I also loved your answer.The fifth question:Osho,You call the Hasidim a joyous, enlightened community, yet the Hasidism of modern New York appears to be so rigid, austere, dogmatic and contemptuous of both goyim and other Jews.How did this transformation take place?It always takes place.Truth cannot remain long on the earth; it comes and it disappears. If you are available it hits you, and then it is gone. You cannot hold it on the earth. The earth is so false and people are so much engrossed in their lies that truth cannot remain here long. Whenever a buddha walks on the earth, truth walks for a few moments. When the buddha is gone, truth also disappears. Only the footprints are left and you go on worshipping the footprints. The footprints are not the buddha, and the words uttered by the buddha are just mere words. When you repeat them they are just words, they mean nothing.It was Buddha who was the meaning behind the words. You can repeat exactly the same words, but they will not mean the same, because the person behind the words is no longer the same.The Hasidim were a joyous community when Baal Shem was there. When he walked on the earth, the Hasidim were one of the most beautiful communities on the earth – they flowered. A master is needed, a living master is needed. Only in a living master’s presence does your innermost bud open, blossom.After Baal Shem disappeared, there was only a tradition left. What he said, what he did, the legends about him, are many. And then people go on repeating them, people go on imitating them. These people are bound to be false.But this is natural, so don’t be angry at them. Once I am gone from here this community will not be so joyous, cannot be. It is just natural. Then the words will be there and people will be repeating them and they will try to follow them religiously, but there will be effort. Right now there is no effort. You are simply flowing with me. Right now it is spontaneous, right now it is a love affair. Then it will be a sort of duty to be fulfilled. You will feel an obligation.You will remember me. You will want to live the same way, but something very vital will be missing – the life will be missing. Whenever a master departs only a dead corpse of his teaching remains.So always seek a living master. A dead master is of no use – because a dead master means nothing but a dead teaching. Always seek a living master. But it is very difficult because people’s minds are very slow. By the time you come to recognize somebody as a master he is gone. This is the difficulty. By the time you recognize that Jesus is a master, Jesus is no longer there. Then there are only Christians, then there are churches, then there are the pope and the priest, and they catch hold of you.Yes, Hasidism has become orthodox but the Hasids were not. They were a living religion, a very living river.I have heard:A rabidly anti-Catholic Jew was on his deathbed. All the family were gathered round as he gasped, “Fetch a priest.”They were all thunder-struck, but his wife said to their eldest son, “Go on, it is his dying wish. Fetch a priest.” So the son fetched a Catholic priest, who received the old man into the Church, gave him the last rites and left.The eldest boy, with tears in his eyes, whispered to his father, “Dad, all your life you have brought us up to believe that the Church of Rome is the anti-Christ. How come in your last moments you can bring yourself to join them? You are a Jew, and you have always believed in the Judaic tradition. How can you do this at the last moment?”And with his last breath the old man muttered, “Another one of the bastards dead.”He converted himself to be a Catholic so that a Catholic dies in the world. “Another one of the bastards dead!”People always become that way because people live through the mind. Mind is a tradition.I have heard:“Is your grandfather a religious man?” asked the young co-ed of her date.“He’s so orthodox,” replied the boy, “that when he plays chess he doesn’t use bishops, he uses rabbis!”The ego functions in a very traditional way. To be revolutionary, one needs to be beyond the ego. And it is not that you can do it once and forever, you have to do it every moment again and again because the ego goes on closing in on you, it goes on caving in on you. Each moment that you pass through, whatsoever you have lived, whatsoever you have experienced, becomes your ego. You have to discard it. Renunciation is not once and for all. You have to renounce every moment; whatsoever is gathered you have to renounce it, only then renunciation remains a revolution. And not only do you have to renounce ordinary things of the world, you have to renounce ordinary ideologies also – Jewish, Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan. You have to renounce thoughts so that you can remain in a pure mirrorlike reflection. Then your consciousness can remain undisturbed, uncolored by any thought, you can see into things directly and your consciousness is not distracted or distorted by any prejudice.Once a tradition settles, once a religion is no longer revolutionary, you start interpreting it in your own ways. Then you don’t bother what Buddha means, then you start reading your own thoughts into Buddha’s assertions. Then you don’t bother what Krishna says, you go on reading into the Gita whatsoever you want to read. Then the perversion settles. That’s why I insist again and again: if you can find a living master, be with him – because you cannot distort a living master. You will try! But you cannot distort him because a living master can stop you from distorting his message. But a dead book, a scripture – Holy Bible, Holy Koran, Holy Gita – what can they do? They may be holy, but they are completely dead, you can do whatsoever you want to do with them. And man is very cunning and very clever.When aged Fennessy collapsed on the street, a crowd soon gathered and began making suggestions as to how the old fellow should be revived.Maggie O’Reilly yelled, “Give the poor man some whiskey.”No one paid any attention to her and the crowd continued shouting out suggestions. Finally Fennessy opened one eye, pulled himself up on an elbow, and said weakly, “Will the lot of ye hold your tongues and let Maggie O’Reilly speak?”Whatsoever we want to hear, whatsoever we want, becomes our scripture, becomes our interpretation. People are rigid. So whether they are Hasids or Buddhists or Sufis or Zen Buddhists does not matter – people are rigid, people’s minds are rigid. Wherever they belong they create rigidity there. You can move from being a Hindu and you can become a Christian, or from Christian you can become a Mohammedan, but it will not make much difference because you will remain you. And you will do the same by being a Christian, you will do the same by being a Mohammedan or by being a Hindu. What ideology you believe in does not matter much. The real thing that matters is you, your consciousness, your state of consciousness.You are here with me. Your children, the next generation, will believe in me simply because their father or their mother believed in me. They will not have any direct contact with me, they will simply believe; it will not be a trust, it will be just a mental thing, a formal thing.It happens that sometimes the children come and when the mother takes sannyas, the child also wants to take sannyas. The child does not know what he is doing, not knowing where he is moving; he is just imitating the mother. The mother has come on her own, but the child has come just as a shadow. For the mother I have a totally different meaning, for the child I have no meaning at all. If the mother had gone to another master, the child would have been initiated there. If the mother had become Mohammedan or Christian, the child would have become Mohammedan or Christian.There is no relevance for the child, it is not significant for the child – and it may become part of his ego that he is a sannyasin. Later in his life he may wear orange, may wear a mala, and he will do the formal thing, but he will be as ordinary a mind as there are all over the world. And he will do with his belief what the ordinary mind has always been prone to do: he will become rigid about it, fanatical about it. He will start declaring that here is truth and nowhere else.When you declare that only your belief is true and all else is false, you are not concerned with truth at all. You are simply concerned with the assertion of your ego. It is an ego declaration, “My country has to be right, my religion has to be right. Wrong or right, my country has to be right, my religion has to be right – because it is my religion.”Deep down it is my “I” that has to be right.The sixth question:Osho,Last night, in the early morning, I saw two dreams one after another. In one, you were sitting in a room in complete silence. I entered the room very slowly, came closer and closer to you, bowed down, touched your feet. You placed your hands on my head. I felt very blissful, ecstatic, very, very light. In the other dream there was a beautiful room, very cool, soothing, blue-colored. You were lying on the bed. Laxmi, some other disciples and myself were sitting there – very few disciples were there. Laxmi beckoned to me to come closer near your bed. You were indicating something not indicated before. Your fingers were making very different gestures. It looked as if you were giving your final message. I could even hear it very clearly and distinctly. It was, “Drink me, eat me, breathe me. Don't leave me undrunk, uneaten, unbreathed.” And we all were weeping.There you missed. You should have been laughing. Correct your dream. Next time don’t commit that mistake.The seventh question:Osho,“Shall the day of parting be the day of gathering? And shall it be said that my eve was in truth my dawn? Shall my heart become a tree, heavy-laden with fruit that I may gather and give unto them? Am I a harp that the hand of the Mighty may touch me, or a flute that his breath may pass through me? A seeker of silences am I, and what treasure have I found in silences that I may dispense with confidence?”Yes, a million, million times, yes. Let this be your guide. You just allow the divine and he will start singing through your flute. Just don’t hinder his way.Only one thing is needed – don’t hinder existence. It is not a question of God playing on your flute or not. It is only a question of whether you will allow him or not. If you allow him, this very moment the song begins. If you don’t allow him and you go on praying, “Play on my flute,” then it is never going to begin.Man has nothing else to do but surrender – in deep trust, in deep love. Don’t be a doer, just surrender. Let there be a let-go. And whatsoever you have asked, I say yes, a million, million times, yes.The eighth question:Osho,I was a sad child, a frightened adolescent, and an angry young man. Yet all my life I have felt deep within that everything was funny, absurd, ridiculous. When I was in the seminary some years ago, a friend told me that we have such a limited capacity for divine things that if God told us a joke, we would die laughing. I remember my friend's statement because since coming to Pune I have felt a great belly-laugh welling up inside of me. I feel that God has told me a joke, and the punch-line is slowly dawning on me. I am a little afraid that I will not catch it fully until I have left Pune in December, and then I will laugh so loud and hard that you will be able to hear me all the way from Texas. Please tell me, will I survive this joke?It is impossible to survive this joke. The laughter that I am teaching to you is something that is going to destroy you completely. The laughter that I am teaching to you is very destructive, it is a crucifixion. But only after this destruction is there creation. Only out of chaos are stars born and only after crucifixion is there resurrection.No, you will not be able to survive this laughter. If you really allow it, you will be drowned by it, you will disappear and only laughter will remain. If you laugh then the laughter is not total. When there is only laughter and you are not, then it is total. And only then have you heard the joke that God is telling.Yes, this whole cosmos is a joke; Hindus call it leela. It is a joke, it is a play. And the day that you understand then you start laughing, and that laughing never stops. It goes on and on. It spreads all over the cosmos.Laughter is prayer. If you can laugh you have learned how to pray. Don’t be serious; a serious person can never be religious. Only a person who can laugh, not only at others but at himself also, can be religious. A person who can laugh absolutely, who sees the whole ridiculousness and the whole game of life, becomes enlightened in that laughter.No. You ask: “Please tell me, will I survive this joke?” No, if you have heard the joke you cannot survive. If you have not heard, then it is very unfortunate because you will survive.The last question and the most important:Osho,Why do Jews have long noses?Now don’t be afraid. I am not going to give you a long talk, a ninety-minute talk, no, because I know the answer. When you don’t know the answer you have to give a very long answer. You see, that’s why I go on talking so long. When I don’t know the answer I have to talk very long. In my talking you forget your question. But when I know the answer, then there is no need. And I know the answer. I happen to know the answer.How I came upon the answer – about that I must tell you something.One day – just a few days ago – Vivek asked me this question early in the morning: “Why do Jews have long noses?” I settled in my chair, in my posture. I made my towel comfortable, looked at the clock and I was just going to start a great discourse on the philosophy and the physiology of the Jewish nose. But then she became apprehensive and afraid. Naturally – because once I take off, then it takes ninety minutes at least for me to land again on the earth. So she said, “Stop! Stop! I happen to know the answer! You need not give me the answer!”I was very shocked because I was already on the way. In a hurried way she said, “Because the air is free!”It is a beauty. I loved it. It explains everything. The Jews have long noses because the air is free!Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Rabbi Bunam used to tell young menwho came to him for the first timethe story of Rabbi Eisik, son of Rabbi Yekel in Cracow.After many years of great poverty,which had never shaken his faith in God,he dreamed that someone bade him look for treasureunder the bridge which leads to the king’s palace in Prague.When the dream recurred the third time he set out for Prague. But the bridge was guarded day and nightand he did not dare start digging.Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morningand kept walking around it until evening.Finally, the captain of the guards,who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something or waiting for someone.Rabbi Eisik told him of the dreamwhich had brought him from a faraway country.The captain laughed, “And so to please your dream you wore out your shoes to come here! You poor fellow.And as far as having faith in dreams, if I had had it I should have had to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew – Eisik, son of Yekel!That’s what the dream told me. And imagine what it would have been like; one half of the Jews over there are called Eisik, and the other half Yekel!” And he laughed again.Rabbi Eisik bowed, traveled home,dug up the treasure from under his stove,and built the house of prayer which is called Reb Eisik’s Shul.Rabbi Bunam used to add,“Take this story to heart and make what it says your own. There is something you cannot find anywhere in the world, not even at the zaddik’s,and there is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.”Life is a search, a constant search, a desperate search, a hopeless search, a search for something one knows not what. There is a deep urge to seek, but one knows not what one is seeking.And there is a state of mind in which whatsoever you get is not going to give you any satisfaction. Frustration seems to be the destiny of humanity, because whatsoever you get becomes meaningless the very moment you have got it. You start searching again.The search continues whether you get anything or not. It seems irrelevant what you have got, what you have not got – the search continues anyway. The poor are searching, the rich are searching, the ill are searching, the well are searching, the powerful are searching, the powerless are searching, the stupid are searching, the wise are searching – and nobody knows exactly what.This very search – what this search is and why it is there – has to be understood. It seems that there is a gap in the human being, in the human mind; in the very structure of the human consciousness there seems to be a hole, a black hole. You go on throwing things into it, and they go on disappearing. Nothing seems to make it full, nothing seems to help toward fulfillment. It is a very feverish search. You seek it in this world, you seek it in the other world; sometimes you seek it in money, in power, in prestige, and sometimes you seek it as God, bliss, love, meditation, prayer – but the search continues. It seems that man is ill with search.The search does not allow you to be here and now because the search always leads you somewhere else. The search is a project, the search is a desire: that somewhere else is what is needed, that it exists, but it exists somewhere else, not here where you are. It certainly exists, but not in this moment of time, not now – and somewhere else. It exists “then-there”, never here-now. It goes on nagging you; it goes on pulling you, pushing you, it goes on throwing you into more and more madness; it drives you crazy and it is never fulfilled.I have heard about a very great Sufi mystic woman, Rabiya al-Adabiya:One evening people found her sitting on the road searching for something. She was an old woman, her eyes were weak and it was difficult for her to see. So the neighbors came to help her. They asked, “What are you searching for?”Rabiya said, “That question is irrelevant, I am searching. If you can help me, help.”They laughed and said, “Rabiya, have you gone mad? You say our question is irrelevant, but if we don’t know what you are searching for, how can we help?”Rabiya said, “Okay. Just to satisfy you, I am searching for my needle, I have lost my needle.”They started helping her – but immediately they became aware of the fact that the road is very big and a needle is a very tiny thing. So they asked Rabiya, “Please tell us where you lost it – the exact, precise place. Otherwise it is difficult. The road is big and we can go on searching and searching forever. Where did you lose it?”Rabiya said, “Again you ask an irrelevant question. How is it concerned with my search?”They stopped. They said, “You have certainly gone crazy!”Rabiya said, “Okay. Just to satisfy you, I have lost it in my house.”They laughed, they asked, “Then why are you searching here?”And Rabiya is reported to have said, “Because here there is light and there is no light inside.”The sun was setting and there was a little light still left on the road.This parable is very significant. Have you ever asked yourself what you are searching for? Have you ever made it a point of deep meditation to know what you are searching for? No. Even if in some vague moment, dreamy moment, you have some inkling of what you are searching for, it is never precise, it is never exact. You have not yet defined it.If you try to define it, the more it becomes defined the more you will feel that there is no need to search for it. The search can continue only in a state of vagueness, in a state of dream; when things are not clear you simply go on searching, pulled by some inner urge, pushed by some inner urgency. One thing you do know: you need to search. This is an inner need. But you don’t know what you are seeking.And unless you know what you are seeking, how can you find it? It is vague – you think it is in money, power, prestige, respectability. But then you see people who are respectable, people who are powerful – they are also seeking. Then you see people who are tremendously rich – they are also seeking. To the very end of their life they are seeking. So richness is not going to help, power is not going to help. The search continues in spite of what you have.The search must be for something else. These names, these labels – money, power, prestige – these are just to satisfy your mind. They are just to help you feel that you are searching for something. That something is still undefined, a very vague feeling.The first thing for the real seeker, for the seeker who has become a little alert, aware, is to define the search; to formulate a clear-cut concept of it, what it is; to bring it out of the dreaming consciousness; to encounter it in deep alertness, to look into it directly; to face it. Immediately a transformation starts happening. If you start defining your search, you will start losing your interest in the search. The more defined it becomes, the less it is there. Once it is clearly known what it is, suddenly it disappears. It exists only when you are not attentive.Let it be repeated: the search exists only when you are sleepy; the search exists only when you are not aware; the search exists only in your unawareness. The unawareness creates the search.Yes, Rabiya is right. Inside there is no light. And because there is no light and no consciousness inside, of course you go on searching outside – because outside it seems clearer.Our senses are all extrovert. The eyes open outward, the hands move, spread outward, the legs move into the outside, the ears listen to the outside noises, sounds. Whatsoever is available to you is all opening toward the outside; all the five senses move in an extrovert way. You start searching there where you see, feel, touch – the light of the senses falls outside. And the seeker is inside.This dichotomy has to be understood. The seeker is inside, but because the light is outside, the seeker starts moving in an ambitious way, trying to find something outside which will be fulfilling.It is never going to happen. It has never happened. It cannot happen in the nature of things – because, unless you have first sought the seeker, all your search is meaningless. Unless you come to know who you are, all that you seek is futile because you don’t know the seeker. Without knowing the seeker how can you move in the right dimension, in the right direction? It is impossible. The first things should be considered first.So these two things are very important: first, make it absolutely clear to yourself what your object is. Don’t just go on stumbling in darkness. Focus your attention on the object – what you are really searching for. Because sometimes you want one thing and you go on searching for something else, so even if you succeed you will not be fulfilled. Have you seen people who have succeeded? Can you find bigger failures anywhere else? You have heard the proverb that nothing succeeds like success. It is absolutely wrong. I would like to tell you: nothing fails like success. The proverb must have been invented by stupid people. Nothing fails like success.It is said about Alexander the Great that the day he became the world conqueror he closed the doors of his room and started weeping. I don’t know whether it really happened or not, but if he was even a little intelligent it must have happened.His generals were very disturbed. What has happened? They had never seen Alexander weeping. He was not that type of man, he was a great warrior. They had seen him in great difficulties, in situations where life was very much in danger, where death was very imminent, and they had not seen even a tear coming out of his eyes. They had never seen him in any desperate, hopeless moment. What has happened to him now – now when he has succeeded, when he is the world conqueror?They knocked on the door, they went in and they asked, “What has happened to you? Why are you crying like a child?”He said, “Now that I have succeeded, I know it has been a failure. Now I know that I stand in exactly the same place as I used to be in when I started this nonsense of conquering the world. And the point has become clear to me now because there is no other world to conquer anymore – otherwise I could have remained on the journey, I could have started conquering another world. Now there is no other world to conquer, now there is nothing else to do, and suddenly I am thrown to myself.”A successful man is always thrown to himself in the end and then he suffers the tortures of hell because he wasted his whole life. He searched and searched, he staked everything that he had, now he is successful – and his heart is empty and his soul is meaningless and there is no fragrance, there is no benediction.So the first thing is to know exactly what you are seeking. I insist upon it, because the more you focus your eyes on the object of your search, the more the object starts disappearing. When your eyes are absolutely fixed, suddenly there is nothing to seek; immediately your eyes start turning toward yourself. When there is no object for search, when all objects have disappeared, there is emptiness. In that emptiness is conversion, turning in. You suddenly start looking at yourself. Now there is nothing to seek, and a new desire arises to know who this seeker is.If there is something to seek, you are a worldly man; if there is nothing to seek, and the question, “Who is this seeker?” has become important to you, then you are a religious man. This is the way I define the worldly and the religious.If you are still seeking something – maybe in the other life, on the other shore, in heaven, in paradise, in moksha, it makes no difference – you are still a worldly man. If all seeking has stopped and you have suddenly become aware that now there is only one thing to know: “Who is this seeker in me? What is this energy that wants to seek? Who am I?” – then there is a transformation. All values suddenly change. You start moving inward.Then Rabiya is no longer sitting on the road searching for a needle that is lost somewhere in the darkness of one’s own inner soul. Once you have started moving inward… In the beginning it is very dark – Rabiya is right. It is very, very dark because for lives together you have never been inside, your eyes have been focused on the outside world.Have you watched it? Observed? Sometimes when you come in from the road where it is very sunny and the sun is hot and there is bright light – when you suddenly come into the room or into the house it is very dark because the eyes are focused for the outside light, for much light. When there is much light, the eyes shrink. In darkness the eyes have to relax. A bigger aperture is needed in darkness; in light a smaller aperture is enough. That’s how a camera functions and that’s how your eye functions. The camera has been invented along the lines of the human eye.So when you suddenly come from the outside, your own house looks dark. But if you sit a little while, by and by the darkness disappears. There is more light; your eyes are settling.For many lives together you have been outside in the hot sun, in the world, so when you go in you have completely forgotten how to enter and how to readjust your eyes. Meditation is nothing but a readjustment of your vision, a readjustment of your seeing faculty, of your eyes. In India that is what is called the third eye. It is not an eye somewhere; it is a readjustment, a total readjustment of your vision. By and by the darkness is no longer dark; a subtle, suffused light starts being felt.And if you go on looking inside – it takes time – gradually, slowly, you start feeling such a beautiful light inside. But it is not aggressive light; it is not like the sun, it is more like the moon. It is not glaring, it is not dazzling, it is very cool; it is not hot, it is very compassionate, it is very soothing, it is a balm.By and by, once you have got adjusted to the inside light, you will see that you are the very source. The seeker is the sought. Then you will see that the treasure is within you and the whole fault was that you were seeking for it outside. You were seeking for it somewhere outside and it has always been there inside you, it has always been here within you. You were seeking in a wrong direction, that’s all.Everything is available to you as much as it is available to anyone else, as much as it is available to a Buddha, to a Baal Shem, to a Moses, to Mohammed. It is all available to you, you are only looking in the wrong direction. As far as the treasure is concerned you are not poorer than Buddha or Mohammed – no, existence has never created a poor man. It does not happen, it cannot happen – because existence creates you out of its richness. How can it create a poor man? You are its overflowing, you are part of its being, how can you be poor? You are rich, infinitely rich, as rich as existence itself.But you are looking in a wrong direction. The direction is wrong; that’s why you go on missing. And it is not that you will not succeed in life, you can succeed, but still you will be a failure. Nothing is going to satisfy you because nothing can be attained in the outside world which can be comparable to the inner treasure, to the inner light, to the inner peace, to the inner bliss.Now this story. This story is tremendously meaningful.Rabbi Bunam used to tell young menwho came to him for the first time,the story of Rabbi Eisik, son of Rabbi Yekel in Cracow.After many years of great poverty,which had never shaken his faith in God,he dreamed that someone bade him look for treasureunder the bridge which leads to the king’s palace in Prague. When the dream recurred the third time he set out for Prague.But the bridge was guarded day and nightand he did not dare start digging.Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morningand kept walking around it until evening.Finally, the captain of the guards,who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something, or waiting for someone.Rabbi Eisik told him of the dreamwhich had brought him from a faraway country.The captain laughed, “And so to please your dream you wore out your shoes to come here! You poor fellow.And as far as having faith in dreams, if I had had it I should have had to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew – Eisik, son of Yekel!That’s what the dream told me. And imagine what it would have been like; one half of the Jews over there are called Eisik, and the other half Yekel!” And he laughed again.Rabbi Eisik bowed, traveled home,dug up the treasure from under his stove,and built the house of prayer which is called Reb Eisik’s Shul.Rabbi Bunam used to add,“Take this story to heart and make what it says your own. There is something you cannot find anywhere in the world, not even at the zaddik’s,and there is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.”The first thing to be understood about the story is that he dreamed. All desiring is dreaming and all dreaming takes you away from yourself – that is the very nature of the dream.You may be sleeping in Pune and you may dream of Philadelphia. In the morning you will not wake up in Philadelphia, you will wake up in Pune. In a dream you can be anywhere; a dream has a tremendous freedom because it is unreal. In a dream you can be anywhere: on the moon, on Mars. You can choose any planet, it is your game. In a dream you can be anywhere, there is only one place you cannot be – that is where you are.This is the first thing to be understood about the dreaming consciousness. If you are where you are, then the dream cannot exist, because then there is no point in the dream, then there is no meaning in the dream. If you are exactly where you are and you are exactly what you are, then how can the dream exist? The dream can exist only if you go away from you. You may be a poor man and you dream about being an emperor. You may be an ordinary man and you dream about yourself being extraordinary. You walk on the earth and you dream that you fly in the sky. The dream has to be a falsification of reality; the dream has to be something else than reality.In reality there is no dreaming, so those who want to know the real have to stop dreaming.In India we have divided human consciousness into four stages. We call the first stage the ordinary waking consciousness. Right now you are in the ordinary waking consciousness. What is an ordinary waking consciousness? You appear to be awake, but you are not. You are a little bit awake, but that little bit is so small that it doesn’t make much difference.You can walk to your home, you can recognize your wife or your husband, you can drive your car – that little bit is only enough for this. It gives you a sort of efficiency, that’s all. But it is a very small consciousness, exhausted very easily, lost very easily. If somebody insults you it is lost, it is exhausted. If somebody insults you, you become angry, you are no longer conscious. That’s why after anger many people say, “Why did I do it? How did I do it? How could I do it? It happened in spite of me.” Yes, they are right – it happened in spite of you because you lost your consciousness. In anger, in violent rage, people are possessed; they do things they would never do if they were a little aware. They can kill, they can destroy; they can even destroy themselves.The ordinary waking consciousness is only “waking” for name’s sake – deep down dreams continue. Just a small tip of the iceberg is alert – the whole thing is underneath, in darkness. Watch it sometimes. Just anywhere close your eyes and look within: you will see dreams floating like clouds surrounding you. You can sit on a chair any moment of the day, close your eyes, relax, and suddenly you see that the dreams have started. In fact they have not started, they were continuing – just as during the day stars disappear from the sky. They don’t really disappear, they are there, but because of the light of the sun you don’t see them. If you go into a deep well, a very deep, dark well, from the dark well you can look at the sky and you will be able to recognize a few stars, even at midday. The stars are there; when night comes they don’t reappear, they have always been there, all twenty-four hours. They don’t go anywhere, the sunlight just hides them.Exactly the same is the case with your dreaming: it is just below the surface, it continues just underground. On the top of it is a little layer of awareness, underneath are a thousand and one dreams. Close your eyes any time and you will find yourself dreaming.That’s why people are in great difficulty when they start meditating. They come to me and they say, “This is something funny, strange. We never thought that there were so many thoughts.” They have never closed their eyes, they have never sat in a relaxed posture, they have never gone in to see what was happening there because they were too engaged in the outside world, they were too occupied. Because of that occupation they never became aware of this constant activity inside.In India, the ordinary waking consciousness is called the first state. The second state is that of dreaming. Any time you close your eyes you are in it. At night you are continuously in it, almost continuously. Whether you remember your dreams in the morning or not is not of much importance, you go on dreaming. There are at least eight cycles of dreaming during the night. One cycle continues for many minutes – fifteen, twenty minutes, then there is a gap, then there is another cycle, then there is a gap, then again there is a cycle. Throughout the whole night you are continuously dreaming and dreaming and dreaming. This is the second state of consciousness.This parable is concerned with the second state of consciousness. Ordinarily all desires exist in the second state of consciousness, the dreaming state. Desire is a dream, and to work for a dream is doomed from the very beginning because a dream can never become real. Even if you sometimes feel it has become almost real, it never becomes real – a dream by nature is empty. It has no substance in it.The third state is sleep, deep sleep, sushupti. In it all dreaming disappears – but all consciousness also. While you are awake there is a little awareness, very little; when you are dreaming, even that little awareness disappears. But still there is an iota of awareness – that’s why you can remember in the morning that you had a dream, such and such a dream. But in deep sleep even that disappears. It is as if you have completely disappeared. Nothing remains. A nothingness surrounds you.These are the three ordinary states. The fourth state is called turiya. The fourth is simply called “the fourth.” Turiya means the fourth. The fourth state is that of a buddha. It is almost like dreamless sleep, with one difference – that difference is very great. It is as peaceful as deep sleep, as without dreams as deep sleep, but it is absolutely alert, aware.Krishna says in his Gita that a real yogi never sleeps. That does not mean that a real yogi simply sits awake in his room the whole night. There are a few foolish people who are doing that. That a real yogi never sleeps means that while he is asleep he remains aware, alert.Ananda lived with Buddha for forty years. One day, he asked Buddha, “One thing surprises me very much; I am intrigued. You will have to answer me. This is just out of curiosity, but I cannot contain it anymore. When you sleep at night I have watched you many times, for hours together, and you sleep in such a way that it seems as if you are awake. You sleep in such a graceful way; your face, your body – everything is so graceful. I have seen many other people sleeping, and they start mumbling, their face goes through contortions, their body loses all grace, their face becomes ugly, they don’t look beautiful anymore…” All beauty has to be managed, controlled, practiced; in deep sleep it all disappears.“And, one thing more,” Ananda said. “You never change your posture, you remain in the same posture. Wherever you put your hand in the beginning, you keep it there the whole night. You never change it. It seems that deep down you are keeping absolutely alert.”Buddha said, “You are right. That happens when meditation is perfect.”Then awareness penetrates your being so deeply that you are aware in all of the four states. When you are aware in all four states then dreaming absolutely disappears, because in an alert mind a dream cannot exist. And the ordinary waking state becomes an extraordinary waking state – what Gurdjieff calls self-remembering. One remembers oneself absolutely, each moment. There is no gap. The remembrance is a continuity. One becomes a luminous being.And deep sleep is there, but its quality changes completely. The body is asleep, but the soul is awake and alert, watchful. The whole body is deep in darkness, but the lamp of inner consciousness burns bright.This story says:After many years of great poverty,which had never shaken his faith in God,he dreamed that someone bade him look for treasureunder the bridge which leads to the king’s palace in Prague.After many years of great poverty… it is natural that one should start dreaming about treasures. We always dream about that which we don’t have. Fast for one day and in the night you will dream about food. Try to force celibacy upon yourself and your dreams will become sexual, they will have a quality of sexuality.That’s why psychoanalysis says that the analysis of dreams is of tremendous import, because it shows what you are repressing. Your dream becomes a symbolic indication of the repressed content of your mind. If a person continuously dreams about food, about feasts, that simply shows that the person is starving himself. Jaina monks always dream about food – they may say so, they may not. If you fast too much you are bound to dream about food. That’s why many religious saints become so afraid of falling asleep.Even Mahatma Gandhi was very afraid to go into sleep. He was trying to reduce it to as little as possible. Religious people make it a point to try not to sleep for too long – four hours, five hours at the most. Three is the ideal. Why? Because once your need of bodily rest is complete your mind starts weaving and spinning dreams, and immediately the mind brings up things which you have been repressing. Mahatma Gandhi said, “I have become a celibate as far as my waking consciousness is concerned, but in my dreams I am not a celibate.” He was a true man in a sense – truer than other so-called saints. At least he accepted that in his dreams he was not yet celibate.But unless you are celibate in your dreams you are not yet celibate, because the dream reveals whatsoever you are repressing during the day. The dream simply brings it back to your consciousness. Dream is a language, a communication from the unconscious which is saying, “Please don’t do this to me. It is impossible to tolerate. Stop this nonsense. You are destroying my natural spontaneity. Allow me, allow whatsoever is potential in me to flower.”When a person represses nothing, dreams disappear. So a buddha never dreams. If your meditation goes deep you will immediately find that your dreams are becoming fewer and fewer and fewer. The day your dreams completely disappear and you attain to clarity in your sleep – no clouds, no smoke, no thoughts; simple, silent sleep, without any interference of dreams – that day you have become a buddha, then your meditation has come to fruition.Psychoanalysis insists that dreams have to be understood because man is very cunning: he can deceive while he is awake, but he cannot deceive when he is in a dream. A dream is truer. Look at the irony. A dream is truer about you than your so-called waking consciousness. Man has become so false, man has become so fake that the waking consciousness cannot be relied upon; you have corrupted it too much.A psychoanalyst immediately goes into your dreams, he wants to know about your dreams, he does not want to know about your religion, he does not want to know about your philosophy of life, he does not want to know whether you are a Hindu or a Christian, an Indian or an American – that is all nonsense. He wants to know what your dreams are. Look at the irony – your dreams have become so real that your reality is less real than your dreams. You are living such a pseudo-life, inauthentic, false, that the psychoanalyst has to go to your dreams to find a few glimpses of truth. Only your dreams are still beyond your control.There are also people who try to control dreams. In the East methods have been invented to control dreams. That means you are not even allowing the unconscious to convey any message to you. You can do that too. You can cultivate dreams if you work hard. You can start planning your dreams. You can give a story to your own unconscious to unfold in your dreams. If you do it consistently, every day, by and by you will be able to corrupt the unconscious.For example, once a devotee of Krishna stayed with me. He said, “I always dream of Krishna.”I asked him, “How do you manage it? A dream is not something that you can manage. What method have you tried?”He said, “A simple method which my guru gave to me. Every night when I go to sleep I go on thinking and thinking about Krishna, fantasizing. After three years of continuously practicing fantasy while falling asleep, one day it happened. Whatsoever I had fantasized continued in my dream and it became my dream. Since then I have been having tremendously religious dreams.”I said, “You just go into the details – because you may have managed the story, but the unconscious will be sending messages in the story itself. The unconscious can use your story to send its messages.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “You simply give me the content of your dream, the detailed content.”And he started telling me. It was absolutely sexual. Krishna was his lover and he had become a male gopi, a boyfriend. The content was homosexual. And they were dancing together and kissing and hugging and loving each other.I said, “You have simply changed the figure, but the content still remains. And my understanding is that you are a homosexual.”He was very much disturbed and shocked. He said, “What do you mean? How have you come to know about it?”I told him, “Your dream is a clear message.”He started weeping and crying. He said, “From my childhood I was never attracted to women, I was always attracted to men. And I thought it was good because women would distract me from my path.”The homosexual content had entered into his religious story. Krishna was nothing but a homosexual partner. He became very disturbed and that very night the dream disappeared and a purely homosexual dream entered. He said, “What have you done to me?”I said, “I have not done anything. I have simply made your message clear to you. You can fabricate a story, but that doesn’t matter, the inner content remains the same.”Just see. Go to a person who is not religious. You will find nude pictures of women in Indian homes, in bachelors’ homes. These people are not religious. But go to a religious man. He may have beautiful pictures of gods and goddesses, but just look at the content, at the detail of it. Whether it is a film actress or whether it is a goddess makes no difference. Just look at the breasts! They will indicate exactly the same content. The story is different, somebody has a picture of a goddess on his wall and somebody has Elizabeth Taylor or somebody else’s picture, or Sophia Loren – but it makes no difference. Whether you call her a goddess or you call her a film actress makes no difference. Look at the detail and you will see what that man is hankering after.You can manipulate your dreams, you can destroy the purity of your unconscious’s messages, but still the unconscious will go on giving you messages. It has to. It has to scream to you because you are destroying your own nature, your own spontaneity.This dream happened: After many years of great poverty, which had never shaken his faith in God, he dreamed that someone bade him look for treasure under the bridge which leads to the king’s palace in Prague. Poor men always dream of kings’ palaces and kings’ treasure and things like that. If you have very rich dreams it simply shows that you are a poor man. Only very rich people dream of becoming sannyasins – a Buddha, a Mahavira. Living in their palaces they have dreams of becoming sannyasins, because they were fed up with their success. Success is finished for them, it has no charm, it has no allurement, it has no fascination any more. Now they think that a poor man’s life is a real life and they seek somewhere else where they are not.But the dream always goes somewhere else. The rich man thinks that the poor man is living a real life, and the poor man thinks that the rich man is living a real life. But the fallacy is the same: they both think, “Real life is somewhere else where I am not. Somehow I am always excluded from the real life – somebody else is enjoying it. Life is always happening somewhere else. Wherever I go, life simply disappears. Wherever I reach for it I always find emptiness.” But it is always happening somewhere else. Life seems to be like the horizon, it is just ahead somewhere. It is a mirage.When the dream recurred the third time he set out for Prague.And remember, even if a dream recurs too many times it almost starts looking real. Repetition makes things real.Adolf Hitler wrote in his autobiography Mein Kampf that if you go on repeating a lie it becomes real. Repetition is the key. And he should know, he practiced it. He is not simply asserting something theoretical, he practiced it the whole of his life. He uttered lies, absolutely absurd lies, but one thing he insisted on – he went on repeating. When you go on repeating some lie again and again and again it starts becoming real, because the mind starts getting hypnotized by it.Repetition is the method of hypnosis. Repeat anything and it becomes engraved in your being – that’s how we are deluded in life. If you repeat, “This woman is beautiful, this woman is beautiful…” If you go on repeating it, you will start seeing beauty in her. It may be there, it may not be there, it doesn’t matter – if you repeat it long enough it will become true. If you think that money is the goal of life, go on repeating it and it will become your goal of life.That’s how all advertising functions: it just goes on repeating. The advertiser believes in the science of repetition; he simply goes on repeating that this brand of cigarette is the best. When you read it for the first time you may not believe it. But next time, again and again – how long can you remain an unbeliever? By and by the belief will arise. And the belief will be such that you may not even become conscious of it. It will be subliminal, it will be just underneath consciousness. One day suddenly, when you go to the store and the storekeeper asks what brand of cigarette you need, you will say a certain brand. That repetition worked. It hypnotized you.That’s how religions have been functioning in the world – and all politics depends on it. Advertise, go on repeating to the public, and don’t be bothered whether they believe or not – that’s not the point. Hitler says there is only one difference between truth and lie: the truth is a lie that has been repeated very often. And man can believe any lies. Man’s gullibility is infinite. Man can believe in hell, man can believe in heaven, man can believe in angels, man can believe in devils, man can believe in anything! You just go on repeating.And there is no need to argue. An advertisement never argues – have you observed the fact? There is no need to argue. The advertisement simply persuades you, it never argues. An arguer may not be able to convince you, but a person who persuades you, who simply goes on throwing soft suggestions at you, not direct arguments… Because when somebody argues with you, you may become defensive, but if somebody simply goes on hinting at certain things, not in any direct way, just supposing, you are more prone to be convinced by it.Dream functions in that way; dream is a salesman. Dream simply goes on repeating itself. It never argues, it simply insists on being repeated. And, often repeated, one starts believing in it.When it happened thrice: …he set out for Prague. He started believing in its reality.But the bridge was guarded day and nightand he did not dare start digging.In the world there is too much competition. Every place is guarded and every object has to be fought for – it is not easy. This is something very strange in this world. Nothing is meaningful and yet for everything you have to fight. Nothing seems to be significant, but there is much competition, much conflict. Everybody is rushing toward it; that creates the trouble – it is not that there is something in it. There is nothing in it, but everybody is trying to rush toward it. Everybody is hankering for everybody else’s place, that’s why the world is so crowded.In fact it is not as crowded as it seems. Look: we are sitting here, everybody is sitting in his own place. This place is not crowded at all. But if a frenzy suddenly takes hold of your mind and everybody starts trying to reach another’s place, then this place would be crowded. Right now you are sitting religiously; in the other situation you would be rushing at each other politically. Right now you are satisfied with your place and you are not hankering for anybody’s place – at least not in Chuang Tzu auditorium. But if you start pushing yourself into other’s places, others will become defensive, they will start pushing you. A fight, a war, will ensue.Why are there so many wars in the world? The reason is that everybody is trying to have another’s territory. And the other may be trying the same thing. He may be looking at you.But the bridge was guarded day and nightand he did not dare start digging. Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morningand kept walking around it until evening.That’s what many people are doing. Very few succeed, many simply walk around. But they go on doing it. Even if you cannot succeed, your desires, your hopes, are continuously there. At least you can go to the place, near the palace, and you can simply walk around. The whole day, from morning to evening he was walking around – that’s what many people are doing, waiting for some miracle to happen. Someday there may be no guards, someday may be a holiday, someday there may be a possibility to dig… One waits and one goes on waiting. It never happens, but one’s whole life is wasted in waiting.Nevertheless he went to the bridge every morningand kept walking around it until evening.Finally, the captain of the guards,who had been watching him, asked in a kindly way whether he was looking for something, or waiting for someone.Rabbi Eisik told him of the dreamwhich had brought him from a faraway country.The captain laughed, “And so to please your dream you wore out your shoes to come here! You poor fellow.And as far as having faith in dreams, if I had had it I should have had to go to Cracow and dig for treasure under the stove in the room of a Jew – Eisik, son of Yekel!That’s what the dream told me. And imagine what it would have been like; one half of the Jews over there are called Eisik, and the other half Yekel!” And he laughed again.Rabbi Eisik bowed, traveled home,dug up the treasure from under his stove,and built the house of prayer which is called Reb Eisik’s Shul.It is a beautiful story – and very true. That is how it is happening in life. You are looking somewhere else for that which is already there within you. Rabbi Eisik bowed, thanked the man, traveled home…This is the journey of religion: traveling back home. And a man who has understood life always pays his respect toward life because it has shocked you out of your dreams. He is not against life; he simply knows that he has nothing to do with life, he simply knows that he was searching in a wrong direction.Life has always been compassionate, life has been telling you again and again that you can find nothing here – go back home. But you don’t listen.You earn money, and one day money is there – then life says to you, “What have you got?” But you don’t listen. Now you think you have to put your money into politics, you have to become a prime minister or a president, then everything will be okay. One day you are a prime minister, and life again says, “What have you got?” You don’t listen. You go on thinking of something else and something else and something else. Life is vast – that’s why many lives are wasted.But don’t be angry at life. It is not life that is frustrating you, it is you who are not listening to life. And this I call a criterion, a touchstone: if you see some saint who is against life, bitter against life, know well he has not understood yet. Otherwise he will bow down to life in deep respect and reverence, because life has awakened him out of his dreams. Life is very shocking, that’s why. Life is painful. The pain comes because you are desiring something which is not possible. It doesn’t come from life, it comes from your expectation.People say that man proposes and God disposes. It has never happened. God has never disposed of anybody. But in your own proposition you have disposed of yourself. Listen to God’s proposition, keep your own proposition to yourself. Keep quiet. Listen to what the whole is willing – don’t try to have your private goals, don’t try to have your private desires. Don’t ask anything individually – the whole is moving toward its destiny. You simply be part of it. Cooperate. Don’t be in a conflict. Surrender to it. And life always sends you back to your own reality – that is why it is shocking.It shocks you because it doesn’t fulfill your dreams. And it is good that life never fulfills your dreams – it always goes on disposing, in a way. It gives you a thousand and one opportunities to be frustrated so that you can understand that expectations are not good and dreams are futile and desires are never fulfilled. Then you drop desiring, you drop dreaming, you drop proposing. Suddenly you are back home and the treasure is there.Rabbi Eisik bowed, traveled home, dug up the treasure from under his stove, and built the house of prayer which is called Reb Eisik’s Shul. The treasure had always been waiting there under his stove. In the same room he dreamed that the treasure was somewhere near the palace of the king in Prague. It was just there! In his own room, in his own house, it was just there waiting to be dug up.This is very indicative. Your treasure is in your own being – don’t look for it somewhere else. All palaces and all bridges to the palace are meaningless; you have to create your own bridge within your own being. The palace is there; the treasure is there.Existence never sends anybody into this world without a treasure. It sends you ready for every situation – how can it be otherwise? When a father sends his son on a long journey he makes every preparation. Even for unexpected situations the father provides. He gives all the provisions.You are carrying everything that you need. Just go into the seeker and don’t go seeking outside. Seek the seeker, let the seeker be the sought.Because of this, Rabbi Eisik built the house of prayer. It was such a tremendous revelation, such a tremendous experience – “Existence has put the treasure where I have always lived. I was poor because of myself, I was not poor because existence wanted me to be poor. As far as it is concerned I was a king, always a king.” Because of this understanding he made a prayer house, a temple, out of this treasure. He used it well.Whenever somebody comes to his innermost treasure, prayerfulness arises – that is the meaning of the story. He made a house of prayer called Reb Eisik’s Shul. Whenever you understand the grace of existence, the compassion, the love, what else can you do? A great prayer of thankfulness arises into your being, you feel so overpowered by its love, overwhelmed. What else can you do? You simply bow down and you pray.And remember, if you pray to ask for something, it is not prayerfulness. When you pray to thank existence for something, only then is it prayerfulness. Prayerfulness is always a thanksgiving. If you ask for something, then the prayerfulness is still corrupted by desire. Then it is not prayerfulness yet – it is still poisoned by dreaming. Real prayerfulness happens only when you have attained to yourself, when you have known what existence has given to you already without your asking for it. When you realize what you have been given, what infinite sources have been given to you, prayerfulness arises. You would like to say to existence, “Thank you.” There is nothing else in it but a pure thank you.When a prayer is just a thank you it is prayerfulness. Never ask for anything in a prayer; never say, “Do this, do that; don’t do this, don’t do that.” Never advise existence. That shows your irreligiousness, that shows your lack of trust. Thank it. Your life is already a benediction, a blessing. Each moment is such pure joy, but you are missing it, that I know. That’s why the prayerfulness is not arising; otherwise you would build a house of prayer. Your whole life would become that house of prayer; you would become that temple – the shrine of existence. Its song would burst from your being. It would flower in you and its fragrance would spread to the winds.It does not happen because you are missing something. And you are missing not because of existence, you are missing because of yourself. If you desire, and you think that the treasure is somewhere else, you move into the future. The future is needed because you desire; the future is a by-product of desiring. How can you project desire in the present? The present is already here, you cannot project any desire in it, it does not allow desire. If you desire, the present has already gone; you can desire only in the future, only in the tomorrow.This has to be understood. Desire is always in the future, but the future is never there. The future is that which is not, and desire is only in the future. And desire comes out of the past which also is not. The past is gone and the future has not yet come. Desire comes out of the past because you must have known what you desire in the past somehow. How can you desire something which is absolutely new? You cannot desire the new. You can only ask for some repetition. You had some money, you will ask for more; but money you know. You had some power, you ask for more; but power you know.Man cannot desire the unknown. The desire is just a repetition of the known. Just look at it. You have known it and you are not fulfilled, so you are asking for it again. Do you think you will be fulfilled? At the most you can ask for more quantity, but if one rupee is not fulfilling, how can a thousand rupees be fulfilling? If one rupee is unfulfilling, ten thousand rupees will be ten thousandfold more unfulfilling – that is simple logic. If one woman has not fulfilled you, then ten thousand women are not going to fulfill you. If one woman has created such a hell, then ten thousand women… Just think! It is simple arithmetic. You can solve it.You can ask only out of the past and you can ask only in the future, and both are non-existential. That which exists is the present. This very moment is the only moment there is. You cannot desire in it, you can just be in it. You can just enjoy it.And I have never come across a person who can be miserable in the present. You will be surprised. Many times people come to me and they say that they are very miserable and this and that, and I say to them, “Close your eyes and find out right now whether you are miserable or not.” They close their eyes, then they open their eyes, and they say, “Right now I am not miserable.”Right now nobody is miserable. There is no possibility. It is not allowed by the nature of things. This very moment are you miserable? This very moment? You may have been miserable a moment before; okay, that is right. Or you may be miserable a moment afterward – that too is allowed. But this very moment, between these two non-existential moments, are you miserable? Nobody has ever been.This moment is always of pure benediction; this moment is always of joy, of tremendous delight; this moment is God’s moment. The past is yours, the future is yours, the present is God’s. We divide time into three tenses – past, present, future – but we should not divide it in that way. That division is not right. Time can be divided between the past and the future, but the present is not part of time, it is part of eternity. Existence has no past, remember, you cannot say existence was. Existence has no future – you cannot say existence will be. Existence has only one tense – present. Existence is. Existence always is. In fact God is only another name for “isness”. Whenever you are also in the moment, whenever you are also in this “isness,” you are happy, blessed. A prayerfulness arises. You become a shrine. You should become Reb Eisik’s Shul, you should become a prayer house.Rabbi Bunam used to add, “Take this story to heart and make what it says your own.There is something you cannot find anywhere in the world,not even at the zaddik’s,and there is, nevertheless, a place where you can find it.”Zaddik means the master. The word zaddick comes from a Hebrew root which means the pure, the purest, purity itself. The zaddik means the master – who has attained to his “presentness”, who is no longer in the past and no longer in the future, who is just here-now, who is just a presence. To be in the presence of a master is to be in the presence of a presence. That’s all. And to be in the presence of a master can help you to be present because his presence can become infectious.But Rabbi Bunam says: There is something you cannot find anywhere in the world, not even at the zaddik’s… He says that there is something which you cannot find anywhere, not even in the presence of a master. But don’t feel hopeless: …there is nevertheless a place where you can find it.That place is you, and that time is now. In fact the zaddik’s, the master’s effort is nothing but to throw you to your “presentness”, to make you available to existence, or to make existence available to you.This “presentness” cannot be taught, but it can be caught – hence the value of satsang, of being in the presence of a zaddik, of a master, of a guru; just to be there doing nothing. In fact a master is not doing anything. He is just there. A master is prayerfulness, a constant thankfulness. With each breath he is thanking existence. Not verbally; his very breathing is a thankfulness, with each beat of his heart he goes on saying thank-you. His thank-you is not verbal, it is existential. His being is prayerfulness. To be in the presence of such a man may help you to have some taste of prayerfulness. That taste will start a new journey in your life – the inward journey.You have been seeking for centuries, for millennia, and you have not yet found. Now, let the seeker be the sought. You have traveled outside for so long that you are very tired, very exhausted.Jesus says, “Those who are tired, those whose burden is heavy, they should come to me. I will give them rest.” What does he mean? He simply means, “Come to me. I am at rest. Be close to me. Have a taste of it.” And that very taste will turn the tide and you will start moving inward.You are here with me. Have a taste of my being. Don’t just listen to my words, listen to me. Taste me. And then suddenly you will be here and now, and you will be turning inward and you will not ask for anything and you will not desire anything and you will not have any movement into the future and you will not have any clinging with the past.And then this moment is liberation, this moment is enlightenment.Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Who are you and what type of play are you playing with us? And how long will you play? Please explain.To be frank with you – which usually I am not – I don’t know who I am. Because knowledge is not possible here where I am. There is only the knower left, the known has disappeared; only the container is left, the content is no more.For knowledge to exist, a great division is needed in reality – the knower and the known. And between the two, knowledge happens. The known is a must for knowledge to happen.The space I am in is absolutely undivided and indivisible. Knowledge is not possible. So, to be exact, I don’t know.And I would like you also to come to this innocent ignorance, to this state of not-knowing, because the state of not-knowing is the highest state of knowing – not of knowledge, mind you, but of knowing. And this knowing is content-less – not that you know something; there is nothing to know. You simply are. I am, but I don’t know who. All identities have disappeared; just a tremendous emptiness is left behind.I call it emptiness because you are full of identities – otherwise it is absolute presence, not emptiness, not absence. It is the presence of something which by its very nature is a mystery and cannot be reduced to knowledge.So I don’t know who I am, but I am tremendously content in this not-knowing. And whosoever has ever come to this door of not-knowing has laughed at all knowledge and the stupidity that goes on in the name of knowledge. Knowledge is mediocre. To be in the state of not-knowing is intelligence, it is awareness, it is non-accumulative. Each moment that which happens disappears, it leaves no trace behind, no existential trace. One comes out of it again pure, again innocent, again like a child.So I am a child on the seashore of time, collecting seashells, colored stones. But I am tremendously fulfilled. I know not who I am because I am not. When I say “I am not” I mean the “I” no longer has any relevance. I use the word – obviously I have to use it and there is nothing in the word to be against it – but it is no longer relevant to my inner world. It is still of use with you, but when I am alone I am not. When I am with you, then this word I has to be used as a communicative device. But when I am alone I am not. Aloneness is there, amness is there, but the “I” is not. So who should know, and whom?First I told you that the content has disappeared. Now I would like to tell you – because the more you get ready and receptive, the more I can tell you – that the container has also disappeared. Because the container is meaningful only with the content; without the content what is the meaning of the container? The content and the container are both not there. Something is, tremendously is, absolutely is, but there is no name to it. In love you call this space bhagwan, and in deep respect I also call it bhagwan.Just the other night I was reading a letter in Current. The letter-writer asked me who appointed me as a bhagwan. Now, a bhagwan cannot be appointed. If somebody appoints somebody as a bhagwan then the appointer will be the bhagwan, not the appointed. It is a recognition, it is a realization. Bhagwan simply means that all that we call worldly is no longer there – that’s all. The desire to possess, to be possessed, the desire to accumulate, the desire to cling, the desire to be, the libido, the lust for life, has disappeared. When this desire disappears, when the smoke of desire disappears and only the flame remains in its purity, who is going to appoint? Who is there to appoint? It is not an appointment. Or, if you love the word very much, then I will say, “It is a self-appointment.” But that too is not very meaningful. It is a declaration.The letter-writer wants me to say who. Nobody can decide who I am. This is my declaration. Only I know what has happened within me; nobody else can know it. Unless you also come to that state of being divine… The state is hiding behind you; any moment you become courageous enough to enter it, you can – then only will you recognize me, not before it.I also call this space, in tremendous respect, bhagwan. The word bhagwan is very beautiful. The English word God is not as beautiful. Bhagwan simply means the blessed one. That’s all. The blessed one. And I declare myself to be the blessed one. And I declare it only so that you can also gain heart and you can also strive for it; so that my presence can become a dream in you; so that my presence can invoke a journey in you; so that my presence can create a fire in you – a fire that will burn you, and through which you are going to be reborn true. A fire that is going to destroy you, annihilate you utterly, and yet out of it you will come absolutely new, with no identity, with no name, with no form.I have declared myself a bhagwan because I would like you also to come to this recognition. You have forgotten the language. Somebody must exist in front of you as a reality, not as a concept, not as someone in the scriptures. Krishna exists in the Gita, Christ exists in the Bible – they may have been, they may not have been, nobody can be certain.I am just here, confronting you. If you are courageous enough to open toward me, suddenly a sprout will start coming into being in your seed; you will start growing in an unknown dimension. To make that dimension available to you I declare myself a bhagwan. This is nobody else’s business.But I can declare myself a bhagwan only because I am not. Only one who is not can call himself the blessed one.Because if you are, you remain miserable, your very being is your misery. Hell is not somewhere else; hell is the confined state, hell is the miserable state when you live with the “I”. To live with the ego is to live in hell.You ask me, “What type of play are you playing with us?” Certainly, it is a play. I am not serious. And if you are serious, there is not going to be any meeting with you. Seriousness does not cross my path at all. I am absolutely non-serious. This is a play. And I would like to call this play “the mad game.”I have coined the word mad: M stands for the master and d stands for the disciple. The master-and-disciple game! It is a mad game. I am an expert in being a master. If you are also ready to become a disciple, here we go!And it is none of anybody else’s business. It is a game between me and you. If you decide to be a disciple, as I have decided to be a master, then we can play the game. And those who have decided to be disciples are enjoying it tremendously.Once you decide to be a disciple you enter into another world – a totally different world of the heart, of love, of trust. Then it is a play. You are not serious, but still you are very sincere. Never misunderstand seriousness for sincerity. Sincerity is very playful, never serious. It is true, authentic, but never serious. Sincerity does not have a long face, it is bubbling with joy, radiating with an inner joyousness.Rejoice that I am here! If you decide to be a disciple, then only can you understand what I am doing here, then only can you understand this mad game, this madly mad game. It is a play; in fact it is the ultimate game in life. You have played many other games, this is the last. You have played being a lover, being a friend; being a father, being a husband, being a wife, mother, being rich, being poor, being a leader, being a follower – you have played all the games. And only those who have played all the games can play this game, because they will be mature enough to play it.This is the last game. After this game, games stop, game playing stops. Once you have played the game rightly – the master-disciple game – by and by you come to a point where all playing disappears. Only you are left – neither the master nor the disciple exists there. This is just a device.Between the master and the disciple – if the rule of the game is followed rightly – devotion arises. That is the fragrance, the river that flows between the two banks of the master and the disciple. That’s why it is so difficult for the outsider to understand. But I am not interested at all in the outsider understanding it; it is a very esoteric game. It is only for the insiders, it is only for mad people. That’s why I am not interested even in answering people who are not insiders, because they will not understand. They are not at that altitude of being where understanding can become possible.Just see. If two chess players are playing and you don’t know what chess is, and you start asking questions, they will simply say, “Shut up! First you go and learn the game. It is a complicated game.”And chess is nothing when you start playing this mad game! Your whole life – your emotions, your feelings, your intellect, your body, mind, soul, everything – is involved, is at stake. It is the last gamble.So only those who are insiders can understand; outsiders will always feel uncomfortable about it. They don’t know the language.I am not here playing the game of a priest; I am not here playing the game of a prophet. In fact the prophet is nothing but the politician in disguise. The language of the prophet is the language of the politician – of course, in the name of religion. The prophet is revolutionary; he wants to change the world, the whole world, to his heart’s desire. I have no plans for changing the world. It is perfectly good as it is and it is going to remain as it is. All the prophets have failed. That game is doomed to be a failure.I am not a priest because I don’t belong to any religion; I simply belong to religion as such. I am not a Jew, I am not a Hindu, I am not a Christian, I am not a Mohammedan, I am not a Jaina – I don’t belong to any religion. So I am not a priest, I am not a preacher. I simply love pure religion.Let me tell you an anecdote:Mr. and Mrs. Goldberg had scrimped and saved to put their eldest son through college. At last they had the money and decided to send him to a fine, highbrow Eastern boarding school. They saw him off on the train and tearfully bade him farewell.A few months later he returned home for the Christmas holidays. The parents were overjoyed to have their son, Sammy, back with them. The mother greeted him with, “Samelah! Oh, it’s so good to see you.”“Mother,” replied the son, “stop calling me Samelah. After all, I’m a grown-up man now, and I do wish you would refer to me as Samuel.”She apologized and asked, “I hope you only ate kosher foods while you were away…?”“Mother, we are living in a modern world, and it’s preposterous to hang onto the old world traditions. I indulged in all types of kosher and non-kosher food, and believe me, you would be better off if you did too.”“Well, tell me, did you at least go to the synagogue to offer a prayer of thanks occasionally?”The son replied, “Really, do you honestly feel that going to a synagogue when you’re associating with a large percentage of non-Jews is the proper thing to do? Honestly, Mother, it’s unfair to ask it of me, really.”At this point Mrs. Goldberg, fighting back anger, looked at her eldest son and said, “Tell me, Samuel, are you still circumcised?”I am not interested in whether you are circumcised or not. I am not interested in whether you are a Jew, a Hindu, a Christian or a Mohammedan. To me that sort of thing is sheer stupidity. I am not teaching you any religion. My whole effort, or my whole play here, is to make you aware of the reality as it is; to make you aware of the fact, not to give you any fantasy about it; to make you aware of the truth, not to give you any theory about it. I am not a theoretician, I am not a theologist. In fact theology has killed God, and so many religions have created such confusion in the minds of people that, rather than helping, they have been harmful and poisonous. Rather than helping people to be religious, they have created great politics in the name of religion – great violence, conflict, hatred in the name of religion.To me, religion simply means a dimension of love. I am here to show you the beauty of life, the grandeur that surrounds you. From that very grandeur you will have your first glimpses of godliness.I am here to seduce you into a love of life; to help you to become a little more poetic; to help you drown your head into your heart; to help you die to the mundane and to the ordinary so that the extraordinary explodes in your life. But this is possible only if you decide to be a disciple.Sannyas is a great agreement, a covenant. When I initiate you into sannyas, I am initiating you into the world of my play. And if you are ready to go with me, great doors are waiting to be opened for you. But those doors are not of the mosque, of the church, of the gurdwara and the temple – those doors are of life itself. Life is the only shrine of existence and to be playful about it is the only prayer.“Who are you and what type of play are you playing with us? And how long will you play?” It is not a question of time. If you decide to be a disciple, it can go on and on – in the body and out of the body, with the mind and without the mind, in life and in death, within life and beyond life. This game is an eternal game, that’s why I call it the ultimate game. Those who decided to play with Christ, they are still playing; on new planes, in new plenitudes it continues. Those who decided to play with Buddha are still playing. The game is so beautiful, so eternal, who wants to stop it?I may not be here in the body, but that will be a loss only to those who are not close to me, that will be a loss only to those who were not courageous enough to be with me. When I have gone out of the body it is not going to be a loss to you if you have really been a disciple. The game will continue. I will remain available, you will remain available. It is a question of the heart, it is a question of consciousness. And consciousness knows no time; consciousness is beyond time, consciousness is timelessness.So the question is meaningful from some outsider – but then I will not answer it. The question is meaningless from an insider – and only then can I answer it. If you are an insider, you know there is a beginning to this play but there is no end to it. You have entered into something which is going to last forever.“Osho, please explain.” A game has to be played, not to be explained, because if you explain it, it loses all charm. Come, be a partner. Get involved in it.There are a few things which cannot be explained; in the very explanation they die. For example a joke cannot be explained. That’s the beauty of a joke: either you understand it or you don’t understand it. If you ask, “Please explain,” it cannot be explained. If somebody explains it and it becomes completely clear to you, no laughter will come out of it, because it is when the joke suddenly dawns on your being that there is laughter; when there is a jump, a quantum leap, then there is laughter.You were going along on one plane, the story was moving along on one plane, then suddenly an unexpected turn which you could not have imagined, happened. That very turn, which you could not have imagined happening, gives it beauty. That very turn shocks you. That very turn releases the tension that was building up. You were going along in suspense – “What is going to happen? What is going to happen?” – and everything was just ordinary and then, suddenly, there is an extraordinary turn to the story. The punch line has to be a sudden turn. Then the built-up tension relaxes and you start laughing. The tension is released, explodes. But if somebody explains to you, dissects the joke logically, explains everything to you and then you understand it, then the joke disappears. The joke has to be enjoyed, not understood.This whole world is a cosmic joke. If you try to understand it you will miss. That is how philosophers have always been missing. They have been trying to solve it, they have been trying to look for clues. It has no clues. It is a sheer mystery. It has no keys and no locks. It is available if you are available. But a mind which wants to understand it becomes tense and becomes unavailable.Don’t try to understand life. Live it! Don’t try to understand love. Move into love. Then you will know – and that knowing will come out of your experiencing. That knowing will never destroy the mystery: the more you know, the more you know that much remains to be known. Life is not a problem. To look at it as a problem is to take a wrong step. It is a mystery to be lived, loved, experienced.In fact the mind that is always after explanations is an afraid mind. Because of great fear he wants everything to be explained. He cannot go into anything before it is explained to him. With explanation he feels that now the territory is familiar, now he knows the geography, now he can move with the map and the guidebook and the timetable. He is never ready to move in an unknown territory, uncharted, without a map, without a guide. But life is like that. And no map is possible, because life goes on changing. Every moment it is new. I say to you there is nothing old under the sun. Everything is new. It is a tremendous dynamism, an absolute movement. Only change is permanent, only change never changes – everything else goes on changing.So you cannot have a map; by the time the map is ready it is already out of date. By the time the map is available it is useless. Life has changed its tracks. Life has started playing a new game. You cannot cope with life with maps because it is not measurable. And you cannot cope with life with guidebooks because guidebooks are possible only if things are stagnant. Life is not stagnant; it is a dynamism, it is a process. You cannot have a map of it. It is not measurable, it is an immeasurable mystery. Don’t ask for explanations.That’s why although I answer when you ask questions – because this is part of the agreement of this mad game: you will ask and I will answer – you should never take my answers as explanations. They are not. They are simply introductions to the mystery, prefaces to the mystery, seductions to the mystery. They are not really answers.My answers are not answers; my answers are simply to help you to come out of your questions and to start living. An answer is an answer when it simply explains your question and you are satisfied that you have now got some information which you were needing and your question is no longer there. Now the place that the question was occupying is occupied by the answer. My answers are not answers in that way. They will help you to drop the question, but they are not going to answer the question. And once the question is dropped you will find no answer occupying its place. There will be no answer. My whole way of answering is such that I answer and yet I never answer. I answer so that you don’t feel offended – your question has to be respected so I respect it – but I cannot answer it because life has no answers.And this I call maturity of mind: when somebody comes to the point of looking at life without any questions, and simply dives into it with courage and fearlessness.The second question:Osho,Dreams are unreal. But I have heard and read that the mother of Mahavira saw nine white elephants in her dreams before Mahavira's birth. Then what does that mean? And what is the use of answering the dreams of questioners?Dreams are unreal, but so is your life. Dreams are unreal, but that is what your life is. Your life is just a dream because you are fast asleep. Can’t you hear yourself snoring?You are fast asleep. Whatsoever you call your life is just a dream seen with open eyes. You see two types of dreams: one with closed eyes, one with open eyes. But both are dreams.You say, “Dreams are unreal but I have heard and read that the mother of Mahavira saw nine white elephants in her dreams before Mahavira’s birth.” Your reading is a dream, your hearing is a dream. Whatsoever you have heard about Mahavira has nothing to do with Mahavira. It is your dream.And just look: Mahavira’s mother dreamed of nine white elephants. First it is a dream, then it is a dream about a white elephant. A dream in a dream! White elephant? The story is beautiful; it says that life is just like a Chinese box: a box within a box. You go on – it is just like an onion. You peel it, there is another layer; you peel it, another layer – box within box.First, Mahavira’s being born is a dream; then, being born out of a mother is another dream. Then the mother dreams. And the mother dreams about white elephants! Look at the whole absurdity of it.Then there are stupid people who start analyzing these dreams and make much fuss about it. Jainas say that whenever a tirthankara is born, a particular series of dreams has to happen to the mother. And if those dreams have not happened, then the man is not a tirthankara. So all the mothers had to dream – remember. Twenty-four tirthankaras have been born in India, and all the mothers of the tirthankaras had to repeat the same dream. It is a must, it is a legal thing – you cannot avoid it! If you don’t dream, your son cannot be a tirthankara. When my mother started dreaming I said, “Stop! There is no need. I am not going to fulfill any legal and formal things. There is no need to dream about white elephants. You can rest.”Foolish people go on finding foolish things, but they decorate them very well. You ask what it means. It means nothing. It simply means that you are more interested in dreams than you are in reality.People are not interested in Mahavira as such. If Mahavira’s mother had forgotten to dream these dreams, Jainas would have not accepted him as the twenty-fourth tirthankara. That was one of the most important things to be decided. You may not know it, but there were a few other people who were also claiming that they were tirthankaras. In the time of Mahavira there were eight persons who were claiming that they were tirthankaras and it was a great problem how to decide because no criteria existed. So people had to invent such foolish criteria. It was only Mahavira’s mother, the story says, who dreamed these dreams.Goshalak’s mother erred. Poor Goshalak suffered for it. Mahavira’s mother must have been very clever; she must have planned everything very beautifully. At least Mahavira’s astrologers must have – the mother died immediately after giving birth. In fact I don’t see that she ever told anybody about her dreams, because she died immediately. But that too is a point. Jainas say that when a tirthankara is born, the mother dies immediately. They have made things very difficult for the mother. Mahavira’s mother’s death must have been a pure accident. Goshalak’s mother lived. These things are not allowed. Goshalak suffered because his mother lived. Mahavira’s mother died. These are foolish criteria. They don’t see Mahavira directly; they are looking for other indications.When Jesus was there, Jews were asking certain questions because he had to fulfill the prophesies in the Old Testament. Were they fulfilled or not? Jesus was there in reality, standing before them, but they were not concerned about Jesus, they were concerned about the prophesies in the Old Testament. If they were fulfilled, then he was the right man; if they were not fulfilled, then he was not the right man. How foolish can humanity be? Jesus is there – but that is not proof of anything, no. And Jews denied him because they thought he had not fulfilled all the criteria. They had to crucify him because they thought he was just a charlatan, a deceiver; he had not fulfilled all the prophesies.And Christians go on proving that he has fulfilled them. Now it has become just a verbal game of argumentation, of logic. The reality is completely forgotten.Look at the real. If Mahavira is there, Mahavira is there whether the mother dreamed of white elephants or black elephants. Whether she dreamed or didn’t dream doesn’t matter; whether she lived or died doesn’t matter. These are all irrelevant things. If Mahavira is there, look directly. His presence will be enough proof. And if it is not enough proof, then there is no need to bother about other proofs. Then what can other proofs do?“And what is the use of answering the dreams of questioners?” The questioners have only dreams, they don’t yet have a real life, so by answering their questions I will be pulling them out of their mud of dreams. I am not interested in their dreams, I am interested in the consciousness that is dreaming. That consciousness is not a dream. It is dreaming, it is in a dream, but it is not a dream. It is a reality, and it has to be pulled out of the dreaming state.So I go on using whatsoever devices are needed. If sometimes I feel that analyzing the dream may help you to come out of it then I analyze it. But remember always and always, I am not interested in the dream, I am not a psychoanalyst. But if I feel that by dissecting the dream I will be able to make you aware that you are not the dream, that you are the witness to it, then I dissect it. The reality is not in the dream, the reality is in the dreamer – and the dreamer has to be awakened. I function like an alarm clock.The third question:Osho,For people who have been so clouded by lies and deceptions in the waking state, can remembering dreams, re-enacting and experiencing them in the waking state, be a useful method – the first step on the path of higher consciousness and truth? Can this method hasten the thirst for godliness until the point comes when the dreaming mind is dropped?Yes, to a limited extent it can be of great help – but remember, only to a limited extent. Otherwise people are such that first they waste their time in dreaming, then they can waste their time in enacting the dream in the waking state; then they can waste their time on some psychoanalyst’s couch talking about their dreams – and the psychoanalyst analyzes them. Then dreams become too important. That much importance should not be given to them.There is a great need of a shift of consciousness from the content to the container. Yes, for the time being, dreams can be used. Enacting them will be useful. If in the night you have seen a dream, then enacting it in the morning can be of tremendous help because in the night you were asleep. The dream was there, the message was there, the message was delivered by the unconscious, but the conscious was fast asleep. So it was as if you were drunk and somebody called you and you took the phone somehow, and you listened, but you cannot remember exactly what the message was because you were drunk. The message was delivered, the unconscious delivered a certain message.That’s what a dream is: a packaged message from the unconscious that you are doing something wrong, that you are moving against nature, that you are going against me, that you are going against yourself. It is a warning from the unconscious that enough is enough, stop! Come back home, be natural, be more spontaneous. Don’t be lost in social formalities and moralities and don’t become a fake. Be real.The message is delivered, but you are asleep and in the morning you cannot even remember anything exactly. Have you watched it? When you wake up in the morning, for a few seconds some fragments of the dream float in the consciousness – just for a few seconds, not more than thirty seconds, or at the most sixty seconds, one minute. Then they are gone. You have washed your face, taken a cup of tea; finished with the night, you don’t remember now. And even when you awake in the morning, only very fragmentary things are there. And those too are the tail parts of the dream. When you dream, you dream in a certain way: you started the dream at five o’clock in the morning, then you went into it, and at six o’clock you woke up. That was the end part of the dream – it is as if you were seeing a film and you were only awake at the end part. So you remember the end part of the dream, not the beginning, not the middle. Then you have to go upstream. If you want to recollect the dream you have to move in the reverse order, as if you are reading a book backward. It is very difficult.And then, one thing more. When you are conscious you again start interfering with the dream content, you don’t allow the whole message to be received. You will drop many things. If you have murdered your mother in the dream, you will drop it. You may not remember it, you may not allow it to become conscious. Or, at the most, you will allow it in a very deep disguise: you have murdered somebody else. Or, if you have lived in a community which values nonviolence very much, you may not even remember that you murdered – that part will simply disappear. We listen only to that which we want to listen to.I have heard:As he lay on his deathbed he spoke, “Sara, I want you to know before I die that Ginsburg the tailor owes me two hundred dollars, and Morris the butcher owes me fifty dollars, and Klein next door owes me three hundred dollars.”His wife turned to the children and said, “What a wonderful man your father is. Even when he’s dying he’s got the brains to realize who owes him money.”The old man continued, “And Sara, I want you also to know that I owe the landlord a hundred dollars.”To which his wife cried, “Ho ho, now he’s getting delirious.”Whatsoever you want to hear is right, otherwise “ho ho!” Then immediately you become disconnected.You will remember the dream, now the mechanism has to be understood. The dream is a message from the unconscious to the conscious because the conscious is doing something which the unconscious feels is unnatural. And the unconscious is always right, remember; because the unconscious is your nature. The conscious is cultivated by the society, it is a conditioning. The conscious means society inside you. It is a trick of society. The conscious is doing something which the unconscious feels is too much against nature, so the unconscious wants to give a warning. In the morning, when you remember, again you will remember from the conscious, again the conscious will interfere. Whatsoever is against it will not be allowed; whatsoever is sweet will be allowed. But that is not the point. The bitter part was the real message.But try it. What they do in psychodrama can be helpful. Rather than remembering a dream, reliving a dream is more useful. And they are different. When you remember, you remember from the conscious; when you relive, you relive from the total. In reliving there is more possibility that the unconscious will again be able to give some messages.For example: you dreamed during the night that you were walking on a road. You go on walking and walking and walking and the road never ends. The non-ending road creates tremendous fear in you because with anything non-ending the mind cannot cope, the mind becomes afraid. Non-ending? It looks very boring. You go on, you go on, you go on – and the road is non-ending. You become tired, you become frustrated, you are fed up, you fall down – but the road goes on and on and on. You have limitations and the road seems to be unlimited.If you dream such a dream… Many people dream about it because there is a great message in it. The famous Russian author, Maxim Gorky, used to dream it many times. He said that in his life it was one of the most important dreams – it was repeated continuously, almost every month. It must have had a great message otherwise it wouldn’t have been repeated. And it was repeated – that simply shows that Gorky never understood it. Once you understand a dream, once the message is delivered, the dream stops. If a dream is continuously repeated, that simply shows that you have not understood it, so the unconscious goes on knocking at your door. It wants you to understand it.Remembering is one thing – you can close your eyes and remember the dream and it will be as if you are seeing a film, a movie. Reliving it is totally different. You create the whole situation, you visualize the whole situation. It is not a dream on the screen, you relive it. Again you are on the road. Look around. Close your eyes when you remember it, look around. What type of road is it? Are trees there or is it a desert? What kind of trees? Is the sun there in the sky or is it night? Visualize it, stand on the road and visualize it and let it be as colorful as possible – because the unconscious is very colorful. The conscious is just black and white, the unconscious is very psychedelic.So let it be colorful. See the greenness of the trees, the redness of the flowers, the brightness of the stars. Feel the road, the touch underneath your feet. Feel the road – rough, smooth, dead, alive? Every road has its own individuality. Smell. Standing there, smell. What type of smell is it? Has it rained just now and a delicate smell from the earth is arising? Or have the flowers bloomed and the fragrance is there? Feel the breeze; feel whether it is cool or warm. Then start moving – as if you are moving in reality. It is not on the screen of the memory, you are reliving it. And through this sensitivity of taste, touch, air, feel, coolness, warmth, greenery, color, it again becomes real. Again the unconscious will start giving you messages. They can be of tremendous value.But there is a limit to it. Try to understand in this way, but always remember that whether the dream is seen in the night or relived in the day, it is a dream. And below the unconscious – or beyond the unconscious – is still another door of your being that has to be opened.Freud and the Freudians think that man ends with the conscious and unconscious. Man does not end with the conscious and unconscious, there is a super-conscious element also. And that is truer.So, don’t think that the conscious is the only mind. Before Freud it was thought that the conscious was the only mind. When Freud introduced the concept of the unconscious for the first time, he was laughed at, ridiculed, because people said, and they were linguistically right, “What nonsense! How can mind be unconscious? Mind means consciousness. If it is unconscious, it is not mind; if it is mind, it is conscious.” Of course their grammar was right and their language was true – but existentially they were wrong. And Freud by and by became victorious. Truth always wins.Now another layer has to be introduced into the world of psychology – that layer is of the super-conscious. Psychologists will again be against it. They will say, “What nonsense you are talking! You are bringing religion into psychology. Somehow we have got rid of religion and now you bring it in again from the back door!” But you cannot get rid of religion – religion is not something accidental, it is very essential. You have to recognize it. And you have to recognize its claims.Man is conscious, unconscious and super-conscious. Man is a trinity – that is the meaning of the old concept of the trinity in Christianity, Judaism. In the East we have the concept of trimurti – three faces of God, three faces of being. Man is a triangle. The third has to be remembered.The questioner has asked: “For people who have been so clouded by lies and deceptions in the waking state, can remembering dreams, reenacting and experiencing them in the waking state, be a useful method?” Yes, a useful method but with a limited possibility. And rather than remembering, emphasize reliving.“Can it be the first step on the path of higher consciousness and truth?” Certainly, but only the first step. And never be lost in the first step. There are many people who become lost in the first step and then they never take the second. Then the first is useless. Unless the second happens, the first is meaningless. Only with the second does the first become relevant. With the third the second becomes relevant. And only when you have achieved the goal does your journey become relevant. Otherwise it remains irrelevant; the relevance always comes from the beyond, the relevance is transcendental.So, first relive your dreams. It will be helpful, it will make you more alert. And then start – even in your dreaming, even while you are reliving or when you are awake, walking on the street in an ordinary waking state – start seeing yourself as a witness, not as a participant; as a watcher. The watcher, the observer, the seer, the witness, is the real step which leads you into reality. It is beyond dream.The dreams can be helpful so that the grip of the dreams on your mind is loosened, but the real step is only when you have started becoming watchful. Try it the whole day. Whatsoever you are doing, remember that you are the watcher. Walking… Remember that the body is walking, you are the watcher. Eating… Remember that the body is eating, you are the witness. If it spreads all over your day, one day, suddenly, you will see that in the dream also the watcher has a little possibility. And when you can also remember that “I am just the watcher” in the dream, then dreams disappear. Then, with the disappearance of the dreams, a new consciousness arises in you. That consciousness I call the super-consciousness. And that consciousness is the goal of the psychology of the buddhas.The fourth question:Osho,How can I come closer? What should I do?Let me tell you an anecdote:“Help me,” the man demanded of the rabbi. “I have a wife and twelve children and I cannot support them. Every year my wife gives me a new child. What should I do?”“Do?” screamed the rabbi. “Haven’t you done enough?”You ask me, “What should I do to come closer to you?” Your doing is not going to help – because by doing, you become more of a doer and the doer feeds the ego and the ego is the barrier between me and you. By non-doing you will come closer to me, not by doing. Not by willpower can you come closer to me, but only by surrendering. Only when you recognize that nothing can be done, and you are helpless and you relax, suddenly you will find that you have come close to me. When you surrender you come close to me.The mind goes on asking “What should I do?” If you do something, that very doing will not allow you to move away from the ego.Let me tell you another anecdote:Old man Ginsberg was disgusted with his family. He told them that he was leaving them and going to Japan.The boys asked, “Papa, how will you get there?”He said, “Don’t worry, I’ll row there.”They walked him to the dock and, without their father seeing, tied a very long rope to his row boat. He bade them all farewell and started rowing toward the horizon. They let him stay in the boat all night, but when the sun began to rise they became nervous about his well-being. There was a tremendous fog and the old man and the boat were not visible. The old man had been rowing away all night when suddenly he heard a voice in the distance shouting, “Abe Ginsberg, are you all right?”He turned toward the voice and shouted, “Who knows me in Japan?”Now he thinks he has reached Japan just by rowing the whole night, and the boat is tied with a long rope. He has not gone anywhere. If you want to come close to me by doing something then you may have a little or a long rope, but you will remain tethered to the shore, you cannot go far away.By doing, nobody can come close to a master. By doing, you can attain things in the world, but by doing you cannot attain anything in existence – only by non-doing, by a tremendous receptivity, passivity. You just leave it to me, you just enjoy being here. You dance, you sing, you celebrate. You forget this nonsense of coming closer and you will be coming; by your dance, by your singing, by your rejoicing, you will be coming close to me.The question is from Priya. She has asked today, but three weeks ago I gave her a message to go and dance every day. Her question has come today, but it reached me three weeks ago. It may have reached to her self today, to her own conscious it may have come today – but three weeks ago I suddenly felt that a deep desire to come close to me was arising in her unconscious, so I sent her a message to go and dance. And she is dancing, and believe me, she is coming closer.By your dance, by your laughter, by your joy, you come close to me – because in dance you relax, the doer disappears. In singing you are lost. Whenever you are lost I can penetrate your being; whenever you are there then it is difficult, because you are closed.The fifth question:Osho,I have heard sannyasins say that they are with you for some benefit to them. They have a motivation of enlightenment or something likewise. But I do not have any thoughts of enlightenment or any benefit which I may get by being with you. I just love to be in your presence without any motivation whatsoever. Please comment.Then why are you asking? In your question there is a motivation. You want me to say, “Good boy. You are absolutely right. It is you who are going to obtain enlightenment and not the others, because you have no motivation.” This is the motivation in asking the question!But remember, you cannot deceive me. Your words cannot deceive me. Your words cannot hide the motivation. Why are you asking me to comment? If you are really enjoying being here, no comment is needed. If you are really in love with me, it is enough – nothing else is needed. In love there is no question, it is a non-questioning attitude.But you want me to say, “This is the true way. You are on the right track. Soon enlightenment is going to happen to you and others who are here with motivation are going to miss.”Let me tell you an anecdote:A Jewish couple found themselves in Florida unable to find a room in a hotel. The only place left to stay in was a hotel that was notorious in its policy of not allowing Jews.The husband turned to his wife and said, “Becky, you keep your big mouth shut; not one word is to come from your lips. Leave it to me. You’ll see, I’ll talk good English, the man at the desk will never know, and we’ll get a room.”Sure enough, they walk up to the desk, Dave asks for a room, the hotel clerk gives them the key to the room, and they are set.Becky says, “Dave, it’s so hot, maybe we can go down to the pool for a swim?”Dave says, “Okay, but remember, not one word is to fall from your mouth.”They walk down to the cabanas. Dave signals the cabana boy and he sets up chairs and towels for them.Becky turns to Dave and asks, “Now can I go into the pool?”He answers, “Okay, but remember, not a syllable must you utter.”Becky goes over to the edge of the pool and sticks one toe into the water, which is icy cold, and before she realizes what she is doing, she yells, “Oy vey!” whereupon everyone at the pool turns on her. Without blinking an eye she adds, “Whatever that means.”But you cannot deceive. Howsoever you put it, it will show. Motivation is such a thing you cannot hide. There is no way to hide it; there is no language to hide it. Motivation simply shows.Now, let me tell you this. This motivation may not be very conscious to you, you may not be very aware of it, but it is there. And I am not saying that something is wrong in it, I am not trying to make you guilty about it. Always remember one thing: never feel guilty about anything.It is natural to come with a motivation, nothing is wrong in it. It is absolutely natural to come with a motivation, otherwise how else will you come? Without motivation, only a madman can come here. Without motivation, how can you come? You must have some motivation to learn meditation, to have a more silent life, to learn about love, to have more loving relationships, to know what this life is all about, to know what death is, or to know if there is something beyond death. Without motivation you cannot come to me.So I accept it absolutely, and you have to accept it – you have come to me with motivation.It is my work here to help you to drop the motivation. You come with motivation – that’s your work, without it you cannot come. Then starts my work: to help you to drop the motivation. Motivation brings you close to me, but then motivation itself becomes the obstacle. You have to come with a motivation and then you have to learn to drop it. And when you drop it, suddenly you are not only close to me, you are one with me – because closeness is still a distance. In closeness also there is a distance. Howsoever close you are, you are distant. The real closeness is only when all distance and all closeness disappear – you are simply one with me, I am one with you; when we only appear as two, but we are not.Become conscious of your motivation in asking this question and that will help you to drop it. Consciousness helps you to drop it. Anything you become conscious about starts slipping out of your hands. You cannot cling consciously, you cannot be angry consciously, you cannot be greedy consciously, you cannot be motivated consciously.Consciousness is such a mutation, it brings so much light into your being that darkness simply disappears.So the only thing to remember is: don’t be worried about others’ motivations; that is none of your business. If they are motivated, they will suffer for it, they will create their own hell. You simply don’t be concerned with it, you simply go on looking at your own motivations, you simply go on penetrating deeper and deeper into why you are here.And never feel guilty if you have found a motivation. If you come across a motivation, it is natural. But when I say it is natural, I don’t mean that it has to be there forever and ever. It is natural but it has to go. When it goes, something supernatural starts happening. If you are not aware about it and if you go on hiding it, then it will never go.And this may be a trick of the mind – looking for motivation in others. You may be using others as scapegoats. It is one of the great psychological truths about the human mind that whatsoever you want to hide within yourself you start projecting onto others. Whenever you start seeing something in somebody else, remember it as a message. Go immediately withinward – it must be there. The other is functioning only as a screen. When you see anger in others, search for it within yourself. When you see greed in others, go in and dig for it there and you will find it; when you see too much ego in others, just go inside and you will find ego sitting there. The inside functions like a projector; others become screens and you start seeing films on others which are really your own tapes.The last question:Osho,I do not feel I am a man, yet I see a man's face in the mirror.A great insight has happened to you, a great realization. Let it sink deep, let it become your constant awareness.No face is yours. All faces are false. Once you had the face of a lion, once you had the face of a donkey, once you had the face of a tree and sometimes the face of a rock. Now you have the face of a man – or a woman, ugly, beautiful, white, black.But you don’t have any face. Your reality is faceless. And that facelessness is what Zen people call the original face. It is not a face at all.When you were not born, what face had you then? When you die, what face will you carry with yourself? This face that you see in the mirror will be dropped here; it will disappear into the earth – dust unto dust. You will go faceless just as you came faceless.Right now you don’t have any face, the face is just a belief – you have believed in the mirror too much. And when you have come to realize this facelessness, you have seen the face of God.Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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One day, after he had gone blind,Rabbi Bunam visited Rabbi Fishel.Rabbi Fishel was famous throughout the landfor his miracle cures.“Entrust yourself to my care,” said his host,“I shall restore your light.”“That is not necessary,” answered Bunam,“I see what I need to see.”Spirituality is not a question of morality, it is a question of vision. Spirituality is not the practicing of virtues – because if you practice a virtue it is no longer a virtue. A practiced virtue is a dead thing, a dead weight. Virtue is virtue only when it is spontaneous; virtue is virtue only when it is natural, unpracticed – when it comes out of your vision, out of your awareness, out of your understanding.Ordinarily religion is thought of as a practice. It is not. That is one of the most fundamental misunderstandings about religion. You can practice nonviolence but you will still remain violent, because your vision has not changed. You still carry the old eyes. A greedy person can practice sharing, but the greed will remain. Even the sharing will be corrupted by the greed, because you cannot practice anything against your understanding, beyond your understanding. You cannot force your life into principles unless those principles are of your own experience.But so-called religious people try to practice virtue – that’s why they are the most unvirtuous people on the earth. They try to practice love, and they are the most unloving people on the earth. They have created all sorts of mischief: wars, hatred, anger, enmity, murder. They practice friendship, but friendship has not flowered on the earth. They go on talking about God, but they create more and more conflict in the name of God. The Christian is against the Mohammedan, the Mohammedan is against the Hindu, the Hindu is against the Jaina, the Jaina is against the Buddhist – that’s all they have been doing.There are three hundred religions and they have all created fragments in the human mind; they have not been an integrating force, they have not healed the wounds of the human soul. Because of them humanity is ill, because of them humanity is insane – and the insanity comes out of one thing. That has to be understood as deeply as possible because you can also go in the wrong direction. The wrong direction has a tremendous appeal; otherwise so many people would not have gone in it. The appeal must be great. The magnetic force of the wrong direction has to be understood, only then can you avoid it.You can try practicing anything you like and you will remain opposite to it. You can enforce a sort of stillness upon yourself: you can sit silently, you can learn a yoga posture, you can make the body still, as if it is without movement, you can make the body like a statue. And by repeating a mantra or just by repressing the mind continuously for a long time, you can enforce a certain stillness upon your being – but it will be the silence of the cemetery, it will not be throbbing, alive, kicking. It will be a frozen thing. You can deceive others, but you cannot deceive yourself and you cannot deceive God. You have got it without any understanding; you forced it upon yourself; it is a practiced silence.The real silence arises out of the understanding: “Why am I not silent? Why do I go on creating tensions for myself? Why do I go on getting into miserable patterns? Why do I support my hell?” One starts understanding the “why” of one’s hell – and by that very understanding, by and by, without any practicing on your part, you start dropping those wrong attitudes that create misery. Not that you drop them, they simply start disappearing.When understanding is there, things start changing around you. You will love, but you will no longer be possessive. It is not love that creates trouble. If you ask your so-called saints, they say it is love that creates trouble. That is an absolutely false statement. It is based on a deep misunderstanding of the human love life.It is not love that creates misery – love is one of the greatest blessings, a benediction. It is possessiveness that creates misery. Possess your beloved, your friend, your child, and you will be in misery. And when you are in misery those religious people are there waiting by the corner. They jump upon you. They say, “We told you before: never love, otherwise you will be in trouble. Drop out of all love situations, escape from the world.” And of course it appeals because you are already seeing it happening to you. It is now your own experience that they are right – and yet they are not right and it is not your experience. You never analyzed the phenomenon that has happened, you never analyzed that it is not love that has tricked you into misery, it is possessiveness. Drop possessiveness, not love.If you drop love of course the misery will disappear, because by dropping love you will be dropping possessiveness also – that will be automatically dropped. The misery will disappear, but you will never be happy. Go and see your saints. They will be a proof of what I am saying. They will never be happy.They are not unhappy, that is true, but they are not happy either. So what is the point? If happiness does not arise by dropping unhappiness then some mistake has been committed. Otherwise it should be natural. You say, “I have lit the candle and the darkness is still there.” Either you are befooling yourself or you are dreaming, hallucinating, about the candle. Otherwise it is not possible – the candle is burning bright and the darkness is still there? No, the darkness is a certain, absolute proof that the light has not entered yet.When unhappiness drops, suddenly there is happiness. What is happiness? Absence of unhappiness is happiness. What is health? Absence of disease is health. When you are not unhappy then how can you avoid happiness? When you are not unhappy how can you manage not to be happy? It is impossible. It is not in the nature of things. It is against the arithmetic of life. When a person is not unhappy suddenly all his sources are alive, a dance arises in his being, a joy rises in his being. A laughter bursts forth. He explodes. He becomes a Hasid, a Sufi. He becomes a presence of divine ecstasy. By seeing him you will see godliness – a glimpse, a ray of light. By visiting him you will be visiting a shrine, a sacred place, a teertha. Just by being in his presence you will be suffused with a new light, a new being; a new wave will arise around you and you can ride on that tidal wave and go to that other shore.Whenever there is really a dropping of unhappiness, happiness is left – nothing else is possible. One is simply happy without any reason, without any why.But your saints are not happy, your saints are very sad; your saints are not living, your saints are dead. What has happened? What calamity? What curse? A misstep. They thought love had to be dropped and then there would be no misery. They dropped love – but the misery was not happening because of love, the misery was happening because of possessiveness.Drop possessiveness! In fact, convert the energy which is involved in possessiveness into love energy. But that cannot be done by enforcing anything – a clear vision is needed, a clarity.So the first thing I would like to say to you is: spirituality is not the practicing of any virtue, spirituality is the gaining of a new vision. Virtue follows that vision; it comes on its own accord. It is a natural by-product. When you start seeing, things start changing.In life there are three things – one: the objective world, the world of things. Everybody is able to see that. We are naturally capable of seeing the objective world. But this is only the beginning of the journey. Many have stopped there and think that they have arrived home. Of course they have not arrived so they are miserable.Beyond the objective is the opening of another world – the world of the subjective. The objective is the world of things, objects; the objective is the world of science, mathematics, physics, chemistry. The objective is very clear because naturally we are born perfectly able to see the objective.The subjective has to be explored; nobody is born with a vision of the subjective. The subjective has to be explored, one has to learn what it is; one has to taste it by and by and move into it by and by. The world of music, poetry, art – the world of any creativity – is the world of the subjective. The man who starts moving inward becomes more poetic, more aesthetic. He has a different aroma around him, a different aura.The scientist lives with things; the poet lives with persons. The scientist is not at all aware of who he is, he is simply aware of what surrounds him. He may be able to know about the moon and about Mars and about the stars far, far away, but he is completely oblivious of his own inwardness. In fact the more he becomes concerned with faraway things, the more and more he becomes oblivious of himself. He remains almost in a sort of sleep about himself.The poet, the painter the dancer, the musician, they are closer to home. They live in the subjective – they know they are persons. And when you know you are a person, suddenly you become capable of looking into other persons. For a poet even a tree is a person, even animals are people; for a scientist even a man or a woman is nothing but an object. A scientist looks at a man as if he is also just an object. And if he is not aware of his own inwardness, how can he be aware of the inwardness of the other?When I use the word person, I mean that there is an inside to it which is not available to outside observation, analysis, dissection. There is a rock, it has no inside; you can break it and you can see everything. If you break a rock nothing is disturbed, nothing is destroyed. Even if it is in pieces, it is the same rock. But if you break a person, something of tremendous value immediately disappears. Now you are left with a dead body, and the dead body is not the person. The broken rock is still the same rock, but the broken person is no longer the same person. In fact the broken person is not a person at all. On the dissection table of a surgeon you are not a person; only when a poet touches you and holds your hand do you become a person.That’s why people hanker for love. The reason for the hankering for love is nothing but this: you would like somebody to see that you are a person, not a thing.You go to the dentist, he is not worried about you; he is simply interested in your teeth. Even if I go to the dentist, I see him… What a miracle! He is not interested in me, he just looks. I am there, sitting in his chair, he is completely oblivious of me. A great space is available just in his room, but he will not even look at me – that’s not his concern. He is only interested in the teeth, in his own technique. His knowledge of the objective world is his only world.People hanker for love because only love can make you a person, only love can reveal your inwardness to you, only love can make you feel that you are not just that which is apparent from the outside. You are something more; you are something totally different from what you appear to be. The reflection in the mirror is not your totality; the reflection in the mirror is just the reflection of your surface, not of your depth. It says nothing about your depth.When you come to a scientist, or a person who is absolutely absorbed with the objective dimension, he looks at you as if you are just the reflection in the mirror. He does not look at you, he looks around you. His approach is not direct, his approach is not intimate – and you feel something is missing. He is mistreating you because he is not accepting your personality. He is treating you as if you are a thing. He is doing things but he is not touching you at all; you remain almost non-existential to him.And unless somebody touches you with love, looks at you with love, your own inwardness remains unfulfilled, unrecognized; that is the need to be needed.The subjective is the dimension, the inward dimension, of poetry, song, dance, music, of art. It is better than the scientific dimension because it is deeper. It is better than the objective dimension because it is closer to home. But it is not yet the dimension of religion, remember. There are many people whose mind is obsessed with the objective – when they think about God, God also becomes an object. Then God is also outside. Ask a Christian where God is and he will look upward, somewhere in the sky – outside. When you ask a person where God is and he looks somewhere else than within himself, then he belongs to the non-religious dimension. People ask, “What is the proof of God?” Proofs are needed only for a thing. God does not need proof. If I love you, what is the proof? For poetry there is no proof, for chemistry there is. But poetry exists. And a world without chemistry would not be very much worse, but a world without poetry would not be a human world at all.Poetry brings meaning to life, the unproved brings meaning to life – the proved at the most makes you comfortable. God is not an object and cannot be proved. God is more like music. It exists, certainly it exists, but there is no way to grab it. You cannot have it in your fist, you cannot lock it into your treasury, there is no way.Love exists, but you cannot possess it. If you try to possess it, you belong to the objective dimension and you are killing love – that’s why possession is destructive. If you possess a woman, if you say, “She is my wife and I possess her” then she is no longer a person. You have reduced her to be a thing and she will never be able to forgive you. No wife has ever been able to forgive her husband; no husband has ever been able to forgive his wife – because both have reduced each other to things.A husband is a thing, a wife is a thing, and when you become a thing you become ugly – you lose freedom, you lose inwardness, you lose poetry, you lose romance, you lose meaning. You become simply a thing in the world of things. Utility is there – but who lives for utility? Utility can never be satisfying. You are being used, how can it be satisfying? Whenever you feel you are being used, you feel offended. And you should feel offended, because it is a crime to use somebody and it is a crime to allow somebody to use you. It is a crime against existence.But there are people who try to use God also. When you go and you pray for something you are trying to use existence. You don’t know what prayerfulness is, you don’t know what love is, you don’t know what poetry is, you don’t know the subjective realm at all. Your prayer, if it has a motivation in it, a desire in it, is ugly. But we find – we are very cunning people – we find ways and means.Let me tell you an anecdote:A minister, a priest and a rabbi were discussing how they decided what part of the collection money each retained for personal needs and what part was turned over to their respective institutions.“I draw a line,” said the minister, “on the floor. All the money I toss in the air. What lands to the right of the line I keep, to the left of the line is the Lord’s.”The priest nodded, saying, “My system is essentially the same, only I use a circle. What lands inside is mine, outside is his.”The rabbi smiled and said, “I do the same thing. I toss all the money into the air and whatever God grabs is his.”We even go on playing tricks with God. In fact God is also our invention, a very cunning invention. It is also somewhere there – and you can pray to him, you can ask things from him, you can find security in him, consolation, comfort. It is a security measure, a sort of other-worldly bank balance. But it remains an object.God is not an object – that’s why Mohammedans, Christians, Jews have all tried not to make any image of God. That is very symbolic and meaningful because when you make an image of God it becomes objective. Let God remain without any image. But it has remained without an image only in theology. Whether you have made an image of God or not, it makes no difference; your mind, if it is just capable of moving in the objective dimension, will treat God as an object. Even a Mohammedan turns toward Mecca for his prayers; that becomes an image. Even a Mohammedan goes to Mecca to kiss the stone; that becomes the image. The Black Stone of Mecca is the most-kissed stone ever. In fact it is very dangerous to kiss it now – it is unhygienic.But whether you make any image of God or not, if the mind is objective, your idea of God will be objective. When you think of God you start thinking of high heaven, the uppermost boundary of the sky. There God is. If you ask a truly religious person where God is, he will close his eyes and go inward. God is there, inward. Your own being is divine. Unless godliness is immanent in you, unless godliness is immersed in your being, you are carrying an image. Whether you have made an image of wood or of stone does not matter – you can make an image with thinking, thought, idea. That too is an image – of a subtler material, but still an image.Man remains the same unless he changes his dimension. Somebody is an atheist; he says, “There is no God because I cannot see him. Show me and I will believe.” And then someday he comes to have an experience, a vision, a dream in which he sees God standing there. Then he starts believing.In the Gita, Arjuna, Krishna’s disciple, goes on asking again and again, “You go on talking about him, but I cannot believe unless I see.” Now, what is he saying? He is saying, “Let God be objective then I will believe.” And Krishna concedes to his desire. I am not happy with that – because to concede to this desire means to concede that the objective dimension is capable of knowing God. The story says that Krishna then revealed his reality, his vastness; he revealed God. Arjuna started trembling and shaking. He said, “Stop! Enough! I have seen!” He saw Krishna expanding and becoming the whole universe; and in Krishna stars were moving, the sun was rising and the moon and planets and the beginning of the world and the end of the world and all life and all death was there. It was too much; he could not bear it. He said, “Stop!” And then he came to believe.But this belief does not change the object, this belief does not change the objective dimension. He did not believe because he could not see; now he has seen so he believes – but God remains in the objective world, God remains a thing. I am not happy with Krishna for doing this. It should not be done. It is conceding to a foolish disciple’s desire. The disciple needs to be changed from his dimension; he should be made more subjective.But we remain – we go on changing forms but we remain the same.I have heard:The funeral was over. Still sobbing, Goldberg, the new widower, followed his late wife’s sister into the waiting limousine. As the big car passed through the cemetery gates the sister was horrified by Goldberg’s hand, which was slowly but passionately creeping up her leg. With her body still wracked with sobs of bereavement, she screamed,“Goldberg, you monster, you fiend, you animal! My sister is not yet cold in her grave. What is the matter with you!”In a voice shaking with emotion, Goldberg replied, “In my grief do I know what I am doing?”People remain the same in their grief or in their other moods – they remain the same, they don’t change the dimension.So this is the first thing to understand: you need a shift from the objective to the subjective. Meditate more and more with closed eyes about your emotions, about your thoughts. Look deeper into the inner world, the world that is absolutely private to you. The objective is public; the subjective is private. You cannot invite anybody into your dreams, it is not possible. You cannot say to your friend, “Tonight come into my dream,” because the dream is absolutely yours. You cannot even invite your beloved who may be sleeping just on the same bed, who may be sleeping just by your side, you may be sleeping hand in hand. But you dream your dreams and she dreams her dreams. Dreams are private. The subjective is the private; the objective is the public, the objective is the marketplace. Many people can watch one thing, but many people cannot watch one thought; only one person can – the person to whom the thought belongs can watch it.Remove your consciousness more and more toward the private. The poet lives a private life; the politician lives a public life. Mahatma Gandhi used to say that he didn’t have any private life. That means he must have had a very poor life. A private life is a rich life. The politician’s life is there to be watched by everybody: on the TV, in the newspapers, in the street, in the crowd. The politician only has a public face. When he goes home he is nobody. He loses all face.You have to find your private face. The emphasis should be more on the private than on the public. And you should start learning how to love the private – because the private is the door to God. The public is the door to science, but not to religion, not to God. The public is the door toward arithmetic, calculation, but it is not the door to ecstasy, to love. And enjoy things which are very private: music, poetry, painting. Hence the insistence of Zen on calligraphy, painting, poetry, gardening – something that is absolutely private, something that you live from the in toward the out, that rises as a wave in the innermost core of your being and spreads outward.The public life is just the reverse: something rises outside and fades into you. In a public life the original, the source, is always outside. Your center of being is never within yourself, it is always outside. That’s why a politician is always afraid of the outside – because his life depends on the outside. If the people don’t vote he will be nobody.But that doesn’t make any difference to a painter or to a poet. Nobody purchased Vincent van Gogh’s paintings. During his whole life not a single painting was sold; but that didn’t matter, he enjoyed himself. If they sold, good; if they did not sell, good. The real prize was not in their being sold and appreciated, the real prize was in the painter’s creation of them. In that very creation he has attained his goal. In the moment of creation he becomes divine. You become God whenever you create.You have heard it said again and again that God created the world. I tell you one thing more: whenever you create something you become a small God in your own right. If God is the creator, then to be creative is the only way to reach him. Then you become a participant, then you are no longer a spectator.Van Gogh, appreciated or not, lived a tremendously beautiful life in his inner world – very colorful. The real prize is not when a painting is sold and critics appreciate it all over the world – that is just a booby prize. The real prize is when the painter is creating it, when the painter is lost in his painting, when the dancer has dissolved into his dance, when the singer has forgotten who he is and the song throbs. There is the real prize, there is the real attainment.In the outside world you depend on others. In the public life, in the political life you depend on others, you are a slave. In the private life you start becoming a master of your own.Let me insist and emphasize it because I would like all of my sannyasins to be creative in some way. To me, creativity is of tremendous import. An uncreative person is not a religious person at all. I am not saying that you all have to be van Goghs – you cannot. I am not saying you all have to be Leonardo da Vincis or Beethovens or Mozarts; I am not saying you all have to become Wagners and Picassos, Rabindranaths – no, I am not saying that. I am not saying that you have to become a world famous painter or poet or you have to win a Nobel Prize – because if you have that idea, again you fall into politics. The Nobel Prize comes from the outside; it is a booby prize, it is not a real prize. The real prize comes from inside. And I am not saying that you are capable – all are not capable of becoming Picassos. And there is no need either, because too many Picassos would make a very monotonous world. It is good that there is only one Picasso and it is good that he has never been repeated, otherwise it would become boring.But you all can become creators in your own way. It does not matter whether anybody comes to know about it or not, that is absolutely unimportant. You can do something out of love – then it becomes creative. You can enjoy something while you are doing it – then it becomes creative.While I am talking to you Astha is cleaning my bathroom and my room. I inquired of her if she would like to drop this work and come to the talk. She said, “Osho, cleaning your bathroom is enough for me.” It is a creative act, and she has chosen it out of love. And certainly she is not missing anything. Whether she listens to me or not is not the point. If she loves cleaning the bathroom, if she loves me, it is prayerfulness. You can be here, but you may listen to me or you may not listen to me. She is not here, but she has listened to me. She has understood me. Now the work itself becomes worship. Then it is creative.I would like to remind all of my sannyasins again and again: be creative. In the past the majority of the religious people proved to be uncreative. That was a calamity, a curse. Saints were simply sitting doing nothing. That is not real religion. When real religion explodes into people’s lives, suddenly much creativity explodes also.When Buddha was here a great creativity exploded. You can find proofs in Ajanta, Ellora. When Tantra was an alive religion a great creativity exploded. You can go to Puri, Kanorak, Khajuraho. When Zen masters were alive they created many really new dimensions – out of small things, but very creative.The question is, if you are uncreative it simply means that you must have practiced your religion, you must have forced yourself into a certain pattern, and you have got blocked, frozen in that pattern. A religious person is flowing, streaming, riverlike; seeking, exploring, always seeking and exploring the unknown, always dropping the known and going into the unknown, always choosing the unknown for the known, sacrificing the known for the unknown. And always ready. A religious man is a wanderer, a vagabond; into the innermost world he goes on wandering, moving from one place to another. He wants to know all the spaces that are involved in his being.Be more creative. Dance, and don’t bother whether somebody likes your dance or not – that is not the question. If you can get dissolved into it, you are a dancer. Write poetry. There is no need even to show it to anybody. If you enjoy it, write it and burn it. Play on your flute or guitar or sitar. You must see our tabla player, Bodhi. How meditatively he plays on his tabla! That’s his meditation. He is growing: going into it, dissolving, melting.The subjective is the realm of all art and creativity. These are the two ordinary realms of being.The third, the really religious, is the transcendental. First is the objective: the objective is the world of science; second is the subjective: the subjective is the world of art; and third is the transcendental: that which goes beyond both, is neither objective nor subjective, is neither out nor in. In it both are implied, in it both are involved, but yet it is higher than both, bigger than both, beyond both. The subjective is closer to the transcendental than the objective, but remember, just by being subjective, you don’t become religious. You have taken a step toward being religious, a very important step, but just by being subjective, you don’t become religious. You can find poets who are not religious, you can find painters who are not religious… Religion is more than art, more than science.What is this third? First, you start looking into your thoughts. Drop the public world and move into the private: look into your dreams, your thoughts, your desires, your emotions, your moods and the climates that go on changing inside you, year in, year out. Look into it. This is the subjective.Then the last and the ultimate jump: by and by, by looking into thoughts, start looking into the looker, the witness, the one who is watching the thoughts.First move from things to thoughts, then from thoughts to the thinker. Things are the world of science, thought is the world of art and the thinker is the world of religion. Just go on moving inward. The first circumference around you is of things, the second of thoughts, and the third, the center, your very being, is nothing but consciousness. It is nothing but a witnessing.Drop things and go into thoughts; then one day thoughts also have to be dropped and then you are left alone in your purity, then you are left absolutely alone. In that aloneness is godliness, in that aloneness is liberation, moksha, in that aloneness is nirvana, in that aloneness for the first time you are in the real.The objective and subjective are divided; there is a duality, a conflict, a struggle, a division. The person who is objective will miss something – he will miss the subjective. And the person who is subjective will miss something – he will miss the objective. Both will be incomplete. The scientist and the poet both are incomplete. Only the holy man is complete; only the holy man is whole. And because he is whole I call him holy.By “holy” I don’t mean that he is virtuous, by holy I mean that he is whole. Nothing is left, everything is involved. His richness is whole: the subjective and the objective have both dissolved into him. But he is not just the total of subjective and objective, he is more. The objective is without, the subjective is within and the religious is beyond. The beyond comprehends both without and within and yet is beyond.This vision is what I call spirituality: the vision of the beyond.A few more things. In the world of the objective, action is very important. One has to be active because only action is relevant in the world of things. If you do something, only then can you have more things; if you do something, only then can you change in the world of objectivity.In the world of subjectivity there is inaction. Doing is not important, feeling is. That’s why poets become lazy. And painters – even great painters and great poets and great singers, they have bouts of activity and then again they relapse into laziness. The subjective is more sleepy, dreamy, lazy; the objective is active, obsessed with action. The objective person always needs to do something or other, he cannot sit alone, he cannot rest. He can fall asleep – but once he is awake he has to do something. The subjective person is inactive. It is very difficult for him to move into action. He enjoys the world of fantasy – and that is available without action. He does not have to go anywhere, he has just to close his eyes and the world of dreams opens.The religious person is a meeting of opposites: action in inaction, inaction in action. He does things, but he does them in such a way that he never becomes the doer. He remains a vehicle of God, the passage – what the Chinese call wu-wei, inaction in action. Even if he is doing, he is not doing it. His doing is very playful; there is no tension in it, no anxiety, no obsession about it. And even when he is inactive he is not dull; even when he is sitting, or lying down and resting, he is full of energy. He is not lethargic, he is radiant with energy. Because both the opposites have come to a meeting and to a higher synthesis in him, he can act as if he is in a non-doing state, and he can remain in a non-doing state, but still you can feel the energy, you can feel a vibe of tremendous activity around his being. Wherever he moves, he brings life to people. Just by his presence dead people become alive; just by his touch dead people are called back to life.Like Jesus… When Lazarus died, Jesus was called. He went to the grave where Lazarus was kept and he called out, “Lazarus, come out!” And the dead Lazarus came out and said, “I am here. You called me out of death. I am here.”A religious person is active – not because he is a doer, a religious person is active because he has infinite energy available. A religious person is active – not because he has to do something, because he has an obsession to do, not because he cannot relax, but because he is such a pool of energy that he has to overflow; the energy is too much and he cannot contain it.So while sitting silently… You can see Buddha sitting silently under the bodhi tree but you will see energy playing around him, a great aura of energy.A beautiful story is told about Mahavira – that wherever he moved, for miles around life would become more alive. And he was an inactive man. He would simply stand or sit under a tree, for hours, for days, but for miles life would start throbbing with a new rhythm. It is said that trees would bloom out of season; trees would start growing faster than ever; dead trees would start producing new fresh leaves. Whether it happened or not is not the point, it may be just a story. But it is very indicative, it is very symbolic. Myths are not historic things, myths are very meaningful symbols. They say something.What does this myth say? It simply says that Mahavira was such a pool of energy, such an overflowing of energy, such an overflowing of God, that wherever he was, life would move faster. A speed would happen to all the existence around him. He would not be doing anything, but things would start happening.Lao Tzu has said that the greatest religious person never does anything, but millions of things happen through him. He is never a doer, but much happens through him. He simply goes on sitting and yet the impact of his being on the world of affairs is tremendous. Nobody may ever come to know about him – he may be sitting in a cave in the Himalayas so you never know about him – but still your life will be affected by him because he will be vibrating. He will give a new energy, a new pulse to life; he will impart a new pulsation to life. You may not come to know about him, but you may have been benefited by him.The opposites become complimentaries in a religious being. Day and night meet and dissolve their conflict; man and woman meet in the religious person and dissolve their conflict. A religious person is ardhanarishwar – he is half man, half woman. He is both. He is as strong as any man can be and he is as fragile as any woman can be. He is as fragile as a flower and as strong as a sword. He is hard and he is soft and he is both together. He is a miracle, he is a mystery. Because opposites meet he goes beyond logic, his being is paradoxical. He is alive as nobody else is alive and he is dead, deader than the dead who are in the graveyards. He is dead in a way and alive in a way – together, simultaneously; he has known the art of dying and the art of living simultaneously.In ordinary life with the ordinary mind everything is divided into its opposites, and there is a great attraction for meeting with the opposite: the man seeks the woman, the woman seeks the man – the yin-yang circle. In a religious man all search has stopped – the man has found the woman, the woman has found the man. In his innermost core the energy has come to a point where everything has dissolved into oneness, into non-duality, advait. All opposites become complimentaries; all conflicts dissolve and become cooperation. Then you have come home, then there is no need to go anywhere, then there is nothing to be sought, nothing to be desired. This state is the state of godliness. God is a state, God is not an object. And God is not even a person, because God is neither objective nor subjective. God is transcendental.If you are in the objective I will say, “Seek the subjective – there is the God.” If you are in the subjective, I will say, “Now go beyond. There is no God in the subjective. God is beyond.” By and by one has to go on eliminating, by and by one has to go on dropping. God is when there is no object and no subject, when there is no thing and no thought, when there is no this world and no that world. When there is no matter and no mind, God is; God is neither matter nor mind. In God, both exist. God is a tremendous paradox, absolutely illogical, beyond logic. You cannot make an image of God in wood or in stone and you cannot make an image of God in concepts and ideas. When you dissolve all images – when you have dissolved all in/out, man/woman, life/death, all dualities – then that which is left is godliness.Now this story:One day, after he had gone blind,Rabbi Bunam visited Rabbi Fishel.Rabbi Fishel was famous throughout the landfor his miracle cures.“Entrust yourself to my care,” said his host.“I shall restore your light.”“That is not necessary,” answered Bunam,“I see what I need to see.”The eyes that see only the outside are blind. They are not really eyes yet. They are very primitive, rudimentary. The eyes that see withinward are more real. The rabbi was right. He said, “Now there is no need to restore my eyes, because although I cannot see objects now I don’t want to see them anymore. And the world that I need to see, I can see. It is good that blindness happened to me because now I am no longer disturbed and distracted by the world of objects.”It has happened many times. Milton became blind – and all his great poetry was born only after he became blind. At first he was very much shocked, naturally. He lost his eyes and there was no way to restore them. He thought his whole life was finished. He was a good poet, already famous. And, of course, a poet thinks, “Without eyes, how can you see the trees and how can you see the moon and how can you see the river and the wild ocean? And without eyes how can you see the color of life? Of course your poetry will become very poor. It will lose color.” But Milton was wrong. He was a religious man and he accepted his blindness. He said, “Okay. If God wills it that way, then that has to be so.” He accepted it. And by and by he became aware of an infinite new world available: the world of inner thoughts. He became subjective. Now there was no need to see outside so all his energy was available.Have you seen blind people? On their faces you will always find a certain grace. Even ordinary blind people look very graceful, very silent. They don’t have any of the distraction of the outside world.Scientists say that man lives through the eyes; almost eighty percent of his life is involved with his eyes. Eighty percent! Only twenty percent is distributed to other senses. You live eighty percent of your life through the eyes. That’s why when you see a blind man a great compassion arises in your being. You don’t feel that much compassion for a dumb or deaf person, no, but for a blind person great compassion arises. You feel, “Poor fellow. Eighty percent of his life is not there.”Eyes are very important. The whole scientific search depends on the eyes. Have you ever heard of any scientist who was blind? It is impossible. A blind person cannot be in objective research – it becomes difficult. But there have been many blind musicians, blind singers; in fact a blind person has tremendous qualities of the ear which a man with eyes cannot have, because eighty percent of his energy is no longer being wasted by the eyes. That energy shifts to his ears. His ears become very, very receptive and sensitive. He starts seeing through his ears. Hold a blind man’s hand and you will be surprised. You will find a very alive touch – a touch you will not find in people who have eyes. Hold the hand of a blind man and you will feel a warmth flowing toward you, because the blind man cannot see you, he can only touch you. His whole energy moves into his touch.Ordinarily you touch with your eyes. A beautiful woman passes by – you look. You have touched her through the eyes. You touched her whole body – and without offending her or breaking any law. By and by you forget completely what touch is.Eyes have become monopolists – they have taken many energies from many sources. For example, the nose. Eyes are very close to the nose. The eyes have taken the whole energy from the nose. People don’t smell. They have lost their smell power. Their noses are dead. A blind person smells. His smelling capacity is tremendous. When you come close to him he knows your smell; he recognizes you by your smell. He touches you; he knows you by your touch. He hears your sound; he knows you by your sound. His other senses become alive. And he is very graceful, because the eyes create much tension.When Milton became blind, first he was shocked, but then he accepted – he was a religious man. He prayed to God and he said, “Thy will be done.” By and by he was surprised that it was not a curse, it was a blessing. He became aware of infinite colors inside. It was a psychedelic world. Very subtle nuances, very beautiful dreams started opening up for him. And all his great poetry was born when he became blind. He was a good poet but not a great poet, but when he became blind he was no longer a good poet, he became a great poet. Good poetry is just so-so – lukewarm. Maybe you cannot find any fault in it, but that’s all. Great poetry has a penetrating energy in it; great poetry is a revolutionary force; it has an impact strong enough to shake the whole world, to change the whole world.It has happened many times. If, when a certain person has suddenly become blind, he can accept it, that very acceptance gives him a new world. The objective disappears, the subjective opens its door. And the subjective is closer to the transcendental – that’s why all meditators close their eyes.Have you observed? All women close their eyes when you make love to them; men never close their eyes. They are foolish. The man wants to see the woman when he is making love to her. He would like to have the light on so he can see. And there are many foolish people who have mirrors in their bedroom. Not only would they like to see the woman, they would like to see all the reflections around. And there are a few who have fixed cameras in their room – automatically taking pictures – because if they miss something right now, later on they can see it!But women are still not that foolish. I don’t know about liberation women – maybe they are doing the same thing because they have to compete with everything, whatsoever it is. They may be making love with open eyes – but then they will miss something. Men make love in the objective dimension; women make love in the subjective dimension. Women immediately close their eyes because it is so beautiful inside, what is there to see outside? When you are moving in love energy, melting, flowing, and an orgasm is opening inside you, it is there that reality has to be looked at. The man is just foolish, he is just looking at the body; the woman is more understanding, she is looking at the psyche – a higher standpoint.But still it is not religious – artistic, aesthetic, but still not religious. When you become religious, then the tantra attitude arises. Then you don’t see with open eyes, you don’t see with closed eyes, you simply see the seer! You are not worried about the experience, you look at the experiencer, you look at the witness. Then love becomes tantra. Whether it is a man or a woman who is moving into the dimension of tantra, he or she is not interested in what is happening; rather, he or she is more interested in the witness who is watching it all. Who is this witness? And when the energy is exploding in such a natural, spontaneous realm it is better to watch. Just be a watcher on the hill. Forget about your being a man or a woman, forget about your being in the body, forget that you are a mind and just be a witness – and then you have become transcendental. Tantra is transcendental.And this dimension has to evolve in all your ordinary life situations. Whatsoever you do, you can do in three ways: objectively, that is the scientific way, the Western way; or subjectively, that is the Eastern way; or the religious way, the transcendental way, in which East and West meet and dissolve. The religious way is neither Eastern nor Western. The West is scientific, the East is poetic; the West thinks in terms of history, the East thinks in terms of myths, puranas. The West is more concerned about what reality is, the East is more concerned about the fantasy about the reality, the dream about the reality. The West is more concerned with the conscious mind, the East is more concerned with the unconscious mind. But religion is beyond both. Religion is of the super-conscious mind, the transcendental mind – it is neither Eastern nor Western.Just as man and woman meet, so East and West meet. West is more male, East is more female; West is more will, East is more surrender. But religion is beyond, and both.“That is not necessary,” answered Bunam, “I see what I need to see.” Certainly a great religious statement – it’s enough, more than enough, if you can see the seer. If you can see the seer, if you can be your consciousness, your awareness, that’s enough. All is available. You have become a God, nothing else is needed.Strive for that state of being. If you are coming from the West, struggle for it; if you are coming from the East, surrender for it. If you are coming from the West, will it; if you are coming from the East, be passive, wait for it.And if you are my sannyasins, who don’t belong to the East or to the West, then drop all duality, be non-dual. Then drop all division, then just be individual. If you belong to me then you belong to the transcendental. That is the whole meaning of being initiated by me. I bring you the transcendental, I bring you the ultimate, I bring you that which cannot be seen on the outside, that which cannot be seen on the inside – but you can become that because you are already that.Enough for today.

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Art of Dying 01-10Category: JEWISH MYSTICS

OSHO-The Art of Dying 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,You seem to be against the demystification of life. In this reference is it right to say that movements in the West like Arica, Zen, Sufism, EST, TM, etc., are the inevitable synthesis between Eastern mysticism and Western science?The real synthesis will be the disappearance of East and West; it will not be a meeting. In the real synthesis the East will not be there and the West will not be there. That’s what yesterday I called the transcendental.East and West are polarities. If you try to synthesize them, take something of the East and something of the West and make a hotchpotch out of it, it will be a compromise and not a synthesis. It will be mechanical, not organic. You can put things together – that is a mechanical unity – but you cannot put a tree together, you cannot put a human being together. The unity of a tree grows, it comes from its own innermost core and it spreads toward its circumference. It arises in the center. A mechanical unity can be put together from the outside; you can put a car or a clock together, but the clock has no center to it, the car has no center to it, the clock has no soul. That is what we mean when we say the clock has no soul; it means it has no center of its own. It is a unity put together from outside. It works; it is utilitarian.But a tree, a bird, a human baby – you cannot put them together. They grow. Their unity comes from their innermost core. They have a center.A compromise is a mechanical unity; a synthesis is an organic growth. So whatsoever is happening right now in the name of EST, TM, Arica, is a sort of mechanical unity. And mechanical unity has its own dangers. The greatest danger is this: the East has developed a great insight into religion and the West has developed a great insight into science. When a Western person starts searching in the East, his attitude is scientific. He can understand only that which is scientific in the East. Try to understand this. And the East has not developed any scientific attitude; Eastern science is very primitive and rudimentary. When a religious person goes to the West from the East, he looks into Western religion, which is very rudimentary, very primitive. And he can understand only the religious language.So when somebody from the East approaches the West, he approaches the West from the weak point in Western growth. And when somebody comes from the West to the East he approaches the East from the weakest link in its growth.Now what is happening? East and West are meeting in Arica, EST, TM and other so-called spiritual movements – and just the opposite to what was expected is happening. It is not Eastern religion meeting Western science, it is Eastern science meeting Western religion. It is an ugly affair.You must have heard:A French actress told George Bernard Shaw that she would like to get married to him.Bernard Shaw inquired why.She said, “The logic is simple. I have a tremendously beautiful body. Look at my face, look at my eyes, my form – it is perfect. And you have a beautiful intellect, the greatest intelligence ever. Our child will be a beauty: your brain and my body.”George Bernard Shaw said, “I am afraid things can go wrong. Our child may have my body and your intellect.”This is what is happening!He declined the offer to marry. He said, “It is dangerous. There is no certainty about it.”Of course, George Bernard Shaw had a very ugly body – and actresses have never been known to have any intellect. Intelligence is a strange phenomenon to actresses, otherwise why would they be actresses in the first place?Arica, EST, and TM are just by-products of the marriage between George Bernard Shaw and the actress. Things have gone wrong. This is not a synthesis; this is a compromise, a hotchpotch. And it is very dangerous.A great synthesis is needed. That synthesis will not come through movements, it will come only through a few people who attain to that synthesis in their souls. It is not a question of reading the Bible and reading the Bhagavad Gita and finding out the similarities and making a synthesis out of it – that would be a mechanical unity. Many people have done that.Dr. Bhagwandas has written a very scholarly book: The Essential Unity of All Religions. The whole thing is silly. Read the Koran, read the Veda, read the Bible, read the Dhammapada, find the similarities – it is very easy to find similarities – but in fact the Koran is beautiful only because of those things which are not in the Gita. The beauty is in its uniqueness. When you find something, as Mahatma Gandhi has done… He read the Koran and found things which were similar to the Gita. He was looking for the Gita in the Koran. It was unjust to the Koran; it was not good manners either because he was imposing some alien element on the Koran. And whatsoever was not similar to the Gita, in tune with the Gita, he would forget about. He would forget that it existed in the Koran. And that which was dropped is the uniqueness of the Koran.The same can be done by a Christian. He can look into the Gita and find something which satisfies his Christian mind – then he is looking for the Bible in the Gita, but the Gita is beautiful only where it is not at all similar to the Bible. There is its uniqueness. Beauty is in uniqueness; similarities become clichés, similarities become meaningless, similarities are monotonous. The Himalayas are beautiful because they have something unique that is not in the Alps. And the Ganges is beautiful because it has something that is not in the Amazon. Of course both are rivers, and there are a thousand and one similar things, but if you go on looking for similarities you will live in a very boring world. I am not in favor of it.I will not tell you to look into Eastern scriptures and into Western scriptures and to find some sort of compromise, no. I would like you to go into your innermost being. If you go beyond the object, you have gone beyond the West; if you go beyond the subject, you have gone beyond the East. Then the transcendental arises and there is the synthesis. And when it has happened within you, then you can spread it without also. The synthesis has to happen within human beings, not in books, not in dissertations, not in PhD theses. An organic unity is possible only in an organic way.This is what I am doing here. I am hammering you to make you go beyond the objective and beyond the subjective. I am not telling you to make subjective and objective meet inside you, because that meeting will not be able to bring the higher into existence. You have to go beyond. The humanity of the future has to go beyond East and West; both have been only half, both have been lopsided. I am neither for East nor for West, I am for a total world, a world that is whole.But it is natural in a way – Arica, EST, TM – in a way natural. This is because the common humanity, the ordinary human mind, always tries to find cheap methods, shortcuts. People are not really interested in the ultimate truth; they are interested at the most in a convenient, comfortable life. They are not really interested in being alive and being an adventurer, they are really afraid of all adventures. They want to put things together in such a way that things become comfortable and one can live comfortably and one can die comfortably. Comfort seems to be the goal, not truth.And everybody has his own prejudice. The Christian, the Hindu, the Mohammedan all have their prejudices. They are very deep-rooted. You can talk about love, but that is always superficial.Let me tell you an anecdote:The distraught young man was perched on the fortieth floor window ledge of a midtown hotel, threatening to jump. The closest the police could get was the roof of an adjacent building a few feet below. However, all pleas to the man to return to safety were of no avail.A priest from the nearest parish was summoned and he hastened to the scene.“Think, my son,” he intoned to the would-be suicide in a very loving way. “Think, my son, think of your mother and father who love you.”“Oh, they don’t love me,” the man replied. “I am jumping.”“No, my son, stop!” cried the priest with great love in his voice. “Think of the woman who loves you.”“Nobody loves me. I am jumping,” came the response.“But think, still think, my boy,” the priest implored. “Think of Jesus and Mary and Joseph who love you.”“Jesus, Mary and Joseph?” the man queried. “Who are they?”At which the point the cleric yelled back, “Jump, you Jew bastard, jump!”All love disappears immediately. All talk of love is just superficial; all talk of tolerance is intolerant deep down.People say, “Tolerate each other.” What do you mean when you say, “Tolerate each other”? It is already intolerant. The very word tolerance is ugly. When you tolerate somebody, do you love him? When Hindus tolerate Mohammedans, do they love them? When Mohammedans tolerate Hindus, do they love them? Can tolerance ever become love? Tolerance may be politics, but it is not religion.One who wants to know the truth – the truth that is beyond all polarities: man–woman, East–West, good–bad, heaven–hell, summer–winter – one who is interested in knowing, in inquiring into the truth which is beyond all dualities, has to drop all his prejudices. If he still carries his prejudice, that prejudice will color his mind.To know truth you need not be a Hindu, you need not be a Mohammedan, you need not be a Christian, you need not be a Jew – to know truth you have to drop all this rubbish, you have to be just yourself. You need not be Indian, you need not be American, you need not be English, you need not be Japanese, Chinese. To know truth you have just to be immense, huge, vital, alive, loving, inquiring, meditative, but with no prejudice, with no scripture, with no concepts, with no philosophy.When you are completely nude of all that has been taught to you, when all the conditionings have dropped, then suddenly there is the highest truth – and that highest truth is a synthesis unto itself; you need not synthesize. It is an organic unity. And from that altitude you can laugh at all the nonsense that goes on in the name of religion, in the name of tolerance, in the name of love, in the name of churches and temples and mosques.The revolution has to happen within you; it has not to be introduced into the world. Because only you are alive – society is dead, society is just a name. Only you have something of the soul. The synthesis has to happen there. The synthesis does not have to happen in Pune or in New York or in Timbuktu or in Constantinople, the synthesis is going to happen within you, within me. And each individual has to become a great experiment toward that synthesis. But remember, when that synthesis arises, you will not be able to say whether it is a synthesis between East and West, between Mohammedan and Christian, between Hindu and Jaina. No, you will immediately be able to see it is a transcendence. Synthesis, real synthesis, organic synthesis, is a transcendence; your altitude has changed, you are standing on the highest peak. From there you look.Whatsoever we look at, whatsoever we see, is not very important. The important thing is where you stand. If you are clinging to the East, whatsoever you see in the West will be a misinterpretation.Just the other day I was reading a newspaper; someone had written an article against me. The article asked how Americans can understand religion, how Western people can understand religion. They cannot, so my whole effort is wastage. This is the Indian chauvinist mind. The Indian thinks that nobody can understand religion except the Indian. And this is not only so with the Indian, this is so with everybody. Everybody deep down carries this nonsense: “we are the chosen few.” This idea is very destructive.It is not a question of being American or Indian; truth has nothing to do with all these labels. Truth is available to anybody who is ready to drop all these labels. Truth is understood only when you are neither American nor Indian nor Hindu nor Christian. Truth is understood by a consciousness that is no longer clouded by any conditionings, which is no longer clouded by the past. Otherwise we go on seeing in things only that which we can understand.I was reading a very beautiful anecdote:The family managed to bring the patriarchal grandfather from Hungary and he came to live with his daughter and her family.The old man was fascinated by New York and all it had to offer.One day his grandson, Yunkel, took him to the zoo in Central Park. Most of the animals were familiar to the old man. However they came to the cage where the laughing hyena was confined and the old man became curious.“Yunkel, in the old country I never heard of an animal that laughed.”Yunkel noticed the keeper standing nearby and approached him.“My grandfather recently came from Europe. He says they don’t have any laughing hyenas there. Could you tell me something about it so that I can in turn tell him?”The keeper said, “Well, he eats once a day.”Yunkel turned to his grandfather and said in Yiddish, “He eats once a day.”The keeper continued, “He takes a bath once a week.”“He bathes once a week.”The old man listened intently.The keeper added, “He mates once a year.”“He mates once a year.”The old man shook his head up and down thoughtfully.“All right. He eats once a day, he bathes once a week, but if he mates only once a year, why is he laughing?”Now this old man is not so old. His mind is still clinging somewhere to his youthful days. His mind is still sexual. He cannot understand why the hyena is laughing if he mates only once a year.There are people who cannot understand that happiness is possible in any way other than sex. There are people who cannot understand that there is any bliss beyond sex. There are people who cannot understand that there is any happiness except in food. There are people who cannot understand that there is any happiness except in big houses, big cars, much money, power and prestige. It is impossible to understand beyond your own standpoint – people remain confined within their own standpoints.That is the real prison. If you want a synthesis you have to drop all the imprisonment, you have to drop out of your cages. They are very subtle cages and you have decorated them for a long time. You may have even started loving them. You may have forgotten completely that they are prisons; you may have started thinking that they are your home. A Hindu thinks Hinduism is his home, he never thinks that it is a barrier. All “isms” are barriers. The Christian thinks that Christianity is the bridge; he never thinks that it is Christianity that is not allowing him to reach to Christ. The church is not the door; it is the wall, the barrier, the Wall of China.But if you have lived with this wall for too long, for centuries, if the mind has become accustomed to it, you think of it as a protection, as a shelter, as security. And then you look at other people; from your cell in the prison you look outside. Your presence in the cell corrupts your vision.Come out under the sky and under the stars – and synthesis will take care of itself. You need not synthesize East and West, you are simply to go beyond these standpoints. Move to the transcendental, and there is synthesis.The second question:Osho,I have heard you saying that man is a goal-oriented process and his destination is the stars. Can you please open this flower for me for a deep smell?The flower is open. I suspect your nose is closed.Your nose has to be opened and you have to reclaim the capacity to smell. You may have lost the sensitivity to smell. You have lived so long in lies that when you come across truth you cannot recognize it. Even truth has to come to you – if truth wants to be recognized – in the garb of a lie. You cannot see it directly. You have learned how to look sideways; you never look directly, your look is never immediate. You are always wavering this way or that and you are always losing the fact.I am here. This is the flower I am talking about. I am your future. That which is going to happen to you has happened to me. If you cannot smell then don’t blame the flower – blow your nose.But that is difficult for the ego; the ego is always ready to deny, it is never ready to transform itself. The ego can say, “There is no God”; it cannot say, “Maybe it is because I have got so many blocks that I cannot feel God.” The ego can deny that there is a flower, but it cannot recognize the fact that it has lost the capacity to smell.Hence there are so many people who deny God. It is easy to deny God, it is comfortable in fact, because if there is no God you need not bother about your nose, you need not work upon your being. If there is no God then there is no work, then there is no growth, then there is no search – you can be lazy, you can drown yourself in lethargy. If there is no God then there is no guilt.I am against guilt, the guilt that has been created by the priests, but there is a different type of guilt which is not created by the priest. And that guilt is very meaningful. That guilt arises if you feel there is something more in life and you are not working hard to get to it. Then you feel guilt. Then you feel that somehow you are creating barriers to your own growth, that you are lazy, lethargic, unconscious, asleep; that you don’t have any integration; that you cannot move toward your destiny. Then guilt arises. When you feel that you have the possibility and you are not turning it into actuality, then guilt arises. That guilt is totally different.I am not talking about the guilt that priests have created in humanity: don’t eat this otherwise you will feel guilty, don’t do that otherwise you will feel guilty. They have condemned millions of things, so if you eat, if you drink, if you do this and that, you are surrounded by guilty feelings. I am not talking about that guilt; that guilt has to be dropped. In fact that guilt helps you to remain where you are. Those guilty feelings don’t allow you to know the real guilt inside.They create so much fuss about small things. You eat in the night and the Jainas create much fuss: you are guilty, you are a sinner. Why have you eaten in the night? Or you have divorced your wife or your husband and the Catholics create a guilty feeling in you; you have done something wrong. It was not wrong to live with the woman and continuously fight, it was not wrong to destroy the woman and destroy yourself, it was not wrong to destroy the children – just between the two of you they were being crushed, their whole life was conditioned in a wrong way. No, that was not bad; but if you get out of that marriage, if you get out of that hell, you feel guilty.These guilt feelings don’t allow you to see the real spiritual guilt, which has nothing to do with any politics, with any priesthood, with any religion or church. This guilt feeling is very natural. When you see that you can do something and you are not doing it, when you see how potential you are but you are not changing that potentiality into actuality, when you see that you are carrying tremendous treasures as seeds which could bloom, and you are not doing anything about it and you are just remaining in misery – then you feel a great responsibility toward yourself. And if you are not fulfilling that responsibility, you feel guilty. This guilt is of tremendous import.I am here; the flower is here. In Zen they say that the flower does not talk, but I would like to contradict that. I would like to say to you the flower talks too, but one thing is needed: you need the capacity to hear, you need the capacity to smell. The flower has its own language. It may not talk in the language that you understand. Your language is a very local language; the flower speaks the universal language.I am here; look into me, feel me, try to imbibe my spirit in you, let my flame come closer to you. Any moment there can be the jump – my flame can jump and light your unlit candle. Just come close, come close… And when I say come close, I mean be more and more in love. Love is the only closeness there is; love is the only intimacy there is. It is not a question of physical closeness; it is a question of inner intimacy. Be open to me, as I am open to you. Be available to me, as I am available to you. Don’t be afraid; you have nothing to lose – except your chains.The third question:Osho,Somewhere there is a fear which makes me closed and hard and sad and desperate and angry and hopeless. It seems to be so subtle that I don't even get really in touch with it. How can I see it more clearly?The only problem with sadness, desperateness, anger, hopelessness, anxiety, anguish, misery, is that you want to get rid of them. That’s the only barrier.You will have to live with them. You cannot just escape. They are the very situation in which life has to integrate and grow. They are the challenges of life. Accept them. They are blessings in disguise. If you want to escape from them, if you somehow want to get rid of them, then the problem arises – because if you want to get rid of something, you never look at it directly. And then the thing starts hiding from you because you are condemnatory; then the thing goes on moving deeper into the unconscious, hides in the darkest corner of your being where you cannot find it. It moves into the basement of your being and hides there. And of course the deeper it goes, the more trouble it creates – because then it starts functioning from unknown corners of your being and you are completely helpless.So the first thing is: never repress. The first thing is: whatsoever is the case is the case. Accept it and let it come – let it come in front of you. In fact just to say “do not repress” is not enough. If you allow me, I would like to say, “Befriend it.” You are feeling sad? Befriend it, have compassion for it. Sadness also has a being. Allow it, embrace it, sit with it, hold hands with it. Be friendly. Be in love with it. Sadness is beautiful. Nothing is wrong with it. Who told you that something is wrong in being sad? In fact only sadness gives you depth. Laughter is shallow; happiness is skin-deep. Sadness goes to the very bones, to the marrow. Nothing goes as deep as sadness.So don’t be worried. Remain with it and sadness will take you to your innermost core. You can ride on it and you will be able to know a few new things about your being that you had never known before. Those things can be revealed only in a sad state; they can never be revealed in a happy state. Darkness is also good and darkness is also divine. The day is not only God’s, the night is his also. I call this attitude religious.“Somewhere there is a fear which makes me closed and hard and sad and desperate and angry and hopeless. It seems to be so subtle that I don’t even really get in touch with it.” It becomes subtle if you want to get rid of it. Then of course it protects itself, it hides in the deepest corners of your being. It becomes so subtle and so garbed that you cannot recognize it. It starts coming under different names. If you are very much against anger then anger will arise under a different name – it may become pride, it may become ego, it may become even a religious pride, it may become even pious. It may hide behind your virtues, it may start hiding behind your character. Then it becomes very subtle because now the label is changed. It is playing somebody else’s role, but deep down it remains anger.Let things be as they are. This is what religious courage is: to allow things as they are.I am not promising you any rose garden – there are thorns, roses also. But you can reach the roses only when you have passed the thorns. A man who has never been sad cannot really be happy. It is impossible for him to be happy. His happiness will be just a forced gesture – empty, impotent. You can see it on people’s faces when they laugh: their laugh is so shallow, it is just painted on their lips. It has no relationship with their heart, it is absolutely unconnected.It is just like lipstick – the lips look red and rosy, but that redness does not come from the redness of the blood. It is good if lips are red, but the redness should come from aliveness, from your blood cells, from your energy, vitality, youth. Now, you paint your lips – they look red, but it is ugly. Lipstick is ugly. And you will find only ugly women using it. What does a beautiful woman have to do with lipstick? The whole thing seems to be absurd. If your lips are red, vital, alive, what is the point of painting them? You are making them ugly and false.Your happiness is also like lipstick. You are not happy and you know you are not happy, but you cannot accept the fact because that would be too shattering for your ego. You – and not happy?! How can you accept it? Maybe you are not happy inside, but that is your own problem, you must not express it, you are not to say the truth. For the world you have to keep a face, you have to maintain a personality. So you go on laughing. Watch people’s laughter and you will immediately see which laughter comes from the heart. When laughter comes from the heart you can immediately feel a different vibe – an overflowing. That man is really happy. When laughter is just on the lips it is empty. It is just a gesture; nothing is behind it. It is a facade.The man who cannot laugh deeply is the man who has repressed sadness – he cannot go deep because he is afraid of sadness. Even if he goes deep into his laughter, there is a fear that sadness may surface, may bubble up. He has to be always on guard.So please, whatsoever the situation is, start allowing it. If you are sad, you are sad. This is what God means for you – at this moment at least he wants you to be sad. So be true – be sad! Live this sadness. And if you can live this sadness, a different quality of happiness will arise in you; it will not be a repression of sadness, it will be beyond sadness.A person who can be patiently sad will suddenly find that one morning happiness is arising in his heart from some unknown source. That unknown source is existence. You have earned it if you have been truly sad; if you have been truly hopeless, desperate, unhappy, miserable, if you have lived in hell, you have earned heaven. You have paid the cost.I was reading a joke:Mr. Goldberg came home from the office unexpectedly and found his wife in bed with Mr. Cohen, the next-door neighbor.Distraught and angry, he ran next door and confronted Mrs. Cohen.“Mrs. Cohen!” he cried. “Your husband is in bed with my wife.”“Calm down! Calm down!” Mrs. Cohen said. “Look, don’t take it so hard. Sit down, have a cup of tea. Relax.”Mr. Cohen sat quietly and drank his cup of tea. It was then that he noticed a little glint in Mrs. Cohen’s eye.Coyly she suggested, “You want a little revenge?”And with that they withdrew to the couch and made love. Then they had another cup of tea, then a little more revenge, a little more tea, more revenge; more tea…Finally Mrs. Cohen looked at Mr. Goldberg and asked, “How about another revenge?”“I will tell you, Mrs. Cohen,” said Mr. Goldberg quietly, “to be truthful, I‘ve got no hard feelings left.”Whatsoever the situation, if you are sad, be sad; if you are in a revengeful mood, take your revenge; if you are jealous, be jealous; if you are angry, be angry. Never avoid the fact. You have to live it, that is part of life’s progress, growth, evolution. Those who avoid remain immature. If you want to remain immature then go on avoiding; but remember, you are avoiding life itself. Whatsoever you are avoiding is not the point; the very avoiding is an avoidance of life.Confront life. Encounter life. Difficult moments will be there, but one day you will see that those difficult moments gave you strength because you encountered them. They were meant to be. Those difficult moments are hard when you are passing through them, but later on you will see they have made you more integrated. Without them you would never have been centered, grounded.The old religions all over the world have been repressive; the new religion of the future is going to be expressive. And I teach that new religion. Let expression be one of the most fundamental rules of your life. Even if you have to suffer for it, suffer. You will never be a loser. That suffering will make you more and more capable of enjoying life, of rejoicing in life.The fourth question:Osho,You are the best whiskey-coke I have ever had. I stumble out of your lectures every day, my head spinning. Should I give you up as a bad habit?It is very difficult to give up bad habits. Good habits are very easy to drop.Who has ever heard of any man or woman capable of giving up a bad habit? And if religion has become your bad habit, or sannyas, you are blessed, you are fortunate. If I am your bad habit then you are fortunate. I would never like to become a good habit to you, no, because a good habit can be dropped very easily!Let me tell you an anecdote:St. Peter, concerned about the state of affairs in America, sent his most dependable and conservative disciple, St. Theresa, to look over the situation and give him a personal report. She stopped first in New York and phoned at the end of three days to say that things were even worse than they had feared.“Let me come home,” she begged.“No,” said St. Peter. “Finish the job. Go on to Chicago.”She called him again from Chicago with an even more dismal tale. “It is a mess of corruption,” she reported sadly. “Sinners on all sides. I can’t take any more of it. Allow me to return to heaven.”“Patience and fortitude,” consoled St. Peter. “They tell me Hollywood is worst of all. Have a look around out there and then you can come home.”Two weeks went by, then four weeks went by, then six weeks went by without further word from St. Theresa. St. Peter, beside himself with anxiety, was about to turn the case over to the celestial FBI when the phone finally rang and the operator said,“One moment, please. Hollywood calling.”And then a sweet voice came over the wire, “Hullo, Peter darling! How divine! This is Terry.”I would not like you to become St. Theresas. Even if you go to Hollywood, Hollywood is not going to corrupt you because I have corrupted you finally, utterly. I am a bad habit. And nobody can make a good habit out of me because good habits are not reliable. At the drop of the hat, good habits disappear. Let religion be your bad habit; let meditation be your bad habit. Yes, it is perfectly good – let me be your whisky-coke.The fifth question:Osho, When I first saw you, I felt I had found protection. Osho will protect. But now I am asking myself, “How is Osho going to protect me from Osho himself?” Please comment.That is not your problem. That is my problem. How am I going to protect you from myself? That is my problem. It is none of your business.One thing I can say… Let me say it through an anecdote:Edwin’s life was over. His wife had left him and taken the children. He had lost his job. The bank had just foreclosed the mortgage on his house. He decided the only thing left for him to do was to jump off a bridge and kill himself. He walked to the Brooklyn Bridge, climbed as high as he could and was just about to jump when he heard a voice down below, screeching.“Don’t jump! I can help you.”He yelled back, “Who are you?”To which the voice replied, “I am a witch.”Curious, he climbed down and there before him was an ugly old crone. She looked at him and said,“I am a witch and if you do as I say I will grant you three wishes.”He thought to himself, “Things can’t be any worse so what do I have to lose?” So he said, “All right. What do I have to do?”She said, “Come home with me and spend the night.”He went with her to her hovel and she commanded him to make wild love to her. With great effort he accomplished all her bidding and finally fell asleep in a completely exhausted state. When he woke up there was the ugly old woman standing in front of him.He said, “Now that I have done your bidding old witch, you must keep your part of the bargain and grant me my three wishes.”The hag looked at him and asked, “How old are you?”He replied, “Forty-two.”The old woman sighed, “Do you mean to tell me that you still believe in witches?”Listening to me for so long, do you tell me you still believe in Osho?My whole effort is to take all the props away from you, all beliefs, Osho included. First I pretend to give you help, because that is the only language you understand. Then by and by I start withdrawing myself. First I take you away from your other desires and help you to become very passionate about nirvana, liberation, truth. And when I see that now all desires have disappeared, there is only one desire left, then I start hammering on that desire, and I say, “Drop it because this is the only barrier.”Nirvana is the last nightmare. You cannot go back because once you have dropped those futile desires, you cannot get back into them. Once you have dropped them, the very charm, the very mystery disappears from them. You cannot really believe how you were carrying them for so long. The whole thing looks so ridiculous you cannot go back.And I start taking the last desire from you. Once the last desire disappears, you are enlightened. Then you are Osho. My whole effort here is to make you capable of declaring yourself that you are also a master – and not only declaring it, living it too.The sixth question:Osho,When I think about your life on this earth and why you have come, it seems that there must be a risk in your undertaking – and the possibility of failure, that your work cannot be granted, that you also must be able to err, to commit a mistake. It seems that if there is no freedom to err, then there is no freedom at all.But when I look at you there is no question of mistakes; egolessness is perfect. Please comment.The first thing: I am not under any obligation to do anything. This is not an undertaking. I am not doing any work actually; it is not work that I am doing. It may be work for you, it is not work for me. I am enjoying the game. It is a play. And in a play it does not matter whether you make mistakes or not. It does not matter.Mistakes become very, very important when you are serious about a thing. When you are doing it as serious work then mistakes become very important. But I am not doing it seriously at all. It is laughter, it is a dance, it is a play for me. I am enjoying it. And I have no plan, no reverence for it. How can I commit a mistake? You can commit a mistake if you have a plan – then you know where you missed. I carry no plans with me. I have no blueprint. I simply go on doing whatsoever happens in the moment. So whatsoever happens is perfectly right because there is no way to judge it, there is no criterion, there is no touchstone. That’s the beauty of it. And that’s what freedom is. In serious work you can never be free; in serious work anxiety will always haunt you; in serious work you are always afraid that something can go wrong.With me nothing can go wrong because there is nothing that is right. If something is right then something can go wrong; if nothing is right then nothing is wrong. That’s the meaning of the Eastern concept of leela – play. It is a playfulness. While I am here I am enjoying this playfulness, I am enjoying it terribly, enjoying it terrifically.You ask, “When I think about your life on this earth…” You are thinking in wrong terms. You are thinking in the terms that religions have conditioned your minds to think in. You are thinking as Christians, Hindus, Mohammedans, Jainas do. You have not yet learned my language.Christians think that Christ came to deliver the whole world from sin – all nonsense! You can see the world is not delivered yet. In fact if the world were completely delivered from sin there would be no work left for Christ. He would go broke. He would go bankrupt. He would have to close the shop. Jainas think that tirthankaras come to help humanity. I can understand – you want help, so you project help.But a tirthankara is not going to help you. He is simply enjoying. And if you want to enjoy, you can participate. He simply opens a door to spiritual enjoyment, to spiritual bliss. And he is not worried whether you come or not, he is not worried whether a few people come or millions come. If nobody comes it is as good as if millions come. He is not in search of customers. He is happy; things are going perfectly well for him. If a few people come and dance with him, good. If nobody comes, he dances alone. His dance remains perfect, it is not a work.Hindus think avatars come when the world is in misery, when the world is in ignorance. When religion disappears from the world then avatars come. All nonsense! Avatars have come many, many times, but the misery has not disappeared, the ignorance has not disappeared.Religion never becomes an established fact; in fact the moment religion becomes established, it is no longer religion, it becomes a church. Established religion is no longer religion, religion remains only unestablished. Religion is a rebellion. You cannot make anything established out of it; it is intrinsically rebellious. And the play continues.But I can understand why people have projected their need for help all over the world. This is their hope. They are in misery, that is certain, and they want somebody to help them. Why do you want somebody to help you? – because you don’t want to take the responsibility on yourself. First you say that others have made you miserable, now you say that somebody has to take you out of the misery. What are you doing? You don’t create your misery, you can’t drop it.Do you exist or not? Responsibility is existence, responsibility gives you being. If you go on throwing responsibility on to someone else – it is the Devil who is creating misery and it is God who becomes Christ, becomes Mohammed, becomes Mahavira, and takes you out of the misery – then what are you doing? You seem to be just like a football: on one side is the Devil, on one side is God, and you are being kicked from this side to that. Enough! Simply say, “Enough! I am not going to allow myself to be kicked anymore.” Are you a football? Claim responsibility.I am not here to help you. You may be here to be helped, but I am not. I am just enjoying my thing. I am doing my thing. And you will be benefited more if you drop your idea of help and work and Christ and avatars. You will be helped more if you drop all concepts of help. Simply be with me. Don’t bring business into it. Let it be pure play.“…it seems that there must be a risk in your undertaking…” There is nothing, no risk – because it is not an undertaking. I am not risking anything because there is nothing to risk, there is nothing to lose. All that is, always is. And that which is not, never is. So what is the risk?If somebody comes and kills me, he kills only my body, which is already dead, has always been dead; it is part of the earth. So, dust unto dust. He cannot kill me. I was before I was born; I will be after death has happened. So what has he done? – nothing serious; nothing of much importance. The person may think he had done a very serious thing: that he has killed me, that he has crucified a Jesus or killed a Socrates. That is his idea. But in me, that which is matter is going to fall into matter and that which is consciousness is going to fall into consciousness, so nobody can kill me. You can shoot at me, but you cannot shoot me. You can cut my head off, but your sword will not touch me. The sword is material and it cannot touch the spiritual.There is no risk and there is no possibility of failure – because there is no possibility of success either. I cannot succeed so how can I fail? In fact the very terminology of success, failure, benefit, loss, is absurd, irrelevant.You ask: “…that your work cannot be granted, that you must be able to err, to make a mistake. It seems that if there is no freedom to err then there is no freedom at all.” Freedom is so absolute that there is no right and no wrong. Freedom is so absolute that whatsoever you do is right. It is not that you have to do something and sometimes it is right and sometimes it is wrong. Try to understand my standpoint from my grounding, from my centering. Whatsoever you do is perfectly right – not that it fulfills any criterion of what is right. Simply there is no criterion of what is right. That’s why I can be with Hasids, I can be with Sufis, I can be with tantrikas, I can be with yogis. It is very difficult for so-called religious people; if they are with Mahavira, how can they be with Mohammed? Impossible. If one is right then the other is wrong. If they are with Krishna, how can they be with Christ? If one is right, the other is wrong. Their mathematics is clear: only one can be right. To me there is no criterion.You cannot judge who is right and who is wrong. Mahavira is right because he enjoyed his thing; Buddha is right because he also enjoyed his thing; Mohammed is right because he enjoyed his thing, tremendously. Bliss is right. So whatsoever I am doing I am enjoying it tremendously – and to be blissful is to be right.Even if I commit mistakes according to you… Maybe sometimes you feel I am committing a mistake. That will be according to you, because you carry some criterion.I stayed in a Jaina family once. An old man came to see me – ninety years old. And he touched my feet and said,“You are almost a twenty-fifth tirtankara.”I said, “Wait, don’t be in a hurry. Just watch me.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “Simply watch me. Otherwise you will have to take your words back.”He became a little disturbed. It was dusk, the sun was setting, the evening was descending and a woman, my host’s wife, came in and said, “Your food is ready.”I said, “Wait.”The old man said, “What? The sun has already gone past the horizon. Are you going to take your food?”I said, “Yes, I am telling the woman to wait. I will have to take my bath and then I will take my food.”He stood up. He said, “Sorry. I must take my words back. You were right. You can eat at night? You don’t know even this much? Then what type of enlightened person are you?”He has a certain criterion: an enlightened person cannot eat at night. This is the Jaina criterion.If you go to any person he has criteria and he looks through those windows to see if I fit or if I don’t fit. But I am not here to fulfill your expectations. I am always right because I don’t carry any criteria. There is no way. You cannot even find contradictions in me, because whatsoever I have said up to this moment is irrelevant. I don’t bother a bit about it. Now it is for foolish scholars, it is finished for me! The moment I say something, I enjoy saying it – that’s all. More than that is not my concern. The moment I do something I enjoy it infinitely – beyond that it is not my concern.“But when I look at you there is no question of mistakes; egolessness is perfect.” How can egolessness be perfect? The very idea of perfection is the ego; egolessness cannot be perfect. Egolessness simply means an absence of the ego. Can absence be imperfect? Absence cannot be imperfect, so how can absence be perfect? Absence is simply absence. Ego can be imperfect, ego can be perfect, but egolessness cannot be either. There is nobody to be perfect.Seeing the point that the whole game of ego is absurd, ego disappears. Nothing is left behind. There is a wholeness, but there is no perfection. There is totality, but there is no perfection.The old religions were all perfection-oriented; my whole teaching is whole-oriented. I say be whole, I don’t say be perfect. And the difference is tremendous. When I say be whole, I allow you contradictions. Then be wholly contradictory. When I say be whole, I don’t give you a goal, a criterion, an ideal; I don’t want to create any anxiety in you. I simply want you, in this moment, wherever, whatsoever you are doing, and whatsoever you are, to be total in it. If you are sad, be totally sad – you are whole. If you are angry, be totally angry. Go into it totally.The idea of perfection is absolutely different, diametrically opposite – not even different, opposite. The perfectionists will say, “Never be angry; always be compassionate. Never be sad; always be happy.” They choose one polarity against the other. In wholeness we accept both the polarities: the lows and the highs, the ups and the downs. Wholeness is totality. And you have to see the whole nonsense of the ego; otherwise it can come in from the back door. If I say, “Now become perfectly egoless,” you will have to prove that there exists nobody who is more egoless than you.Let me tell you an anecdote:A family with a son about to be bar mitzvahed wanted to celebrate the occasion in a unique way. Money was no object. The caterer suggested many things: flying the party out to Disneyland, renting out the White House, having the affair in a nuclear submarine. All of these ideas were rejected by the family as old hat. It was not until the caterer came up with the idea of having the bar mitzvah on safari in Africa that the family grew excited. Invitations were issued to two hundred guests, two hundred plane tickets were bought and the group set off for Africa.In Africa the bar mitzvah party was met by two hundred elephants, fifty guides, seven buglers and three hundred native porters who were to carry their food. Each guest mounted his own elephant with the father of the bar mitzvah boy in the rear of the procession.They were only several miles into the jungle when the whole caravan came to a sudden halt.From the rear elephant the father cried, “What is going on there?”And the question was repeated two hundred times till it reached the head guide at the front of the procession. The answer came back up the line.“We have to stop here for a little while.”“Why?” wailed the distressed father.“Why?” wailed the two hundred guests as the question proceeded up the line.And then came the answer.“There is another bar mitzvah party ahead!”The whole ego trip is like that. You move in a circle, you can never be in the front – never. Again there will be a bar mitzvah party ahead. Even in the darkest jungles of Africa you cannot do anything that has not been done before, you cannot be anything that has not happened before, you cannot be unique. That’s why the ego can never be satisfied. The ego remains imperfect and goes on demanding perfection.My whole message is to see the truth, to see the hell that ego creates in the name of perfection, uniqueness, and to let it drop. Then there is a tremendous beauty – no ego, no self, just a deep emptiness. And out of deep emptiness is creativity, out of that nothingness arises bliss, sat-chit-anand, truth-being-bliss, all arise out of that absolute purity. When the ego is not, you are a virgin. Christ was born out of a virgin; your nothingness is that mother virgin, Mother Mary.The last question – and the most important one. In fact a question of historic importance:Osho,Why do you always carry a towel? And why don't you drop it now?The first thing: the towel has been with me for almost twenty-five years. It is a silver jubilee year! And I am very surprised by the question because only last night I decided to drop it.I am reminded of a story:A man became very old, he became a hundred years old, and the journalists came to interview him. They asked many questions. One journalist, hesitating a little about whether to ask or not – that must also have been the case with the person who asked this question; he or she must have hesitated many times whether to ask such an absurd question or not – the journalist asked, “Sir, one thing more I want to know. What do you think about women?”The old man said, “Strange, only this morning I decided not to think about women at all!” A hundred-year-old man, and he decided just that morning! And he said, “Please, don’t tempt me again!”I decided just last night.But it is good that you have asked. It is a long history how the towel started to be with me, and before I part company with it I had better tell the story to you:When I started living in Jabalpur, there were so many mosquitoes – don’t laugh, because you have nothing in Pune compared with Jabalpur; that’s nothing – I had to chase them with the towel the whole day. It was impossible to sit still.Once a Buddhist monk, a very famous scholar, Bikkshu Jagdish Kashyap, stayed with me. He was my guest.When he saw the mosquitoes he said, “I used to think that Sarnath was the tops for mosquitoes, but now it seems that Jabalpur has defeated Sarnath.”And he said, “I will tell you a story about Sarnath, concerned with Buddha.“Buddha came to Sarnath only once. His first sermon was delivered at Sarnath – but he never came again. So down the centuries Buddhists have said he never came again because of the mosquitoes.”I told Bikkshu Jagdish Kashyap that once I left Jabalpur I would not go back again. And I have not been there since I left. I can understand Buddha’s difficulty. How could he have managed without a towel? Throughout his life he visited the same towns many times – Shravasti at least thirty times, Rajgrih at least forty times – and he never came back to Sarnath again. There must be some secret in it.In fact mosquitoes are old enemies of meditators. Whenever you meditate, whether the Devil comes to tempt you or not, the mosquitoes will always come.For eighteen years I was in Jabalpur. My towel became my constant companion. When I left Jabalpur and came to Mumbai I was thinking of leaving it, but then people started spinning esoteric theories about it. So just to save the theoreticians I continued using it.Now it is a superstition. The word superstition comes from a root which means: something that was useful sometimes, but the circumstances have now changed, it is no longer useful. But it continues. This towel is a superstition and I have continued carrying it just for your sake – because there are theoreticians, esoteric people around who have to have something to base their theories upon.One woman, one of my beautiful sannyasins from the Phillipines, told me that she had found out the truth about my towel. I asked what it was. She said, “You are a nobody, you live in nothingness, you have to hold something otherwise you will disappear.”I said, “Right! Absolutely right!”I had just three things: my lungi, my robe and my towel. My lungi is gone, you can see. Parijat helped me to renounce it. Parijat is my official seamstress – appointed by His Holiness, Osho Shree Shree Shree Oshoji Maharaj! She made the robe so beautifully that the lungi became almost absurd with it. It started looking like a bullock cart by the side of a Cadillac. So out of necessity I had to drop it.Now here goes my towel. The only thing left is my robe. Please never ask any question about it!Let me tell an anecdote:A young Jewish couple was being wed in the usual Jewish tradition surrounded by at least two hundred relatives and friends. The room was in complete hush as the rabbi reached the part of the service which said: With all my worldly goods I thee endow.The best man turned to the maid of honor and said, “There goes Erwin’s bicycle!”And here goes Osho’s towel. It is all that I have. So I must remind you again: never ask any question about my robe.I will throw the towel. Whosoever it lands upon becomes its proud owner, but nobody must raise their hands or try to catch it. Hmmm? You just be in a meditation, absolutely passive. That is the way godliness also descends. If you try to catch it you cannot be the owner of it.And if some problem or some dispute arises that two or three persons claim the towel, you can always go to Mulla Nasruddin. It will be difficult to locate him because he is a very subtle and invisible man. But he’s the best. If you cannot locate him then you can go to the next best person, Swami Yoga Chinmaya. He will decide the dispute – who the owner is. And if it cannot be decided then you can always divide it.Remember that you are not to catch it. If you try to catch it, you miss the opportunity. Let it land on you.Here goes Osho’s towel!Enough for today.

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Ah This 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ah This 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Ascending to the high seat, Dogen Zenji said: “Zen master Hogen studied with Keishin Zenji. Once Keishin Zenji asked him, ‘Joza, where do you go?’Hogen said. ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’Keishin said, ‘What is the matter of your pilgrimage?’Hogen said, ‘I don’t know.’Keishin said, ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’Hogen suddenly attained great enlightenment.”Zen is just Zen. There is nothing comparable to it. It is unique. Unique in the sense that it is the most ordinary and yet the most extraordinary phenomenon that has happened to human consciousness. It is the most ordinary because it does not believe in knowledge, it does not believe in mind. It is not a philosophy, not a religion either. It is the acceptance of ordinary existence with a total heart, with one’s total being; not desiring some other world, supra-mundane, supra-mental. It has no interest in any esoteric nonsense, no interest in metaphysics at all. It does not hanker for the other shore; this shore is more than enough. Zen’s acceptance of this shore is so tremendous, that through that very acceptance it transforms this shore – and this very shore becomes the other shore.This very body the buddha, this very earth the lotus paradise.Hence Zen is ordinary. It does not want you to create a certain kind of spirituality, a certain kind of holiness. All that it asks is to live your life with immediacy, spontaneity. Then the mundane becomes the sacred.The great miracle of Zen is in the transformation of the mundane into the sacred. It is tremendously extraordinary because in this way life has never been approached before, in this way life has never been respected before.Zen goes beyond Buddha and beyond Lao Tzu. It is a culmination, a transcendence of both the Indian genius and the Chinese genius. The Indian genius reached its highest peak in Gautama the Buddha and the Chinese genius reached its highest peak in Lao Tzu. The meeting of the essence of Buddha’s teaching and the essence of Lao Tzu’s teaching merged into one stream, so deeply that no separation is possible now. Even to make a distinction between what belongs to Buddha and what to Lao Tzu is impossible. The merger is so total. It is not only a synthesis, it is an integration. Out of this meeting Zen was born. Zen is neither Buddhist nor Taoist and yet both.To call Zen “Zen Buddhism” is not right, it is far more. Buddha is not as earthly as Zen. Lao Tzu is tremendously earthly, but Zen is not only earthly. Its vision transforms the earth into heaven. Lao Tzu is earthly, Buddha is unearthly: Zen is both – and in being both it becomes the most extraordinary phenomenon.The future of humanity will come closer and closer to the approach of Zen. This is because the meeting of East and West is possible only through something like Zen, which is earthly and yet unearthly. The West is very earthly, the East is very unearthly. Who will become the bridge? Buddha cannot be the bridge. He is so essentially Eastern, the very flavor of the East, the very fragrance of the East, uncompromising. Lao Tzu cannot be the bridge. He is too earthly. China has always been very earthly: more part of the Western psyche than of the Eastern psyche.It is not by accident that China is the first country in the East to turn communist, to become materialist; to believe in a godless philosophy, to believe that man is only matter and nothing else. This is not just accidental. China has been earthly for almost five thousand years; it is very Western. Hence Lao Tzu cannot become the bridge: he is more like Zorba the Greek. And Buddha is so unearthly you cannot even catch hold of him. How can he become the bridge?When I look all around, Zen seems to be the only possibility, because in Zen, Buddha and Lao Tzu have become one. The meeting has already happened. The seed is there, the seed of that great bridge which can make East and West one. Zen will be the meeting-point. It has a great future, a great past and a great future.The miracle is that Zen is neither interested in the past nor in the future. Its total interest is in the present. Maybe that’s why the miracle is possible, because the past and the future are bridged by the present.The present is not part of time. Have you ever thought about it? How long is the present? The past has a duration, the future has a duration. What is the duration of the present? How long does it last? Between the past and the future can you measure the present? It is immeasurable; it is almost not. It is not time, not at all. It is the penetration of eternity into time.Zen lives in the present. Its whole teaching is how to be in the present: how to get out of the past which is no more and how not to get involved in the future which is not yet, just to be rooted, centered, in that which is.The whole approach of Zen is of immediacy and because of this it can bridge the past and the future. It can bridge many things. It can bridge the past and the future, it can bridge the East and the West, it can bridge body and soul. It can bridge the unbridgeable worlds: this world and that, the mundane and the sacred.Before we enter into this small anecdote it would be good to understand a few things. First, the masters do not tell the truth. Even if they want to they cannot; it is impossible. What then is their function? What do they go on doing? They cannot tell the truth, but they can call forth the truth which is fast asleep in you. They can provoke it, they can challenge it. They can shake you up, they can wake you up. They cannot give you godliness, truth, nirvana, because in the first place you already have it. You are born with it. It is innate, it is intrinsic. It is your very nature. So anybody who pretends to give you the truth is simply exploiting your stupidity, your gullibility. He is cunning, cunning and utterly ignorant too. He knows nothing; not even a glimpse of truth has happened to him. He is a pseudo master.Truth cannot be given, it is already in you. It can be called forth, it can be provoked. A context can be created, a certain space can be created in which it rises in you and is no longer asleep, it becomes awakened.The function of the master is far more complex than you think. It would be far easier, simpler, if truth could be conveyed. It cannot be, hence indirect ways and means must be devised.The New Testament has the beautiful story of Lazarus. Christians missed the whole point of it. Christ is so unfortunate – he has fallen in with the wrong company. Not even a single Christian theologian has been able to discover the meaning of the story of Lazarus, his death and resurrection.Lazarus dies. He is the brother of Mary Magdalene and Martha and a great devotee of Jesus. Jesus is far away. By the time he gets the information and the invitation, “Come immediately” two days have already passed, and by the time he reaches Lazarus four days have passed. But Mary and Martha wait for him – their trust is such. The whole village laughs at them. They are being stupid in others’ eyes because they keep the corpse in a cave; they watch day in, day out, guarding the corpse. The corpse has already started stinking; it is deteriorating.The village people say, “You are fools! Jesus cannot do anything. When somebody is dead, he is dead!”Jesus comes. He goes to the cave. He does not enter the cave; he stands outside and calls forth Lazarus. The people have gathered. They must be laughing, “This man seems to be crazy!”Somebody says to him, “What are you doing? He is dead! He has been dead for four days. In fact, to enter the cave is difficult, his body is stinking. It is impossible! Whom are you calling?”Unperturbed, Jesus shouts again and again, “Lazarus, come out!”This crowd is in for a great surprise. Lazarus walks out of the cave, shaken, shocked, as if out of a great slumber, as if he had fallen into a coma. He himself cannot believe what happened, why he is in the cave.This in fact is just a way of saying what the function of a master is. Whether Lazarus was really dead or not is not the point. Whether Jesus was capable of raising the dead or not is not the point. To get involved in these stupid questions is absurd. Only scholars can be so foolish. No man of understanding will think that this is something historical. It is far more! It is not a fact, it is a truth. It is not something that happens in time, it is something more: something that happens in eternity.You are all dead. You are all in the same situation as Lazarus. You are all living in your dark caves. You are all stinking and deteriorating, because death is not something that comes one day, suddenly – you are dying every day. Since the day of your birth you have been dying. It is a long process: it takes seventy, eighty, ninety years to complete it. Each moment, something of you dies; something in you dies, but you are absolutely unaware of the whole situation. You go on as if you are alive. You go on living as if you know what life is.The function of the master is to call forth: “Lazarus, come out of the cave! Come out of your grave! Come out of your death!”The master cannot give you the truth but he can call forth the truth. He can stir something in you. He can trigger a process in you which will ignite a fire, a flame. You are truth, just so much dust has gathered around you. The function of the master is negative. He must give you a bath, a shower, so the dust disappears.That’s exactly the meaning of Christian baptism. That’s what John the Baptist did in the River Jordan. People go on misunderstanding. Today also, baptism happens in the churches. It is meaningless.John the Baptist prepared people for an inner bath. When they were ready he would take them symbolically into the River Jordan. This was only symbolic. Just as your orange clothes are symbolic, this bath in the River Jordan was symbolic – symbolic. The master can give you a bath. He can take the dust, the dust of centuries, away from you. And suddenly all is clear, all is clarity. That clarity is enlightenment.The great master Daie says, “All the teachings of the sages, of the saints, of the masters, have expounded no more than this: they are commentaries on your sudden cry, ‘Ah, this!’”When suddenly you are clear and a great joy and rejoicing arises in you, and your whole being, every fiber of your body, mind and soul dances. You say, “Ah, this! Alleluia!” a great shout of joy arises in your being. This is enlightenment. Suddenly stars come down from the rafters. You become part of the eternal dance of existence.Auden says:Dance till the stars come down from the rafters!Dance, dance, dance till you drop!Yes, it happens. It is not something that you have to do. It is something that, even if you want not to do, you will find it impossible. You will find it impossible to resist. You will have to dance.The beauty of this, the beauty of now, the joy that existence is and the closeness of it… Yes, stars come down from the rafters. They are so close you can just touch them; you can hold them in your hands.Daie is right. He says, “All the teachings the sages expounded are no more than commentaries on your sudden cry, ‘Ah, this!’” The whole heart says, “Aha!” And the silence that follows it, and the peace, and the joy, and the meeting, and the merger, and the orgasmic experience, the ecstasy!Masters don’t teach the truth; there is no way to teach it. It is a transmission beyond scriptures, beyond words. It is a transmission. It is energy provoking energy in you. It is a kind of synchronicity.The master has disappeared as an ego; he is pure joy. The disciple sits by the master’s side, slowly, slowly partaking of his joy, of his being, eating and drinking out of that eternal, inexhaustible source: aes dhammo sanantano. Then one day…and one cannot predict when that day will come; it is unpredictable. One day suddenly it has happened. A process has started in you which reveals the truth of your being to you. You come face to face with yourself. God is not somewhere else: he is now, here.The masters illuminate and confirm realization. They illuminate in a thousand and one ways. They go on pointing toward truth, fingers pointing to the moon. There are many fools who start clinging to the fingers. By clinging to the fingers you will not see the moon, remember. There are even greater fools who start biting the fingers. That is not going to give you any nourishment. Forget the finger and look at where it is pointing.The masters illuminate. They shower great light – they are light.They shower great light on your being. They are like a searchlight; they focus their being on your being. You have lived in darkness for centuries, for millions of lives. Suddenly a master’s searchlight starts revealing a few forgotten territories in you. They are within you. The master is not bringing them. He is simply bringing his light. He is focusing himself on you. And the master can focus only when the disciple is open, when the disciple is surrendered, when the disciple is ready to learn, not to argue; when the disciple has come not to accumulate knowledge but to know truth; when the disciple is not only curious but is a seeker and is ready to risk all. Even if life has to be risked and sacrificed the disciple is ready. In fact, when you risk your sleepy life, you sacrifice your sleepy life. You attain a totally different quality of life: the life of light, of love, the life which is beyond death, beyond time, beyond change.They illuminate and confirm realization. First, the master illuminates the way, the truth that is within you. Second, when you realize it, when you recognize it… It is very difficult for you to believe that you have attained it. The most unbelievable thing is when realization of truth happens to you, because you were told that it is very difficult, almost impossible; that it takes millions of lives to arrive at it. You were told it is somewhere else, maybe in heaven. And when you recognize it within yourself, how can you believe it?The master confirms it. He says, “Yes, this is it!” His confirmation is as much needed as his illumination. He begins by illuminating and ends by confirming. The masters are evidence of truth, not its proof.Meditate over the subtle difference between evidence and proof. The master is evidence, he is a witness. He has seen, he has known, he has become. You can feel it. The evidence can be felt. You can come closer and closer. You can allow the fragrance of the master to penetrate to the innermost core of your being. The master is only evidence, he is not proof. If you want any proof… There is no proof.God can neither be proved nor disproved. It is not an argument. God is not a hypothesis, it is not a theory: it is experience. The master is living evidence. To see it you will need a different approach than that to which you are accustomed.You know how to approach a teacher, how to approach a professor, how to approach a priest. They don’t require much because they simply impart information, which can be done even by a tape recorder, or by a computer, or by a gramophone record or a book.I was a student in a university. I never attended the classes of my professors. Naturally, they were offended. And one day the head of the department called me and he asked, “Why have you joined the university? We never see you, you never attend any classes. And remember, when the examination time comes don’t ask for an attendance record, because seventy-five percent attendance is a must to enter the examination.”I took hold of the hand of that old man and I replied, “Come with me. I will show you where I am and why I have entered the university.”He was a little afraid of where I was taking him and why. It was a well-known fact that I was a little eccentric! He asked, “But where are you taking me?”I replied, “I will show you that you have to give me one hundred percent attendance. Come with me.” I took him to the library and I told the librarian, “Tell this old man, has there ever been a single day when I have not been in the library?”The librarian said, “Even on holidays he is here. If the library is not open then this student goes on sitting in the garden of the library, but he comes. And every day we have to tell him, ‘Now please leave, because it is closing time.’”I told the professor, “I find the books far clearer than your so-called professors. And, moreover, they simply repeat what is already written in the books, so what is the point of going on listening to them secondhand? I can look in the books directly!” I told him, “If you can prove that your teachers are teaching something which is not in the books, then I am ready to come to the classes. If you cannot prove it, then keep in mind that you must give me one hundred percent attendance – otherwise I will create trouble!”I never went to ask him. He gave me one hundred percent attendance. He followed the point; it was so simple. He said, “You are right. Why listen to secondhand knowledge? You can go directly to the books. I know those professors. I myself am just a gramophone record. The truth is,” he said to me, “that for thirty years I have not read anything. I just go on using my old notes.”For thirty years he has been teaching the same thing, again and again and again; and in thirty years, millions of books have been published.You know how to approach a teacher, you know how to approach a book, you know how to approach dead information. But you don’t know how to approach a master. It is a totally different way of communing. It is not communication; it is communion because the master is not proof but evidence. He is not an argument for godliness, he is a witness. He does not possess great knowledge about godliness, he knows. He is not knowledgeable, he simply knows.Remember, to know about is worthless: the word about means around. To know about something means to go on moving in circles, around and around. The word about is beautiful. Whenever you read about, read around. When somebody says, “I know about God,” read he knows around God. He goes in a circle. And real knowing is never about, never around. It is direct, it is a straight line.Jesus says: “Straight is the path…” It does not go in circles. It is a jump from the periphery to the center. The master is an evidence of that jump, that quantum leap, that transformation.You have to approach the master with great love, with great trust, with an open heart. You are not aware of who you are. He is aware of who he is, and he is aware of who you are. The caterpillar might be said to be unaware that it may become a butterfly. You are caterpillars – bodhisattvas. All caterpillars are bodhisattvas and all bodhisattvas are caterpillars. A bodhisattva means one who can become a butterfly, who can become a buddha, who is a buddha in the seed, in essence. But how can the caterpillar be aware that he can become a butterfly? The only way is to commune with butterflies, to see butterflies moving in the wind, in the sun. Seeing them soaring high, seeing them moving from one flower to another flower, seeing their beauty, their color, maybe a deep desire, a longing arises in the caterpillar, “Can I also be the same?” In that very moment the caterpillar has started awakening, a process has been triggered.The master–disciple relationship is the relationship between a caterpillar and a butterfly, a friendship between a caterpillar and a butterfly. The butterfly cannot prove that the caterpillar can become a butterfly; there is no logical way. But the butterfly can provoke a longing in the caterpillar; that is possible.The master helps you to reach your own experience. He does not give you the Vedas, the Koran, the Bible; he throws you to yourself. He makes you aware of your inner sources. He makes you aware of your own juice, of your own godliness. He liberates you from the scriptures. He liberates you from the interpretations of others. He liberates you from all belief. He liberates you from all speculation, from all guesswork. He liberates you from philosophy and from religion and from theology. He liberates you, in short, from the world of words – because the word is the problem.You become so obsessed with the word love that you forget that love is an experience, not a word. You become so obsessed with the word God that you forget that God is an experience, not a word. The word God is not God, and the word fire is not fire, and the word love is not love either.The master liberates you from words. He liberates you from all kinds of imaginative philosophies. He brings you to a state of wordless silence. The failure of religion and philosophy is that they all become substitutes for real experience. Beware of it!Marlene and Florence, two Denver secretaries, were chatting over lunch. “I was raped last night by a scholar,” whispered Marlene.“Really?” said Florence. “How did you know he was a scholar?”“I had to help him.”Scholars are crippled people, paralyzed, hung up in their heads. They have forgotten everything except words. They are great system-makers. They accumulate beautiful theories; they arrange them in beautiful patterns, but that’s all they do. They know nothing, although they deceive others, and deceive themselves too, that they know.A man went into a restaurant to have some lunch and when the waiter came he said, “I will have a plate of kiddlies, please.”“What?” said the waiter.“Kiddlies,” said the man.“What?” asked the waiter again. So the man picked up the menu and pointed at what he wanted.“Kiddlies,” he repeated firmly.“Ah,” said the waiter. “I see. Kidneys. Why didn’t you say so?”“But,” said the man, “I said kiddlies, diddle I?”It is very difficult to pull them out. Scholars live in their own words. They have forgotten that reality has anything else in it other than words. They are utterly deaf, utterly blind. They can’t see, they can’t hear, they can’t feel. Words are words. You can’t see them, you can’t feel them, but they can give you a great ego.A cannibal rushed into his village to spread the word that a hunting party had captured a Christian theologian.“Good,” said one of the cannibals enthusiastically, “I have always wanted to try a baloney sandwich.”Beware of getting lost in philosophy and religion if you really want to know what truth is. Beware of being Christian, Hindu, Mohammedan, because they are all ways of being deaf, blind, insensitive.Three deaf British gentlemen were traveling on a train bound for London. The first said, “Pardon me, conductor, what station is this?”“Wembley, sir,” answered the conductor.“Good Lord!” exclaimed the second Englishman. “I am sure it is Thursday.”“So am I,” agreed the third. “Let us all go into the bar car and have a drink.”That’s how it goes on between professors, philosophers, theologians. They can’t hear what is being said. They have their own ideas and they are so full of them, so many thick layers of words, that reality cannot reach them.Zen says if you can drop philosophizing, there is hope for you. The moment you drop philosophizing you become innocent like a child. But remember, the Zen emphasis on not knowing does not mean that it emphasizes ignorance. Not knowing is not ignorance, not knowing is a state of innocence. There is neither knowledge nor ignorance – both have been transcended.An ignorant man is one who ignores. That’s how the word comes: the root is ignoring. The ignorant person is one who goes on ignoring something essential. In this way the knowledgeable person is the most ignorant person, because he knows about heaven and hell and he knows nothing about himself. He knows about God, but he knows nothing about who he is, what is this consciousness, inside. He is ignorant because he is ignoring the most fundamental thing in life: he is ignoring himself. He is keeping himself occupied with the nonessential. He is ignorant, full of knowledge, yet utterly ignorant.Not knowing simply means a state of no-mind. The mind can be knowledgeable, the mind can be ignorant. If you have little information you will be thought ignorant; if you have more information you will be thought knowledgeable. Between ignorance and knowledge, the difference is that of quantity, of degrees. The ignorant person is less knowledgeable, that’s all; the very knowledgeable person may appear to the world as less ignorant, but they are not different, their qualities are not different.Zen emphasizes the state of not knowing. Not knowing means one is neither ignorant nor knowledgeable. One is not knowledgeable because one is not interested in mere information, and one is not ignorant because one is not ignoring. One is not ignoring the most essential quest. One is not ignoring one’s own being, one’s own consciousness.Not knowing has a beauty of its own, a purity. It is just like a pure mirror, a lake utterly silent, reflecting the stars and the trees on the bank. The state of not knowing is the highest point in man’s evolution.Knowledge is introduced to the mind after physical birth. Knowing is always present, like the heart knowing how to beat or a seed knowing how to sprout, or a flower knowing how to grow, or a fish knowing how to swim. And it is quite different from knowing about things. So please make a distinction between knowledge and knowing.The state of not knowing is really the state of knowing, because when all knowledge and all ignorance have disappeared, you can reflect existence as it is. Knowledge is acquired after your birth, but knowing comes with you. And the more knowledge you acquire, the more and more knowing starts disappearing because it becomes covered with knowledge. Knowledge is exactly like dust and knowing is like a mirror.The heart of knowing is now. Knowledge is always of the past. Knowledge means memory. Knowledge means you have known something, you have experienced something, and you have accumulated your experience. Knowing is of the present. How can you be in the present if you are clinging too much to knowledge? That is impossible. You will have to drop clinging to knowledge. Knowledge is acquired, knowing is your nature. Knowing is always now. The heart of knowing is now, and the heart of now?The word now is beautiful. The heart of it is the letter O which is also a symbol for zero. The heart of now is zero, nothingness. When the mind is no more, when you are just a nothingness, just a zero – Buddha calls it exactly that: shunya, the zero, then everything that surrounds you, all that is within and without, is known; known, not as knowledge, known in a totally different way. The same way that the flower knows how to open, and the fish knows how to swim, and the child knows in the mother’s womb how to grow, and you know how to breathe – even while asleep, even in a coma, you go on breathing – and the heart knows how to beat. This is a totally different kind of knowing, so intrinsic, so internal. It is not acquired, it is natural.Knowledge is got in exchange for knowing, and when you have knowledge, what happens to knowing? You forget knowing. You have knowledge and you have forgotten knowing. And knowing is the door to the divine; knowledge is a barrier to the divine. Knowledge has utility in the world. Yes, it will make you more efficient, skillful, a good mechanic, this and that. You may be able to earn in a better way. All that is there, I am not denying it. You can use knowledge in this way, but don’t let knowledge become a barrier to the divine. Whenever knowledge is not needed, put it aside and drown yourself in a state of not knowing, which is also a state of knowing, real knowing. Knowledge is got in exchange for knowing and knowing is forgotten. It has only to be remembered – you have forgotten it.The function of the master is to help you remember it. The mind has to be re-minded, for knowing is nothing but re-cognition, re-collection, re-membrance. When you come across some truth, when you come across a master and you see the truth of his being, something within you immediately recognizes it. Not even a single moment is lost. You don’t think about it, whether it is true or not; thinking needs time. When you listen to the truth, when you feel the presence of truth, when you come into close communion with truth, something within you immediately recognizes it, with no argumentation. Not that you accept, not that you believe, you recognize. And it could not be recognized if it were not already known somehow, somewhere, deep down within you.This is the fundamental approach of Zen.“Has your baby brother learned to talk yet?”“Oh, sure,” replied little Mike. “Now Mommy and Daddy are teaching him to keep quiet.”Society teaches you knowledge. So many schools, colleges, universities, all devoted to creating knowledge, more knowledge, implanting knowledge in people. The function of the master is just the opposite. What the society has done to you, the master has to undo. His function is basically antisocial, and nothing can be done about it. The master is bound to be antisocial.Jesus, Pythagoras, Buddha, Lao Tzu, they are all antisocial. Not that they want to be antisocial, but the moment they recognize the beauty of not knowing, the vastness of not knowing, the innocence of not knowing, the moment the taste of not knowing happens to them, they want to impart it to others, they want to share it with others. And that very process is antisocial.People ask me why society is against me. Society is not against me – I am antisocial. I can’t help it. I have to do my thing. I have to share what has happened to me, and in that very sharing I go against the society. Its whole structure is rooted in knowledge, and the master’s function is to destroy knowledge; to destroy ignorance and to bring you back your childhood.Jesus says, “Unless you are like small children you will not enter into the Kingdom of God.”Society, in fact, makes you uprooted from your nature. It pushes you off your center. It makes you neurotic.Conducting a university course, a famous psychiatrist was asked by a student, “Sir, you have told us about the abnormal person and his behavior, but what about the normal person?”“When we find him,” replied the psychiatrist, “we cure him.”Society goes on curing normal people. Every child is born normal, remember; then society cures him. Then he becomes abnormal. He becomes Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian, Communist, Catholic… There are so many kinds of neurosis in the world. You can choose, you can shop for whatever kind of neurosis you want. Society creates all kinds; all shapes and sizes of neuroses are available, to everybody’s liking.Zen cures you of your abnormality. It makes you again normal, it makes you again ordinary. It does not make you a saint, remember. It does not make you a holy person, remember. It simply makes you an ordinary person – takes you back to your nature, back to your source.This beautiful anecdote:Ascending to the high seat, Dogen Zenji said: “Zen master Hogen studied with Keishin Zenji. Once Keishin Zenji asked him, ‘Joza, where do you go?’Hogen said, ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’Keishin said, ‘What is the matter of your pilgrimage?’Hogen said, ‘I don’t know.’Keishin said, ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’Hogen suddenly attained great enlightenment.”Now meditate over each word of this small anecdote; it contains all the great scriptures of the world. It contains more than all the great scriptures contain – because it also contains not knowing.Ascending to the high seat…This is just a symbolic, metaphorical way of saying something very significant. Zen says that man is a ladder. The lowest rung is the mind and the highest rung of the ladder is no-mind. Zen says only people who have attained no-mind are worthy enough to ascend to the high seat and speak to people, not everybody. It is not a question of a priest or a preacher.Christians train preachers; they have theological colleges where preachers are trained. What kind of foolishness is this? Yes, you can teach them the art of eloquence; you can teach them how to begin a speech, how to end a speech. And that’s exactly what is taught in Christian theological colleges. Even what gestures to make, when to make a pause, when to speak slowly and when to become loud: everything is cultivated. These stupid people go on preaching about Jesus, and they have not asked a single question!Once I visited a theological college. The principal was my friend; he invited me. I asked him, “Can you tell me in what theological college Jesus learned because the Sermon on the Mount is so beautiful, he must have learned in some theological college? In what theological college did Buddha learn?”Mohammed was absolutely uneducated, but the way he speaks, the way he sings the Koran, is superb. It is coming from somewhere else. It is not education, it is not knowledge. It is coming from a state of no-mind.Little Johnny was the son of the local minister. One day his teacher was asking the class what they wanted to be when they grew up.When it was his turn to answer he replied, “I want to be a minister just like my father.”The teacher was impressed with his determination and so she asked him why he wanted to be a preacher.“Well,” he said thoughtfully, “since I have to go to church on Sunday anyway, I figure it would be more interesting to be the guy who stands up and yells than the one who has to sit down and listen.”You can create preachers, but you cannot create masters.In India, the seat from where a master speaks is called vyasa peetha. Vyasa was one of the greatest masters India has ever produced, one of the ancientmost buddhas. He was so influential; his impact was so tremendous that thousands of books, which were not written by him, exist in his name. Vyasa’s name became so important that anybody who wanted to sell a book would put Vyasa’s name on it instead of putting his own name. Vyasa’s name was guarantee enough that the book was valuable. Now scholars go crazy deciding which is real, the real book, written by Vyasa.The seat from where a buddha speaks is called vyasa peetha – the seat of the buddha. Nobody is allowed to ascend to the seat unless he has attained no-mind. Ascending to the high seat… is a metaphor: it says the man has attained the state of no-mind. He has attained the state of not-knowing which is true knowing.…Dogen Zenji said: “Zen master Hogen studied with Keishin Zenji. Once Keishin Zenji asked him, ‘Joza, where do you go?’”This is a Zen way of saying, “What is your goal in life? Where are you going?” It also implies another question, “From where are you coming? What is the source of your life?” It also implies “Who are you?” because if you can answer where you are coming from and where you are going to, that means you must know who you are.The three most important questions are: “Who am I? From where do I come? And to where am I going?”“…Keishin Zenji asked ‘Joza, where do you go?’Hogen said, ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’”See the beauty of the answer. This is how tremendously beautiful things transpire between a master and a disciple. He said: ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’If you are going to Kaaba, then it is not a pilgrimage because there is an aim in it. If you are going to Jerusalem or to Kashi it is not a pilgrimage. Wherever there is a goal there is ambition, and wherever there is ambition there is mind, desire. And with desire there is no possibility of any pilgrimage.A pilgrimage can only be aimless. See the beauty of it! Only a Zen master can approve it and only a Zen disciple can say something so tremendously revolutionary: ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly.’The master asks, “Where are you going?” And the disciple says, “Nowhere in particular.” Aimlessly, just like a dry leaf in the wind, wherever the wind takes it; to the north, then the north is beautiful; to the south, then the south is beautiful – because all is divine. Wherever you go you encounter it. There is no need to have any aim.The moment you have any aim you become tense, you become concentrated on the aim. The moment you have any aim you are separate from the whole. You have a private goal and to have a private goal is the root of all ego. Not to have a private goal is to be one with the whole, and to be one with the whole is possible only if you are aimlessly wandering.A Zen person is a wanderer, aimless, with no goal, with no future. Moment to moment he lives without any mind; just like the dry leaf he makes himself available to the winds. He says to the winds, “Take me wherever you want.” If he rises on the winds high in the sky, he does not feel superior to others who are lying down on the ground. If he falls to the ground, he does not feel inferior to others who are rising on the wind high in the sky. He cannot fail. He cannot ever be frustrated. When there is no goal, how can you fail? When you are not going anywhere in particular, how can you be in frustration? Expectation brings frustration. Private ambitions bring failures.The Zen person is always victorious, even in his failure.“Keishin said, ‘What is the matter of your pilgrimage?’”He asks again to make certain, because Hogen may be simply repeating. He may have read in some old Zen scriptures: “One should be aimless. When one is aimless, life is a pilgrimage.” Hence the master asks again:“…‘What is the matter of your pilgrimage?’Hogen said, ‘I don’t know.’”Now, if Hogen was only repeating some knowledge gathered from scriptures or others, he would have again answered the same thing, maybe paraphrased in a different way. He would have been like a parrot. The master is asking the same question, but the answer has changed, totally changed. Hogen simply says: ‘I don’t know.’How can you know if you are aimless? How can you know when you don’t have any goal? How can you be when there is no goal? The ego can exist only with goals, ambitions, desires. Hogen said, ‘I don’t know.’His answer, his response, is not parrotlike. He has not repeated the same thing again. The question is the same, remember, but the answer has changed. That’s the difference between a knowledgeable person and a man of knowing, the wise man, who functions out of a state of not-knowing. ‘I don’t know.’Keishin must have been tremendously happy. He said:“‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’”Knowledge creates a distance between you and reality. The more you know, the greater is the distance; so many books between you and reality. If you cram the whole of the Encyclopedia Britannica, then there is so much distance between you and reality. Unless reality tries to find you through the jungle of Encyclopedia Britannica or you try to find reality through the jungle of Encyclopedia Britannica, there is not going to be any meeting. The more you know, the greater is the distance; the less you know, the smaller is the distance. If you don’t know at all, there is no distance at all. Then you are face to face with reality; not even face to face – you are it. That’s why the master said: ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’Remember, such a beautiful sutra, so exquisite, so tremendously significant: ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’The moment you don’t know, intimacy arises between you and reality; a great friendship arises. It becomes a love affair. You are embracing reality; reality penetrates you, as lovers penetrate each other. You melt into it like snow melting in the sun. You become one with it. There is nothing to divide. It is knowledge that divides; it is not-knowing that unites.Listening to this tremendously significant sutra:“‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’Hogen suddenly attained great enlightenment.”He must have been very close, obviously. When he said: ‘I don’t know’ he must have been just on the borderline. When he said: ‘I am making pilgrimage aimlessly’ he was just one step away from the borderline. When he said: ‘I don’t know’ even that one step disappeared. He was standing on the borderline.And when the master said, when the master confirmed, illuminated, and said: ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’ When the master patted him on the back: ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’ Hogen suddenly attained enlightenment. Immediately, that very moment, he crossed the border. Immediately his last clinging disappeared. Now he cannot even say: ‘I don’t know.’The stupid person says, “I know.” The intelligent person comes to know that “I don’t know.” But there is a transcendence of both when only silence prevails. Nothing can be said, nothing can be uttered. Hogen entered that silence; that great enlightenment, and suddenly, immediately, without any lapse of time.Enlightenment is always sudden because it is not an achievement; it is already the case. It is only a remembering, it is only a reminding, it is only a recognition. You are already enlightened. You are just not aware of it. It is awareness of that which is already the case.Meditate over this beautiful anecdote. Let this sutra resound in your being: ‘Not knowing is the most intimate.’One never knows, sudden enlightenment may happen to you as it happened to Hogen. It is going to happen to many people here because what I am doing every day is destroying your knowledge. Destroying and destroying all your clingings and strategies of the mind. Any day when your mind collapses, when you cannot hold it together any more, there is bound to be sudden enlightenment. It is not an attainment, hence it can happen in a single moment, instantly. Society has forced you to forget it; my work here is to help you remember it.All the teachings of the sages expounded are no more than commentaries on your sudden cry, “Ah, this!”Enough for today.

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Ah This 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ah This 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Please, in the question “Who am I?” what does “I” mean? Does it mean the essence of life?“Who am I?” is not really a question because it has no answer to it; it is unanswerable. It is a device, not a question. It is used as a mantra. When you constantly inquire inside, “Who am I? Who am I?” you are not waiting for an answer. Your mind will supply many answers and all those answers have to be rejected. Your mind will say, “You are the essence of life. You are the eternal soul. You are divine,” and so on, and so forth. All those answers have to be rejected. Neti neti, one has to go on saying, “Neither this nor that.”When you have denied all the possible answers that the mind can supply and devise; when the question remains absolutely unanswerable, a miracle happens. Suddenly the question also disappears. When all the answers have been rejected, the question has no props, no supports inside to stand on any more. It simply flops; it collapses, it disappears.When the question also has disappeared, then you know. But that knowing is not an answer. It is an existential experience. Nothing can be said about it, or whatever will be said will be wrong. To say anything about it is to falsify it. It is the ultimate mystery, inexpressible, indefinable. No word is adequate enough to describe it. Even the phrase “essence of life” is not adequate; even God is not adequate. Nothing is adequate to express it. Its very nature is inexpressible.But you know. You know exactly the way the seed knows how to grow. Not like the professor who knows about chemistry or physics or geography or history, but like the bud, which knows how to open in the early morning sun. Not like the priest who knows about God; about and about he goes, around and around he goes.Knowledge beats around the bush. Knowing is a direct penetration. And the moment you directly penetrate into existence, you disappear as a separate entity. You are no more. When the knower is no more, then the knowing is. And the knowing is not about something: you are that knowing, itself.So I cannot say what I means in the question “Who am I?” It means nothing! It is just a device to lead you into the unknown, to lead you into the uncharted; to lead you into that which is not available to the mind. It is a sword to cut the very roots of the mind, so only the silence of no-mind is left. In that silence there is no question, no answer; no knower, no known; but only knowing, only experiencing.That’s why the mystics appear to be in such difficulty to express it. Many of them have remained silent, out of the awareness that whatsoever you say goes wrong. The moment you say it, it goes wrong. Those who have spoken, they have spoken with the condition, “Don’t cling to our words.”Lao Tzu says: “Tao, once described, is no more the real Tao.” The moment you say something about it, you have already falsified it. You have betrayed it. It is such an intimate knowing, incommunicable.“Who am I?” functions like a sword to cut all the answers that the mind can manage. Zen people will say it is a koan, just like other koans. There are many koans, famous koans. One is: “Find your original face.” The disciple asks the master, “What is the original face?” The master says, “The face that you had before your parents were born.”You start meditating on that: “What is your original face?” Naturally, you have to deny all your faces. Many faces will start surfacing: childhood faces, when you were a youth, when you became middle-aged, when you became old, when you were healthy, when you were ill… All kinds of faces will stand in a queue. They will pass before your eyes claiming, “I am the original face.” And you have to go on rejecting.When all the faces have been rejected and emptiness is left, you have found the original face. Emptiness is the original face. Zero is the ultimate experience. Nothingness, or more accurately, no-thingness is your original face.Another famous koan is: “The sound of one hand clapping.” The master says to the disciple, “Go and listen to the sound of one hand clapping.” Now, this is patent absurdity. One hand cannot clap and without clapping there can be no sound. The master knows it, the disciple knows it. But when the master says, “Go and meditate on it,” the disciple has to follow…The disciple starts making efforts to listen to the sound of one hand clapping. Many sounds come to his mind; the birds singing, the sound of running water… He rushes immediately to the master. He says, “I have heard it! The sound of running water, isn’t that the sound of one hand clapping?”And the master hits him hard on the head and he says, “You fool! Go back, meditate more!”He goes on meditating and the mind goes on providing new answers, “The sound of wind passing through the pine trees, certainly this is the answer.” He is in such a hurry! Everybody is in such a hurry. Impatiently he rushes to the door of the master, a little bit apprehensive, afraid too, but maybe this is the answer…Even before he has said a single thing the master hits him! He is very puzzled and he says, “This is too much! I have not even uttered a single word, so how can I be wrong? Why are you hitting me?”The master says, “It is not a question of whether you have uttered something or not. You have come with an answer – that is enough proof. You must be wrong. When you have really found it you won’t come. There will be no need. I will come to you.”Sometimes years pass. Then one day it has happened. There is no answer. First the disciple knew that there is no answer to it, but it was only an intellectual knowing. Now, he knows from his very core: “There is no answer!” All answers have evaporated.And the one sure sign that all answers have evaporated, is only when the question also evaporates. Now he is sitting silently, doing nothing, not even meditating. He has forgotten the question: “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” It is there no more. It is pure silence.There are ways…there are inner paths which exist between a master and a disciple.And now the master rushes toward the disciple. He knocks on his door. He hugs the disciple and says, “So it has happened? This is it! No answer, no question. This is it. “Ah, this!”The second question:Osho,I feel life is very boring. What should I do?As it is you have already done enough. You have made life boring, some achievement! Life is such a dance of ecstasy and you have reduced it to boredom. You have done a miracle! What else do you want to do? You can’t do anything bigger than this. Life boring? You must have a tremendous capacity to ignore life.Just the other day I told you that ignorance means the capacity to ignore. You must be ignoring the birds, the trees, the flowers, the people. Otherwise, life is so tremendously beautiful, so absurdly beautiful that if you can see it as it is, you will never stop laughing. You will go on giggling, at least inside.Life is not boring, but the mind is boring. And we create such a mind, such a strong mind, like the Wall of China around ourselves. It does not allow life to enter into us. It disconnects us from life. We become isolated, encapsulated, windowless. Living behind a prison wall you don’t see the morning sun, you don’t see the birds on the wing, you don’t see the sky in the night full of stars. And, of course, you start thinking that life is boring. Your conclusion is wrong. You are in the wrong space; you are living in the wrong context.You must be a religious person, because to make life boring one has to be religious. One has to be very scholarly. One has to know Christianity, Hinduism, Islam. One has to learn much from the Vedas and the Koran and the Bible. You must be very well-informed. A man who is too well-informed, too knowledgeable, creates such a thick wall of words, futile words, empty words around himself so that he becomes incapable of seeing life. Knowledge is a barrier to life.Put aside your knowledge! And then look with empty eyes. Life is a constant surprise. I am not talking about some divine life; the ordinary life is so extraordinary. In small incidents you will find the presence of godliness; a child giggling, a dog barking, a peacock dancing. But you can’t see if your eyes are covered with knowledge. The poorest man in the world is the man who lives behind a curtain of knowledge.The poorest are those who live through the mind. The richest are those who have opened the windows of no-mind and approached life with no-mind.This is not only your experience. You are not alone in it. In fact, the majority of people will agree with you. They don’t find any surprise anywhere. And each moment there are surprises and surprises because life is never the same. It is constantly changing and it takes such unpredictable turns. How can you remain unaffected by the very wonder of it? The only way to remain unaffected is to cling to your past, to your experience; to your knowledge, to your memories, to your mind. Then you cannot see that which is. You go on missing the present.Miss the present and you live in boredom. Be in the present and you will be surprised that there is no boredom at all. Start by looking around a little more like a child. Be a child again! That’s what meditation is all about, being a child again – a rebirth, being innocent again, not-knowing. That’s what we were talking about the other day. The master said: “Not knowing is the most intimate.”Yes, you must have become very alienated from life, hence boredom. You have forgotten the intimacy, the immediacy. You are no longer bridged. Knowledge functions as a wall, innocence functions as a bridge.Start looking around like a child again; go to the seashore and start collecting seashells again. See a child collecting seashells, as if he has found a mine of diamonds. So thrilled he is! See a child making sand castles. How absorbed he is, utterly lost, as if there is nothing more important than making sand castles. See a child running after a butterfly…and be a child again. Start running after butterflies again. Make sand castles, collect seashells.Don’t live as if you know. You know nothing! All that you know is about and about. The moment you know something, boredom disappears. Knowing is such an adventure that boredom cannot exist. With knowledge, of course it can exist. With knowing it cannot exist.Let me remind you, I am not talking about some divine knowledge, some esoteric knowledge; I am simply talking about this life. Just look around with a little more clarity, with a little more transparency, and life is hilarious!A downtown store in New York featured a plaque in its window reading “Buy American.” Printed in small letters at the bottom was “Made in Japan.”Just start looking around a little more carefully.A German in the Soviet Zone reported to the police that his parrot was missing. He was asked whether the parrot talked.“Yes,” he replied, “but any political opinions he expresses are strictly his own.”Molly, aged seventy-nine, complained of abdominal swelling and pain to the doctor. He examined her thoroughly, put her through a series of laboratory tests, and then announced the results.“The plain fact, madam,” said the medical man, “is that you are pregnant.”“That’s impossible!” said Molly, “Why, I am seventy-nine years old and my husband, although he still works, is eighty-six!” The doctor insisted. So the aging mother-to-be pulled over his desk telephone and dialed her husband’s office. When he was on the line she shouted, “You old goat, you have got me pregnant!”“Please,” quavered the old man, “who did you say was calling?”The third question:Osho,I know you want us all to rid ourselves of our egos and minds, and in my case, I know that this is very necessary, but for those of us who will be returning to the West, would not a total absence of mind or ego make life much more difficult?Joyce, when I say to drop the ego, drop the mind, I don’t mean that you cannot use the mind any more. In fact, when you don’t cling to the mind you can use it in a far better, far more efficient way because the energy that was involved in clinging becomes available. And when you are not continuously in the mind, twenty-four hours a day in the mind, the mind also gets a little time to rest.Do you know, even metals need rest, even metals get tired? So what to say about this subtle mechanism of the mind? It is the most subtle mechanism in the world. In such a small skull, you are carrying such a complicated bio-computer that no computer made by man is yet capable of competing with it. The scientists say a single man’s brain can contain all the libraries of the world and yet there will be space enough to contain more.And you are continuously using it, uselessly, unnecessarily! You have forgotten how to put it off. For seventy, eighty years it remains on; working, working, tired. That’s why people lose intelligence, for the simple reason that they are so tired. If the mind can have a little rest, if you can leave the mind alone for a few hours every day, if once in a while you can give the mind a holiday, it will be rejuvenated. It will come out more intelligent, more efficient, more skillful.So I am not saying that you are not to use your mind, but don’t be used by the mind. Right now the mind is the master and you are only a slave.Meditation makes you a master and the mind becomes a slave. And remember, the mind as a master is dangerous because, after all, it is a machine. But the mind as a slave is tremendously significant, useful. A machine should function as a machine, not as a master. Our priorities are all upside down. Your consciousness should be the master.So whenever you want to use it, in the East or in the West, use it! Of course you will need it in the marketplace. But when you don’t need it… When you are resting at home by the side of your swimming pool or in your garden, there is no need. Put it aside. Forget all about it! Then just be.And the same is the case with the ego. Don’t be identified with it, that’s all. Remember that you are part of the whole, you are not separate from it.That does not mean that if somebody steals from your house, you have simply to watch because you are just part of the whole and he is also part of the whole, so, what is wrong? And somebody takes money from your pocket, so, there is no problem. The other’s hand is as much yours as his! I am not saying that.Remember, you are part of the whole so that you can relax, merge. Once in a while you can be utterly drowned in the whole. And that will give you a new lease of life. The inexhaustible sources of the whole will become available to you. You will come out of it refreshed. You will come out of it reborn; again as a child, full of joy, inquiry, adventure, ecstasy.Don’t get identified with the ego, although, as far as the world is concerned, you have to function as an ego. That is only utilitarian. You have to use the word I, use the word I. But remember that it is only a word. It has a certain utility, and without it life will become impossible. If you stop using the word I completely, life will become impossible. We know names are only utilitarian; nobody is born with a name. I am not saying to drop the name and throw your passport into the river. Then you will be in trouble! You need a name; that is a necessity because you live with so many people.If you are alone in the world, then of course there is no need to carry a passport. If you are alone – for example, if the Third World War happens and Joyce is left alone… Then there is no need to carry a passport. You can throw it anywhere. Then there is no need to have any name. Even if you have one it is useless, nobody ever calls you. Then there is no need to even use the word I because I needs a thou and without a thou, the I is meaningless. It has meaning only in the context of others.So don’t misunderstand me. Use your ego, but use it just like you use your shoes and your umbrella and your clothes. When it is raining use the umbrella, but don’t go on carrying it unnecessarily. And don’t go to bed with the umbrella. And don’t be afraid that in a dream it may rain… The umbrella has a utility, so use it when it is needed. But don’t become so identified with the umbrella that you cannot put it aside. Use your shoes, use your clothes, use a name. They are all utilities, not realities.In the world, when so many people are there, we need a few labels, a few symbols; just to mark, just to make sure who is who.You say, “I know you want us all to rid ourselves of our egos and minds…” I am not saying to “get rid,” I am simply saying to be master of your minds. I am not telling you to be mindless. I am only saying, don’t just be minds. You are far more. Be consciousnesses! Then the mind becomes a small thing. You can use it whenever needed, and whenever not needed you can put it off.I am using my mind when I am talking to you. The mind has to be used; there is no other way. But the moment I enter my room, then I don’t go on using it. There is no point. Then I am simply silent. With you I am using the language, the words, but when I am with myself there is no need for any language, for any words. When I am settled into myself and there is no question of communication, language disappears. Then there is a totally different kind of consciousness.Right now my consciousness is flowing through the mind, using the mechanism of the mind to approach you. I can reach for you with my hand, but I am not the hand. When I touch you with my hand, the hand is only a means. Something else is touching you through the hand. The body has to be used, the mind has to be used, the ego, the language: all kinds of things have to be used. And you are allowed to use them, with one condition only, remain the master.The fourth question.Osho,The other day you answered my question about loving three women. A few things have happened since then. In the first place, I missed you because I was not in the discourse but in the arms of the chosen one, which turned out to be a bad choice because she ran straight away and into the arms of somebody else after she realized that she was chosen. Then, in spite of this, the little commune has grown into five women now. One woman is hell, but what to say about five? But I have got a little help from my friends. For instance, Hamid has suggested I turn gay and has offered me a date with him. Vivek suggested that I wait until there are seven. But please, Osho, before I disappear into the seventh hell, I have already lost three kilos in weight. You offered to buy me out. Can't we talk business now? I really mean it!A preacher was listening to a young man confess his sins. In the middle of it he stopped him. “Wait a minute, young man,” he said, “you ain’t confessin’, you are braggin’.”Now you have started bragging! I know perfectly well… Because I am in contact with your three women too. I also mean business! You don’t have five. You have even lost the three. And today you are here because there is nobody you can be with!Hamid is generous, but remember he is an Iranian!One day, back when the draft was still in effect, Glascox received his induction notice. He reported to his draft board and confessed that he was a homosexual. “Queer, huh?” one member grunted. “Do you think you could kill a man?”“Oh, yes,” giggled Glascox, “but it would take me quite a while!”And let me make you aware that before you can kill an Iranian, the Iranian will kill you! So avoid Hamid. He is generous, but avoid! He is also tired of women. He has just separated from Divya, so he must be feeling lonely.Vivek’s suggestion is very esoteric. She is becoming a little esoteric, by and by. Being the chief medium, she has many esoteric mediums under her, so she is learning a few esoteric numbers. Seven is really dangerous!And your guess is right. Seven women will lead you to the seventh hell. That is the last, rock bottom, you cannot fall below that. Vivek must have suggested it so that once you have fallen to rock bottom, you start rising back up because there is nowhere else to go.You say you have lost three kilos in weight. Your weighing machine is not functioning well. You must have lost more! It is really strange why women are called the weaker sex. They are not. Man is the weaker sex.Danny discovered his wife was cheating with another guy, so he went to this guy’s wife and told her about it. “I know what we will do,” she said, “let’s take revenge on them.”So they went to a motel and had revenge on them. She said, “Let’s have more revenge.” And they kept having revenge, revenge…Finally Danny said, “That’s enough revenge. I have no more hard feelings left.”Be a little careful. This is just the beginning!A couple wakes up after the first night of their honeymoon. She sits up in bed, looks at her husband who is lying naked next to her and says in a surprised voice, “Darling, did we use him all up in one night?”This happens to almost every new male sannyasin in the beginning. Finding so many women here he goes crazy. But within a few weeks he comes to his senses and then a totally reverse process sets in. First he chases women. After a few weeks the women start chasing men and they start escaping.Many women have reported to me, “What has happened here to male sannyasins? They don’t seem to be much interested in women. They don’t approach women, they avoid them. Rather than taking the initiative, they escape. The moment they see a woman chasing them, they escape.”What happens in the ordinary world is that man has enough to imagine, to fantasize about because society does not allow you many relationships with women; only one woman. And you get tired, you get bored. Your mind starts roaming around. All the women who don’t belong to you look tremendously beautiful, just stunning because they are not available. Your mind starts fancying. Your mind goes into trips.Here it is totally different. This commune lives the future now. This is how it is going to be all over the world sooner or later. This commune heralds a new consciousness. A consciousness rooted in freedom. Up to now you have lived in a deep slavery, psychological slavery.When you get freedom, in the beginning, you rush into it madly. You start doing all kinds of things that you always wanted to do but you were not permitted to do. Then soon things settle. You become aware that all women are alike, just as all men are alike. Maybe there are differences, but they are peripheral. Somebody has black hair and somebody has blonde hair and somebody has blue eyes and somebody has black eyes: just peripheral differences.But as you become more and more aware of many people, as you become related to many people, one thing becomes absolutely clear to you: that all men are alike, almost alike, so are all women. Then settling starts: then you start settling with one woman, with one man, in a more intimate relationship.That intimacy is not possible in the outside world because your mind will always go on thinking that your woman, your man, has not got that which others have. And there is no way to find out the truth. Here the way is available, you can find out the truth. Once the truth is known, you start settling with one person. This settlement is not enforced. This is not a legal arrangement. You will not be punished if you separate; nobody is preventing you from separating.But, still, now you start a totally different kind of journey, a new pilgrimage of intimacy: unimposed intimacy. And now you see that the deeper you want to enter the other person, the more time is needed. Patience is needed, many kinds of situations are needed.Physical penetration is sex, which is a very superficial thing. Psychological penetration is love, which is far deeper; far more significant, far more beautiful, far more human. The first is animal, the second is human. And then there is a third kind of penetration when two consciousnesses meet, merge, melt into each other. I call that prayer.Move toward prayer because only prayer will give you real contentment. Only prayer will make you aware of the divinity of the other person, of the godliness of the other person. And seeing the godliness of the other person, of your beloved – you will become aware of your own godliness.Love is a mirror. A real relationship is a mirror in which two lovers see each other’s faces and recognize God. It is a path toward God.The fifth question:Osho,I am born British and so is my friend! Any hope?Nobody is born British. It is a disease that happens later on. We learn it, it is not innate. Just like nobody is born German or Indian. These are structures that are imposed on us later on, after birth. These are social ways of enslaving your psyche, your being. Every society imposes certain forms, rules, regulations. Every society gives you a shape, a form, a face, a facade.Nobody is British and nobody is German and nobody is Indian. Hence these structures can be dropped. One can slip out of them.The only thing needed is awareness. We are so unaware that we become one with the structure, identified with it. We start thinking that we are it. And that’s where the disease becomes a permanent phenomenon; it becomes chronic. Otherwise, one can slip out of being British or Hindu or Mohammedan or communist as easily as the snake gets out of its old skin and never looks back.Secondly, not all British are British, not all Germans are Germans, not all Indians are Indians. You can find a few Indians here. My sannyasins or my would-be sannyasins are not Indians. They have slipped out of the Indian prison. Now, there are so many Germans here. And when I go on telling jokes against Germans they laugh as relaxedly as you laugh. They don’t feel hurt.When I say something against the British, the British are the happiest. They are happy because they must feel jealous of the Germans. I go on hitting the Germans so much! I have a certain soft corner for Haridas, Govinddas, etcetera. I go on hitting them. And the British must feel a little lost, lagging behind!My sannyasins belong to no race, to no country, to no religion. That’s what my sannyas is all about: getting out of all kinds of prisons, becoming simply human; declaring one’s universality, declaring that “The whole earth belongs to us.”As sannyasins grow slowly, slowly into millions, we are going to create trouble. When I have got enough sannyasins I will tell you, “Now you can burn your passports and move freely from one country to another because freedom of movement is a birthright.”It is so ugly that you cannot move from one country to another country easily. They create so many barriers. When you pass the boundary of one country to another, you immediately become aware that you have been in a prison and you are entering another prison. The prison is big, so when you are inside you don’t know about it.The person who has never left India will not be aware that he is living in a big prison. But when you leave the country then you know how difficult it is. How you are tortured for hours, how many papers you have to fill in, how many things you have to do before you can get out, over the border. Then you know that this is a prison. And you have to do the same thing in the other country. These countries are big prisons.The hope is that when there are millions of sannyasins and we have created enough orange energy in the world, we will break all these barriers.But remember always, not all Germans are Germans, not all British are British, not all Indians are Indian. That is the only hope. There are a few who are in the prison but not part of it. It is just an accident that they are born in India, an accident that they are born in England; otherwise they are free souls. They are the real hope for humanity, the real hope for the future.This English sportsman had been abroad and returned to his home without notice. While walking through the corridor with his butler, he looked into his bedroom and discovered his wife making love to a strange man. “Fetch my rifle at once!” he instructed his butler.In a matter of minutes his rifle was brought to him. Raising it and taking aim, he was tapped on the shoulder by the butler who whispered, “If I may say so sir, remember you are a true sportsman. Get him on the rise!”Now the butler is not British, not at all…has more of a sense of humor!Two Englishmen were coming home late at night from a poker party. One said, “I am always afraid when I return home late from a party like this. I shut off the engine of my car a half a block from home and coast into the garage. I take off my shoes and sneak into the house. I am as quiet as possible, but invariably, about the time I settle down into bed, my wife sits up and starts to berate me.”The other man said, “You just have the wrong technique. I never have any trouble. I barge into the garage, slam the door, stomp into the house, and make a hell of a racket. Then I go upstairs to the bedroom, pat my wife and say, ‘How about it, kid?’ She always pretends she is asleep.”The sixth question:Osho,No passion, no jealousy, and so much loving. Can it be true that this suffering is over?One of the most fundamental things to be remembered is that you will have to be constantly aware. You cannot take it for granted that the suffering is over. If you take it for granted that the suffering is over, the suffering will be back, by the back door. You have to be constantly alert and aware.Yes, for the moment there is “…no jealousy, no passion and yet so much loving,” naturally. When there is no passion and no jealousy, all the energies move into the direction of love. It is the same energy that becomes passion, becomes jealousy. When there is no jealousy, no passion, all the energy is available for the flowers of love to bloom. But don’t take it for granted. Don’t think that the suffering is over for ever.Life is a continuous evolution and you have to be constantly alert. Otherwise you can fall back into the old patterns very easily. And the old patterns have persisted so long. They have become so ingrained in your blood, in your bones, in your very marrow, that one moment of unconsciousness and you are back. You have to go on being aware.Something beautiful is happening; much more is going to happen. One never knows how much more is possible. We are never aware of our potential unless it becomes actual.You have seen a beautiful space of non-jealous love. Passion is a kind of fever and it consumes much energy. Fever naturally consumes energy. And passion is fever. When passion disappears, compassion arises. And compassion is cool. Passion is hot, it burns you. Compassion is cool, not cold, remember. Hatred is cold, lust is hot. Exactly between the two is the golden mean, neither hot nor cold. Then you are in a state of cool-warmth. Very paradoxical it seems: cool-warmth. It is not hot, but it is warm; it is not cold, but it is cool.And the real flower of love opens up only in that climate of cool-warmth. A warm-coolness is the right climate for the lotus of love to blossom.But don’t take it for granted. Never take anything for granted! Each moment you have to conquer it again and again. Life is a continuous conquest. It is not that once and for all it is settled and then you can fall asleep and be unconscious and there is no worry left. Again you will be back in the same rut.I am happy. I have been watching you. You are looking both warm and cool. It is a non-ending process. Be alert, be watchful. Don’t destroy this beautiful flower that is growing in you.When you have something precious you have to be more aware. When you have nothing to lose you can be unconscious, you can sleep; there is no problem. But when you have something to lose – and this is something precious – be more conscious, be more alert. You have discovered a treasure.The seventh question:Osho,What is intelligence?First, know well that intellectuality is not intelligence. To be intellectual is to be phony, it is pretending intelligence. It is not real because it is not yours, it is borrowed. Intelligence is the growth of inner consciousness. It has nothing to do with knowledge. It has something to do with meditativeness.An intelligent person does not function out of his past experience, he functions in the present. He does not react, he responds. Hence he is always unpredictable. One can never be certain what he is going to do.A Catholic, a Protestant and a Jew were talking to a friend who said he had just been given six months to live. “What would you do,” he asked the Catholic, “if your doctor gave you six months to live?”“Ah!” said the Catholic. “I would give all my belongings to the Church, take communion every Sunday, and say my ‘Hail Marys’ regularly.”“And you?” he asked the Protestant.“I would sell up everything and go on a world cruise and have a great time!”“And you?” he said to the Jew.“Me? I would see another doctor.”That is intelligence!Janet, a pert secretary, sashayed into the boss’ office. “I have some good news and some bad news.” she announced.“No jokes, please,” said her boss, “not on quarterly report day. Just give me the good news.”“Okay,” declared the girl, “the good news is that you are not sterile.”This is intelligence!The outraged husband discovered his wife in bed with another man. “What is the meaning of this?” he demanded. “Who is this fellow?”“That seems like a fair question.” said the wife, rolling over. “What is your name?”That is intelligence!Enough for today.

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Ah This 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ah This 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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One day the King of Yen visited the Master Chao Chou, who did not even get up when he saw him coming. The king asked, “Which is higher, a worldly king, or the ‘King of Dharma’?”Chao Chou replied, “Among human kings I am higher; among the Kings of Dharma I am also higher.” Hearing this surprising answer, the king was very pleased.The next day a general came to visit Chao Chou, who not only got up from his seat when he saw the general coming, but also showed him more hospitality in every way than he had shown to the king.After the general had left, Chao Chou’s attendant monks asked him, “Why did you get up from your seat when a person of lower rank came to see you, yet did not do so for one of the highest rank?”Chao Chou replied, “You don’t understand. When people of the highest quality come to see me, I do not get up from my seat; when they are of middle quality, I do; but when they are of the lowest quality, I go outside of the gate to receive them.”Man lives in a very upside-down state. Hence, whenever there is an enlightened master, his actions, his words, his behavior; all appear absurd to the ordinary man. Jesus is misunderstood for the simple reason that a man of eyes is talking to the men who are blind. Socrates is not understood for the same reason, because he is talking to people who are utterly deaf. And so is the case with all the buddhas of all the countries, of all the races. Unfortunately, this is going to remain the case forever. It is something in the very nature of things.Man is unconscious. He understands the language of unconsciousness. And whenever somebody talks from the peaks of consciousness it becomes utterly un-understandable, unintelligible. He is so far away! By the time his words reach the dark valleys of our unconscious, we have distorted them to such an extent that they have no reference at all anymore to their origin.The master looks sometimes mad, sometimes irrational, sometimes stubborn. But the only reason that he cannot behave like you, that he cannot be part of the crowd mind, is that he has become awakened and the crowd is fast asleep.To understand a master you have to learn great sympathy. Only that will create a bridge. That’s what the relationship of a disciple to the master is. You can listen to a master without being a disciple. You will hear the words but you will miss the meaning. You will hear the sound but you will miss the music. You will hear the argument but you will miss the conclusion. You will know what he is saying but you will not be able to see where he is indicating.To understand the significance which is wordless, to understand the meaning, a totally different kind of relationship is needed. It is not that of a speaker and the audience: it is that of two lovers. It has to be a love affair; only then is there sympathy enough to have a bridge, to have communication.And once the sympathy is there, it is not very far away from empathy. Sympathy can be transformed into empathy very easily; in fact, it changes on its own accord into empathy. Just as you sow seeds and in the right time they sprout and the spring comes and there are many flowers, sow the seeds of sympathy. That is, initiation into disciplehood, then soon there will be flowers of empathy.In sympathy there is still a little distance. You can hear, you can hear a little better than before. You can understand more clearly than before. But still things are in a state of vagueness. Clearer than before but not absolutely clear yet: in a state of twilight. The night is no more but the sun has not risen yet and it is very misty. You can see but can’t decipher things accurately.Empathy means there is no longer distance. Now the disciple is drowned in the master. He has become a devotee. Now the master is drowned in the disciple. They are not separate entities any more. They have reached the same rhythm of being, they pulsate in synchronicity.Then there is understanding and that understanding liberates, and that understanding is immediate. You see the master, you look into his eyes, you hear his words, you see him moving, his gestures… And they are immediately understood without any translation by the mind. The mind no longer functions as a mediator. It is direct communion, not even communication but communion.The first step is that of a student, curious but still a spectator, far away, collecting information, knowledge. The second step is that of a disciple, no longer a spectator, but a participant; no longer interested in knowledge, but tremendously interested in knowing. And the third step is that of a devotee, utterly one with the master, partaking of his being, drinking out of his inexhaustible source, drunk – drunk with the divine.Only the devotee understands absolutely. The disciple understands a little bit. The student only hears mere words.Remember, you have to pass through these stages too. And it all depends on you. One can remain a student forever. If you keep a distance, if you are afraid to come close, you will be here and yet not here.Come closer, spiritually closer. Bring your beings, unafraid, closer to the master, closer to his light. Yes, that light is not only light, it is fire too. It is going to consume you. Be consumed, because in that fire there is great hope of a rebirth.These small Zen stories on the surface look just like ordinary anecdotes. They are not. They carry immense significance. Before we enter into the story, a few things have to be understood.The other day there was a question from Satsanga. He said, “Osho, why are you not a little more diplomatic with the politicians and the priests, because that will save us a lot of trouble?”I can understand what he means. I can understand his worry. He would like me to be a little more diplomatic but a master cannot be diplomatic. It has never been so. It is impossible. Diplomacy is cunningness. Diplomacy is the art of lying. Diplomacy is the way of persuading others without telling them the truth. Diplomacy is a game. Politicians play the game. Mystics cannot play it.A mystic is one who calls a spade a spade. He is straight, whatsoever the cost. He cannot deceive, he cannot lie. He cannot keep quiet. If he sees something he will say it and he will say it as it is.Gurdjieff used to say sometimes to very prominent people, famous in some way or other; great authors, painters, poets, politicians, people who dominate this world, the great egoists… He used to say to these people a very significant thing, remember it. Suddenly he would say to them, “You have a very good facade.”Now to say to a politician, to a president of a country or to a prime minister or to a king, “You have a very good facade,” is to invite trouble. And Gurdjieff lived his whole life in trouble. But there is no other way.He also used to say, more than once… Whenever some egoist would ask him, “Do you love me? Do you like me?” This was his answer: “For what you could be I have nothing but benevolence, but as you are I hate you – back to your grandmother!”This is not diplomacy. This is creating enemies.Jesus must have been a really great artist in creating enemies because he was only thirty-three when he was crucified. And there was only three years of work because he appeared at the age of thirty. Up to that time he was with the mystery schools: going around the world to Egypt, to India and the possibility is, even to Tibet and to Japan.Hence the Bible has no record of his years of preparation. The record is very abrupt. Something about his childhood is said, very fragmentary. And only once is he mentioned, when he was twelve years of age and he started arguing with the priests in the temple. That’s all. Then there is a gap of eighteen years. Nothing is mentioned.Now a man like Jesus cannot just live an ordinary life for eighteen years and then suddenly explode into Christhood. That is not possible. Those eighteen years he was moving with different masters, with different systems, getting initiated into different mystery schools; learning whatsoever was available, getting in tune with as many masters as possible.He appears at the age of thirty and by the age of thirty-three he is crucified. In three years he really did a good job! He was quick! You cannot think that he was diplomatic. He was the most undiplomatic man ever. In fact, that’s how awakened people behave. What exactly is diplomacy?“Daddy, what is diplomacy?” asked little Bill, just home from school.“Well, son, it is like this,” replied his dad, “if I were to say to your mother ‘Your face would stop a clock,’ that would be stupidity. But if I were to say ‘When I look at you, time stands still,’ that is diplomacy!”Yes, you would like me to be a little more diplomatic. That will save a lot of trouble. But that will save you also from truth, remember. Truth brings many troubles. It is bound to be so because people live in lies and when you bring truth into the world, their lies – their lives rooted in lies – react. A great antagonism is bound to happen. And people as they are, in their unconsciousness, cannot live without lies.Friedrich Nietzsche is right. He says: “Please, don’t destroy people’s lies, their illusions: because if you destroy their illusions they will not be able to live at all. They will collapse.” They will not find anything worth living for. They live because of the illusions: the illusions keep on giving them hope. They live in the tomorrow which never comes. They live in their ambitions which are never fulfilled. But whether fulfilled or not, through those ambitions and desires and illusions and expectations and hopes they can drag their lives up to their graves. If you destroy their illusions, they may simply drop dead here and now because then there is no point in living.And whenever you think of suicide, remember why you are thinking of suicide. Some hope has turned sour, some expectation has turned into a frustration, some desire has proved futile. You have become aware. Even in your unawareness a little ray of awareness has penetrated you. You have seen, maybe only for a moment, a glimpse, just like lightning in the dark night. For a moment all was light and you have seen that the way you are living is false. And there is no fulfillment if you live in a false way. Immediately the idea of suicide arises in you.More and more people are committing suicide today, more than ever. More people commit suicide in the West than in the East. It looks very strange, very illogical. It should not be so, because in the East people are starving but they don’t commit suicide. In the West they have all that man has always desired. People have two houses; one in the city, one in the mountains or on the sea beach, in the country. They have two-car garages and all kinds of gadgets that technology has made available.For the first time the West has succeeded in being affluent, but more people are committing suicide there than in the East. Why? For the simple reason that the East can still hope and the West is becoming aware that there is no hope. When you don’t have something, you can hope for it; when you have it, how can you hope anymore? The thing is there and nothing has happened through it. You have money. You have a good wife, children, husband, prestige, respectability – all. And suddenly you become aware in this affluence that deep down you are hollow; poor, a beggar and nothing else. The whole effort of achieving all these things has failed. The things are there, but no fulfillment happened through them. This is the cause of more suicide in the West.In the West too, more Americans commit suicide than anybody else because they are the most affluent. They are the most in a state of shock. “All the hopes for which we have lived for centuries are fulfilled, and yet nothing is fulfilled.” And this is going to be so. More and more, more and more people will commit suicide.Friedrich Nietzsche is correct. The ordinary man cannot live without illusions. Don’t take his illusions away from him!And the master does exactly that. He tries to take your illusions away. He creates a situation in which, ordinarily, you would commit suicide. But if you are fortunate enough to have a communion with a master, the same situation creates sannyas. It is the same situation, the same crisis!This is my observation: that true sannyas happens only when you have come to the verge of suicide. When you see that the outside world is finished, then there are only two alternatives left. Either commit suicide, be finished because there is nothing anymore to live for, or turn in. “The outer world has failed, now let us try the inner.” That is sannyas. Sannyas and suicide are two aspects of the same coin: if you are focused and obsessed with the outside then suicide, if you are a little loose, flexible, then sannyas.But a master cannot be diplomatic. He has to create this crisis in which suicide is possible and also sannyas, also transformation, also a new birth. But a new birth is possible only when you die to the old, when you die to the past.Cynthia’s fine figure had been poured into a beautiful form-fitting gown and she made a point of calling her date’s attention to it over and over again, throughout the evening.Finally, over a nightcap in his apartment, he said, “You have been talking about that dress all evening long. You called my attention to it first when we met for cocktails, mentioned it again at dinner, and still again at the theater. Now that we are here alone in my penthouse, what do you say if we drop the subject?”This is diplomacy! But masters simply call a spade a spade. Their truth is utterly nude. Whether you like it or not is not the point. They cannot compromise with your likings. If they start compromising with your likings they can’t be of any help to you. To compromise with you means to compromise with your sleep, your unconsciousness, your mechanicalness: to compromise with you means to stop waking you up. That is not possible.Hence, I cannot be diplomatic. Moreover, I am not British!Just the other day I was talking about poor Anurag’s mother, a perfect British lady! But she was not here, just as expected. She had been here only once in many weeks. She simply goes on sitting in the hotel, utterly bored, as every British person is bored. Poor Anurag! I call her “poor” because she is going through something really horrible. Now I have to call it horrible, I can’t be diplomatic! She arranged so that her mother could listen to the tape and after she listened to the tape Anurag asked her, “What do you think of it?” She said, “Dear, I fell asleep.”This is diplomacy!People listen only to that which they want to listen to; otherwise they fall asleep. At least they can think of a thousand other things, and that too is a kind of sleep because they are no longer listening.I have to be hard! I have to be as hard as possible because your sleep is deep and it has to be shattered. I have to hit your head with a hammer otherwise you are not going to wake up. For centuries you have been asleep. Sleep has become your nature. You have forgotten what awareness is, what to be awake means.There are three types of men, and the master behaves differently according to the type. The highest type is the man who has tasted the joy of no-mind. The master behaves with that type of man in a totally different way because he knows he will understand.The state of no-mind is the highest state. You are at the peak when you are in the state of no-mind: when you are absolutely silent, when nothing stirs within you, no idea, no thought; when the mind has ceased to create noise, the constant noise. The mind is chattering so much that it won’t allow you to hear anything. When the mind’s chattering ceases, for the first time you become aware of the music of your own being. And for the first time you also become aware of the music that is this existence.When such a man approaches a master, the master behaves in a totally different way because he knows whatsoever he does, he will be understood. Communion is possible because there is no barrier.The second type of man is the man who lives in between, between the first and the third. He has a meditative mind not yet a no-mind, but a meditative mind. That is, he is on the way. He has learned how to be a little silent, a little more harmonious than others. The noise is there, but it is a distant noise; he has been able to detach himself from it. He has created a little distance between himself and his mind. He is no longer identified with the mind. He does not think, “I am the mind.” The mind is there, still chattering, still playing old tricks, but the man is a little alert not to be a slave of the mind. The mind has not left him, but the mind is no longer as powerful as it ordinarily is.In the state of no-mind, the mind has left. The mind has become tired. The mind has come to realize that “This man has gone beyond, beyond my powers. Now this man cannot be exploited any more. This man has become utterly unidentified with me. He will use me but I cannot use him.”The second type of man, who is in between, sometimes falls back into the old pattern, is used by the mind, sometimes gets out of the old pattern. It is hide-and-seek. Mind is still not absolutely certain that it has failed. There is still hope, because once in a while the man starts listening to the mind, becomes again identified. The distance is not great. The mind is very close. Any moment, any moment of unconsciousness and the mind takes over, starts bossing over again.This is the second type of man, the meditative man, who has known a few glimpses of the eternal. Just as you can see the Himalayas from thousands of miles… The snow-covered peaks in the early morning sun, in an open sky, unclouded sky, can be seen from thousands of miles away. That is one thing. And to be on the peak, to abide there, is quite another.The first type of man abides in no-mind. The second type of man has glimpses only; of tremendous value of course, because those glimpses will pave the way so that he can reach the peak. Once you have seen the peak, even from thousands of miles away, the invitation has been received. Now you cannot remain in the world at rest, in the old way. Something starts challenging you, something starts calling you forth. An adventure has taken possession of you. You have to travel to the peak. It may take years, maybe lives, but the journey has started. The first seed has fallen into the heart.The master behaves with the meditative man in a different way because with the first, communion is possible, with the second, communication is possible.And then there is the third type: the man who lives identified with the mind, with the ego, with whom even communication is not possible, with whom there is no way to relate.This word identification is beautiful. It means to make something an entity, to entity-fy the id; that is the meaning of identification. When you become the mind you have become a thing; you are no longer separate. You have fallen asleep. This is what is called metaphysical sleep. You have lost track of your own self. You have forgotten your reality and you have become one with something which you are not. To become one with something that you are not is identification and to be that which you are is dis-identification.The first man lives in dis-identification. He knows he is not the body, he is not the mind. He simply knows he is only awareness and nothing else. The body goes on changing, the mind goes on changing, but there is one thing in you which is unchanging, absolutely unchanging; that is your awareness. It was exactly the same when you were a child and it will remain exactly the same when you are an old man. It was the same when you were born and it will be the same when you die. It was the same before your birth. It will be the same after your death. It is the only thing in existence which is eternal, unchanging, the only thing that abides.And this eternal awareness can be the true home, nothing else, because everything else is a flux. We go on clinging to the changing; then we create misery, because it changes and we want it not to change. We are asking for the impossible and because the impossible cannot happen we fall into misery again and again.The young man wants to remain young forever and that is not possible. He will have to become old; the body will have to become old. And when the body is old he will be miserable. But awareness is the same. The body is just like the house. Awareness is the host. Deep down within your body and mind complex there is a totally different phenomenon constantly happening. It is neither body nor mind. It is something that can observe both body and mind. It is pure observation. It is the witnessing soul: sakshin. The first type of man knows that he is unidentified with all that is changing. He is centered in his reality. The third type of man is obsessed with something which he is not. In fact, the majority of people belong to the third type. The third type is metaphysically ill. If you ask the awakened one, then the third type is mad, insane. To think yourself something which you are not is insanity.A man went to a psychiatrist and said, “Doctor, you will have to help me. I can’t help thinking that I am a dog. I even chew bones, bark, and lie on the mat in the evenings.”Said the psychiatrist, “Just lie on that couch…”“I am not allowed to!” he cried.But this is the situation of the ordinary humanity. Somebody has become a Hindu, somebody has become a Mohammedan, somebody has become a Christian. Somebody is Indian, somebody is Chinese, somebody is Italian. These are all identifications. Somebody thinks himself white, somebody thinks himself black. Somebody thinks himself a man and somebody is identified with being a woman. These are all states of deep unconscious slumber.If you are not the body, how can you be a man or a woman? If you are not the body, how can you be white or black? If you are not even the mind, how can you be Christian or Hindu? If you are only awareness, then you are only awareness and nothing else.Now this little Zen story:One day the King of Yen visited the Master Chao Chou, who did not even get up when he saw him coming.That is strange! First, now it has become almost impossible for a president or a prime minister or a king to go to a master because they think they are powerful people. Why should they go to these poor people? What can they give to them? Values have changed.Within these two thousand years, man’s values have gone through immense change. In the ancient days, the highest man was not the one who had power but the one who had renounced power. And it seems significant that the one who has renounced power should be thought higher. It is a very ordinary desire to be powerful. The man who has been able to renounce power has attained a certain inner integrity. He has dropped a very ordinary ambition. He has become extraordinary.In those days, kings used to go to seek advice, to search for light, to sit at the feet of somebody who had attained.This king must have heard of Chao Chou. He went to see him. This shows a totally different priority. It is very difficult now; it is difficult because man has become more materialistic. His mind is too much concerned with what you have rather than with what you are. In the ancient days the value was not in your possessions but in your being. The value was not in your things, not even in your knowledge because that too is a possession, but in your being; in your sheer being, in your purity of your inner core. You may have nothing…Alexander had gone to see Diogenes, a naked man who had nothing. But it is beautiful to remember that even Alexander the Great had the guts to go to Diogenes, the naked fakir. Why had he gone? Alexander’s generals, his prime minister, his ministers, were all against it. They said, “Why are you going there? That man has nothing!”Alexander said, “I know it. That man has nothing. That’s why I am going to see him, because I have heard he has a tremendous rootedness, a great centeredness. I want to see a centered man. I am just fragmentary, I have no center. I don’t know what it is to have a center and I want to see a person who has a center. He possesses nothing on the outside, but he possesses himself. And that is the real possession.”One day the King of Yen visited the Master Chao Chou, who did not even get up when he saw him coming. Chao Chou did not get up. That would have been normal, expected. When the king comes to see you, you have to get up and receive him; it is just a formality.I have heard that Chuang Tzu, a Taoist master, used to be in the service of the King of China. Then he left the service. After a few years the king came to hear that Chuang Tzu had become enlightened, so he went to see him.Chuang Tzu was a man of great manners, formality, because he had been one of the most important men of the court of the king. So the king was expecting the same court manners. When he reached Chuang Tzu, he was playing on his flute, both his legs spread underneath a tree, leaning against the tree. He continued to play on the flute, legs spread.The king stood there, could not believe his eyes. He said, “Have you gone mad or something? Have you forgotten all court manners?”Chuang Tzu laughed and he said, “I was showing those manners because I was still hankering for respectability. Now I don’t hanker for anything, so why should I care? You may be the king, you may be a beggar. It is all the same to me. Because now I have no desires any more, it does not matter whether the king comes to me or the beggar.”The king was immensely impressed; he understood the point. All those court manners were nothing but ways of buttressing the king.You buttress somebody, and then in response he buttresses your ego. It is a mutual kind of arrangement. You say good things about others and they say good things about you. Both are being formal because both want to hear good things about themselves.Chuang Tzu said, “Now it is up to you, whatsoever you think. You can think I have gone mad. You can think I have fallen from grace. Who cares?”Exactly the same happened with Chao Chou. He did not even get up when he saw the king coming. But this king must have had a totally different quality from the king who visited Chuang Tzu. Even Alexander was offended by Diogenes’ behavior…Diogenes was lying down naked by the bank of a river in the sand. It was early morning – must have been a morning like this, very cool and he was taking a sunbath. He didn’t get up; he remained lying, taking a sunbath. Alexander was a little embarrassed. How to start, to talk with this man? Not finding anything else he said, “I have come to see you. I am Alexander the Great. Can I be of any help to you?”Diogenes replied, “Look, if you are really great, you need not go on declaring it. That simply shows a very stupid mind. That shows only a very small mind, egoistic. To declare yourself great simply means you are suffering from an inferiority complex!“And the second thing, I don’t need anything. But if you really want to help me you can do one thing, just stand aside because you are blocking the sun.”That was all that Diogenes asked from Alexander the Great, “Stand aside, don’t come in the way of the sun and me.”Alexander could not understand Diogenes. Of course he was impressed, but in a totally different manner. He was impressed by the powerful presence of Diogenes – as if the whole bank was full of his presence, as if he was creating a buddhafield. Although he was armored, although he was not at all interested in mysticism, he was impressed.But this King of Yen must have been of the first type far higher than the king who visited Chuang Tzu and far higher than Alexander. He understood it.The king asked, “Which is higher, a worldly king, or the ‘King of Dharma’?”Why did he ask this question? You will be surprised to know that he asked it just to see whether Chao Chou showed any so-called humility or not.The religious people always go on showing humbleness: “I am nothing, I am nobody.” And if you look into their eyes, their eyes are saying just the opposite. If you watch their behavior, it is always a projection of holier-than-thou. They go on saying, “We are nothing” and they go on in a subtle way, in a diplomatic way proclaiming, “We are saints.”The king asked, “Which is higher, a worldly king, or the ‘King of Dharma’?”Chao Chou replied, “Among human kings I am higher; among the Kings of Dharma I am also higher.”The real man of Zen is not humble in the ordinary sense of the word. He simply says whatsoever is the case. This is the case! Chao Chou is simply stating a truth. He is not saying anything about himself, remember. He is simply stating a fact: “This state, this state of no-mind in which I am, is higher; higher among human beings, among human kings and higher also among Kings of Dharma because it is the highest state.”Once Ramakrishna was given a painting of himself; a portrait by a great painter. Ramakrishna took the painting, bowed down to the painting, touched the feet – his own feet. It was his own portrait! The painter was puzzled, “Is that man really mad?” The disciples were puzzled.One disciple asked, “Paramahansadeva, what are you doing, touching your own feet?”Ramakrishna said, “Right! You should have reminded me before. I should not do such a thing. What will people think? They will think I am mad! But the truth is I completely forgot that this is my picture. I could only see the ultimate state of consciousness. This is a portrait of samadhi, not of Ramakrishna. Ramakrishna is irrelevant! It could have been Buddha’s picture, it could have been Krishna’s picture, it could have been Jesus’ picture. It is just an accident that it is mine. It doesn’t matter.“But the painter has been able to catch hold of something very subtle. He has been able to depict something which is indescribable. And I could not resist myself, I had to bow down. I had to touch the feet.”Remember, when Chao Chou says: “Among human kings I am higher; among the Kings of Dharma, I am also higher…” He is not talking about himself, not at all. He is talking about the ultimate state. He is no more. So who is there to be humble? See the point. There is nobody to be proud. There is nobody to be humble. Those are all games of the ego: to be humble or to be proud.The real man is neither proud nor humble. He simply is not. Then whatsoever he says has no reference to his personality. He is only a mirror. He reflects the ultimate. Chao Chou is talking about the ultimate. He has become one with the ultimate. And the king understood it.Hearing this surprising answer…The answer is really surprising. When you go to saints, they don’t talk like that.Once I was invited to a religious conference. Three hundred saints were invited from all over the country. They invited me, why? I was puzzled because I am not a saint. It seems by some mistake…They had made a great platform for all three hundred saints to sit together. But they were not ready to sit on the same platform, at the same height, with others. Nobody was ready! They all wanted a little higher place than the others. Now, that was impossible! How can you manage three hundred people, everybody asking to be a little higher than the other? So the stage was for three hundred people and thousands of people had gathered to listen. But each saint talked to the people, sitting alone on that big platform.It was impossible to even bring them together. And if you talk to them they will all say, “We are just dust and nothing else. We are humble people, servants of God, servants of humanity.”Even once a year some of them would wash the feet of a poor man, all formality! But they could not sit on the same platform. One of those three hundred saints had brought his own golden throne and he wanted to sit on his golden throne. Now the others were very angry. They said, “This cannot be allowed! If he sits on a golden throne, then we also need golden thrones of the same height.”Can you see what kind of people they are? Are they saints or monkeys? Even monkeys are not so stupid! I have seen them just sitting in trees, on the same branches, enjoying themselves. Nobody is worried about who is higher, who is lower.But, if you talk to those saints… And they all addressed the audience and with great humbleness. Pious egoism! Religious egoism! The pious, religious egoism is far more dangerous than any other. All their behavior, all their talk, is only a beautiful facade, a cultivated phenomenon. Because people respect humbleness they are pretending to be humble, in order to be respected. You see the strategy and the cunning ways of the ego? And these are the people who have reduced the whole of religion to formality.Hearing this surprising answer… It was really surprising. Surprising, because ordinarily the religious people don’t talk like that. The king must have expected that he would say, “I am nobody. I am just dust under your feet. I am the servant of humanity, just a servant of God. I am here to serve others.”But he simply said, “No. I am higher than the human kings and I am higher than the Kings of Dharma too.” He simply stated the fact. In fact, he is showing great respect to the king. By saying the truth he is saying, “I understand that you can understand.”Hearing this surprising answer, the king was very pleased.Reading this sentence for the first time, you will be a little surprised why the king is pleased. He should really be displeased because this man is trying to prove himself higher than everybody; not only than him but than other saints also. He is saying, “I am greater than the Kings of Dharma.”But he was pleased. Why? For the simple reason that this man understands, the king can understand. More respect than that cannot be shown. He has said the truth as it is, naked, utterly naked, trusting that here is a man who will be able to understand. There is no need to compromise. There is no need to come down. There is no need to talk in a language that he can understand. You can say the truth as it is and still you can hope that he will understand. Chao Chou must have seen that this man had attained something of the no-mind.And whenever you come before a master, just a look is enough and he knows you through and through, to the innermost core. He becomes immediately acquainted with you. No other introduction is needed. He can see whether you are asleep or awake. He can see whether you are pretending or real. He can see whether you are pseudo or authentic. He can see where you are.Every evening people come to see me. They come to touch my feet. Touching my feet has nothing to do with me that is just an excuse for them to bow down, to surrender. Any other excuse will do. If you can manage you can bow down to a tree, and immediately you will see a great uprising in yourself, a great uplift.But there are a few fools also. They will touch my feet, but they are only following a formality. There are a few other kinds of fools who will come to touch my feet but will not even be able to do it formally. They will just sit there like rocks. I touch their heads not to offend them otherwise it is not worth it because it is meaningless. If they are not surrendering, my touch cannot reach their hearts, my energy cannot stir their hearts. If they are sitting like rocks, they are just touching my feet in a pseudo way. Touching their heads is futile. Still I touch, just not to hurt them unnecessarily. And they will not understand even that. You can hit only when somebody understands.Now Chao Chou has hit the king as hard as possible by saying, “What are you? I am higher than all the kings, of this world and the other world.” He has hit him hard, must have seen the immense capacity of the man to understand. And that’s why the king is very pleased. He was not hoping that he would be respected so much.Do you see the point? It is not an ordinary anecdote. When you read it, it looks ordinary. When you go deep into it meditatively, you will find subtle nuances, subtle turns. Just this single phrase, …the king was very pleased is of immense importance. What is there to be pleased about? The man has hit him like anything! But there is something to be pleased about because he thought him worthy enough to hit. He thought him worthy enough to say the truth as it is. He belongs to the first category.The next day a general came to visit Chao Chou, who not only got up from his seat when he saw the general coming, but also showed him more hospitality in every way than he had shown to the king.After the general had left, Chao Chou’s attendant monks asked him, “Why did you get up from your seat when a person of lower rank came to see you, yet did not do so for one of the highest rank?”Now the attendant monks can see only the outer shell. The general is of a lower rank, the king is of a higher rank. They can only see the outer side and they must have been puzzled, “Why did Chao Chou behave in such a hard way with the king and why did he behave in such a soft way with the general?”Chao Chou replied, “You don’t understand. When people of the highest quality come to see me, I do not get up from my seat…”There is no need because the highest quality people have no egos; that’s why they are of the highest quality. If they have no egos, there is no need to stand up or to show great respect to them. That will be futile, meaningless. That will simply show that you don’t understand.“When people of the highest quality come to see me, I do not get up from my seat; when they are of middle quality, I do; but when they are of the lowest quality, I go outside of the gate to receive them.”The ways of the masters are strange! And to be with a master is to be with a mystery. A master is a mystery. He lives on the earth and yet he is not part of the earth. He is in the body and he is not the body. He uses the mind and he is not the mind. He is in time but he belongs to the beyond, to eternity. He is as alive as you are, but in a totally different way because he knows there is no birth, no death. He has gone beyond birth and death. He knows life eternal.From the outside he is just like you; hungry he eats, thirsty he drinks, tired he sleeps; just like you. But in his innermost core he is totally different because he is in a totally different world, in a totally different space.And to understand his inner world you will have to grow into your own interiority. That is the only way. You can understand only so much. If you move deep into yourself you will understand the master in a deep way. The deeper you move inside, the deeper you will understand the master. To understand the master you will have to go deeper into yourself. When you have reached the innermost core of your being you will know the master in his absolute perfection. Otherwise, you will misunderstand.Now, even the attendant monks could not understand.Chao Chou said: “You don’t understand.” It is very simple! “When people of the highest quality come to see me, I do not get up from my seat…”“In that way I show my respect to them. I say to them, ‘I have seen that you have known something of the no-mind, that your ego is no longer a solid phenomenon. It is no longer substantial, that you don’t hanker for respect. That’s why I am not showing you the formal respect. I know that you have gone beyond the form and beyond the formal.’”We live in the form and in the formal. We change everything into a formality. Love becomes marriage. Christ becomes the church. Buddha is reduced to stone statues. Great truths become ordinary scriptures to be worshipped. We are really very skillful in reducing every higher thing to the lowest possible. We bring everything to our level.Rather than going to the level of the buddhas, of the masters, we bring the masters, once they have left the world… Of course, when they are alive you cannot bring them to your level. They live without any compromise. You have to surrender to them. But once they are gone, then it is very easy. You can make their statues and temples and you can worship and everything becomes formal. Sunday religion: comfortable, convenient, but meaningless.One Hell’s Angel remarked to another, “I don’t see you at the gang bangs any more. What happened?”“I got married,” said his buddy.“No shit, man,” said the first cycler, “is legal tail any better than the normal kind?”“It ain’t even so good,” said the new groom, “but you don’t have to stand in line for it.”It is comfortable, it is convenient, the legal tail! And man is more interested in convenience than in truth, more interested in comfort than in truth, more interested in security than in transformation.If that is your state too, you are going to miss me because my interest is not security. I will force you more and more into insecurity. My interest is not convenience. I will force you more and more into rebellion. My interest is only one: truth, because it is truth that liberates. Everything else becomes bondage.The highest quality man immediately becomes a devotee. The middle quality man immediately becomes a disciple. The lowest quality man remains for years, for lives, just a student.Look into yourself, where you are. Don’t be just a student here. This is not a school. In fact, the whole process is one of de-schooling. I am not teaching you anything. I am here to help you transform. I am not giving you a dogma or a creed or a religion. I am not interested in all these things. I simply want to give you that which you already have. It has only to be provoked.You have to become attuned to me, in deep accord, one with me. Only then will you be benefited. Great benediction can be yours, great blessings can be yours. But you will have to come out of your small prisons, out of your small minds, out of your small egos. And you will get only that which you deserve, which you are worthy of. I can go on showering diamonds on you, but if you don’t understand what a diamond is you will go on collecting colored stones.And people are really so asleep that they don’t know what they are doing and they ask for wrong things. They ask for respect, they ask for some nourishment for their egos.Many people write letters to me; newcomers, saying, “Why in your ashram isn’t a little more love shown to us newcomers? Why does everybody seem to be a little aloof, a little cool? Why don’t people seem to be interested in newcomers? We come here to find love, warmth.”In fact, behind these words, love, warmth, etcetera, all that they are hankering for is some kind of respect; some kind of ego nourishment. That’s why people will look cool, people will look aloof.We are not interested in helping your egos because we don’t want to create greater hells for you. You are already in suffering. You have suffered enough. We want to pull you out of your egos. Just a small thing can hurt, just a very small thing. And we have managed things in such a way that there are many things which are bound to hurt your egos. Unless you are ready to “drop it,” you will escape from this place sooner or later.Only those who are ready to drop their egos will become part of this commune. And this commune is happening after many centuries. There have been masters with a few disciples… My effort is to bring such a revolution that the whole consciousness of humanity is affected by it. Individual enlightenment is just not enough. We have to start a process of enlightenment in which thousands of people become enlightened almost simultaneously; so that the whole consciousness of humanity can be raised to a higher level because that is the only hope of saving it.Otherwise, these twenty years are going to be fatal. Either we will succeed in transforming the whole of humanity’s consciousness and bring it to a higher level, at least to the second level – a meditative mind – for millions of people, and for thousands of people to the first grade, the no-mind. If we can do it, that is the only possible way to save humanity. Otherwise so much power has come into the hands of foolish politicians that any moment the Third World War can start and that will destroy the whole of humanity. And all the work of the ages, of all the buddhas, will be simply destroyed.Krishna, Jesus, Lao Tzu, Buddha, Pythagoras, Socrates: these people have worked hard to create this garden. And now we are getting ready to burn it totally.Before it is too late… Wake up! At least move to the second state of mind, meditative mind. Then the first will become easy. Being with me, don’t be of the third because that is not really being with me. Only the second is a little bit with me and is on the way to being totally with me. But remember, the goal is to be of the first. No-mind is the goal.From mind to no-mind is the revolution of sannyas.Enough for today.

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Ah This 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ah This 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I have heard that John the Baptist nearly drowned his disciples when baptizing them. Is this true? Is this type of experience something through which a disciple must pass?It is true. I know this fellow John the Baptist! In fact, every master does that. It is absolutely necessary because the disciple has to pass through a death process. Unless he dies – dies to his past, dies to his knowledge, dies to his beliefs – he cannot be reborn. And baptism is only symbolic. It is the symbol of death and resurrection.That’s exactly what I am doing here. You cling to your beliefs; political, social, religious, philosophical. You cling to whatsoever you have accumulated, although it is all junk, although it has not given you a single glimpse of truth. You cling to it…Somebody asked, “I was initiated by a master five years ago and now I am feeling deeply interested in you. But the problem is, can a man have two masters?” If your first initiation has opened the door to truth, there is no need for me to work on you. Why waste my time? I have so many other people to work upon. If the first master has not been able to open the door; or you have not allowed him to open the door; or maybe, who knows whether he was a master or not, then why not drop him?One cannot have two masters, that is utterly stupid. If the first has done the work then I am not needed. If the first has not done the work, for whatever reason; he may be a pseudo master, you may have been a pseudo disciple… Something must have gone wrong somewhere. One thing is certain, that initiation did not work. He could not drown you. He could not kill you. You are still there. But you don’t want to drop your old master and whatsoever he has taught you.Now you ask me, “Can a man have two masters?” I don’t accept such people because these are the wrong type of people. Sooner or later you will go to a third person and you will ask, “Can a man have three masters?”The first thing to remember here is, to be with me means you disconnect yourself from your past, whatsoever it is: your initiation, your master, your church, your religion. Unless you disconnect yourself you can’t be with me. To be with me you have to be reborn; you have to be a new being, utterly fresh as the dewdrops in the early sun. Less than that won’t do. You have to pass through fire. And it is very difficult to pass through fire, because one can see that the familiar is disappearing and the promised is far away. The promised land may be, may not be, and the familiar is going out of your hands. And the mind says, “It is better to have half the bread that you already have than to lose it for the whole bread which you don’t have, which is only a promise.”A master is only a promise: a promise of something that can happen, a promise of your potential becoming actual, a promise of flowering. But right now you are only a seed and the seed cannot believe in the promise. It is very difficult for the seed to believe in the promise. The seed would like to remain a seed and yet be a flower. So we go on clinging to the familiar beliefs, systems of thought, ideology. And still we want to be reborn!It is like a child who wants to cling to the womb and yet wants to be born. That is impossible. Either he has to be in the womb and die in the womb because after nine months to be in the womb is going to be sure death. Or he has to take the risk, the adventure, of going into the unknown.And, certainly, the child must feel the birth as death. It is death to his life as he has known it up to now: for nine months the darkness, the soothing darkness of the womb; the warmth, the absolutely responsibility-free existence, total rest, relaxation. And he has been floating, swimming, in a body-temperature liquid. He has never lacked anything. All was supplied by the body of the mother. Even before he needed, it was there, ready to be given to him. Now suddenly he is being thrown out of his home into the unknown. Who knows what is going to happen? He is being uprooted. He clings! It is natural to cling.And that’s exactly the situation when you are with a master. You have lived in a psychological womb. When you are with a master he starts pulling you out of your psychological womb. It is far more difficult than the physical process of leaving the womb because you feel closer to the psychological womb. You are a Christian, you are a Hindu, a Mohammedan, and you would like to remain that. And still you want to be transformed. Then you are in a double bind. Then you are split. Two masters can only mean a deep split in you. I am not here to create schizophrenia. No, one cannot have two masters. One is more than enough!You have heard rightly: “…John the Baptist nearly drowned his disciples when baptizing them.” That’s the only way to baptize. You ask me, “Is this type of experience something through which a disciple must pass?” Yes, it is a must. Unless the disciple passes through it he never becomes a devotee. And unless you become a devotee you don’t know what it means to be with a master. It is not an intellectual relationship. It is a deep merger with the being of the master. It is something very existential.The second question:Osho,I thought you knew everything. I thought that's what being enlightened is about: knowing. But you don't know about women, and that they trust precisely because they know each other's heart. Women's hate for women is a male myth invented to keep women separate and powerless. Who wants to be a man? Osho I am totally upset. How can you talk nonsense? My mind is having a fit and so is my heart. What to do?Judy, you carry too much of the crap that the Women’s Liberation Movement is creating. You are too full of it. Next time you come to me I will have to look into your eyes, because when people are too full of crap, up to their heads, their eyes are brown! And you must have some lesbian tendencies.You say, “I thought you knew everything.” You are absolutely wrong. I know nothing. “Not knowing is the most intimate.”If you have come here with this idea, you have come to the wrong person and to the wrong place. We celebrate ignorance! We destroy all kinds of knowledge. Our whole effort is to bring innocence back to you: the innocence that you had before you were born. Zen people call it the original face. The innocence is intrinsic; knowledge is given to you by the society, by the people around you, by the family. Innocence is yours. Knowledge is always of others. The more knowledgeable you are, the less you are yourself.Enlightenment has nothing to do with knowledge. It is freedom from knowledge; it is absolute transcendence of knowledge. It is going beyond knowing. That’s why we started this series of talks with the great sutra: “Not knowing is the most intimate.”An enlightened person is one who has no barrier between him and existence. And knowledge is a barrier. Knowledge divides you from existence; it keeps you separate. Not knowing unites you. Love is a way of innocence. Innocence is a bridge. Knowledge is a wall. Who has ever heard of knowledgeable people becoming enlightened? They are the farthest away from enlightenment. Enlightenment grows only in the soil of innocence.Innocence means childlike wonder, awe. The enlightened person is one who is continuously wondering because he knows nothing. So everything becomes again a mystery. When you know, things are de-mystified. When you don’t know, they are re-mystified. The more you know, the less wonder is in your heart. The more you know, the less you feel the great experience of awe. You cannot say “Ah, this!” You cannot be ecstatic. The knowledgeable person is so burdened. He cannot dance, he cannot sing, he cannot love. For the knowledgeable there is no God, because God only means wonder, awe, mystery. That’s why, as knowledge has grown in the world, God has become farther and farther away.Friedrich Nietzsche could declare, “God is dead” because of his knowledgeability. He was certainly a great philosopher, and philosophy is bound to come to the conclusion that there is no God because God simply means the mysterious, the miraculous. And knowledge reduces every miracle to ordinary laws, every mystery is reduced to formulas.Ask the knowledgeable person “What is love?” and he will say, “Nothing but chemistry, the attraction between male and female hormones. It is no more important than a magnet attracting iron pieces, it is the same. Like negative and positive electricity, man and woman are bioelectricity.”Now everything is destroyed. Then all love and all poetry and all music are reduced to nonsense. The lotus is reduced to the mud. The lotus certainly grows out of the mud, but the lotus is not the mud. It is not the sum total of its parts. It is more than the sum total of the parts. That more is God, that more is poetry, that more is love. But science has no place for the “more.” Science reduces every phenomenon to a mechanical thing. And do you know what science means? Science means knowledge; the actual word science means knowledge.Religion is not knowledge. It is just the opposite of knowledge. It is poetry, it is love. It is basically absurd. Yes, you can say that I am talking nonsense. If science is sense then religion is nonsense. But that’s the beauty of it.You say, “I thought you knew everything.” That is your thought and I am not here to oblige everybody’s thought. I cannot be according to your thoughts. I have more than one hundred thousand sannyasins. If I am to fulfill everybody’s thought I will be absolutely torn apart, into millions of pieces. I cannot fulfill your ideas about me. That is your mistake. And it is not too late. Either drop that idea if you want to be here with me…You are here with a paradoxical person, with a person who is trying to convey something mysterious to you, not knowledge. Who is trying to pour his experience of wonder and awe into your beings. It is more like wine than like knowledge. Who is trying to make you intoxicated, who is trying to transform you into drunkards. Yes, for the rational person it will look like nonsense.That’s what one of the most important thinkers of the West, Arthur Koestler, has written about Zen. He calls it “all nonsense.” If you look rationally, it is. But is reason the only way to approach reality? There are other ways, far deeper, far more intimate. “Not knowing is the most intimate.”I am not a man of knowledge, although I use words. I am not even a man of words.“I am a man of few words. Will you or won’t you?”“Your apartment or mine?” said the chick.“Look,” he said, “if there’s going to be such a lot of discussion about it, let’s forget the whole damn thing!”I use words, but I am not a man of words. It is just out of sheer necessity. It is because of you that I have to use words, because you won’t understand the wordless. I am waiting eagerly for the day when I will be able to drop words. I am utterly tired…because words can’t convey that which I am and I have to go on trying to do something which is not possible.Get ready soon so that we can sit in silence and listen to the birds or to the wind in the trees. Just sitting silently doing nothing, the spring comes and the grass grows by itself. That is going to be my ultimate message and my final work on the earth.You say, “I thought that’s what being enlightened is about: knowing.” You cannot think anything about enlightenment. And whatsoever you think is bound to be wrong. It has nothing to do with knowing. It is a state of not knowing. “But you don’t know about women and that they trust precisely because they know each other’s heart.” I know about nothing. What to say about women? I don’t even know about men! So don’t be worried about that. If you know what a woman is or what a man is, beware of your knowledge because that is not real knowing. It is just opinion that you have gathered.Yes, man has been propagating ideas against women. Now women are propagating ideas against men. It is the same foolish thing! And we go on doing this. We go on moving from one extreme to another extreme. Now, you say, “Women’s hate for women is a male myth invented to keep women separate and powerless.”Man has created many myths about women. But now the women are doing the same. They are creating myths about men which are as false as man’s myths about women. I am not here to decide which myth is right and which myth is wrong. I am not here to make you a propagandist for women or against women. My work consists in freeing you from man-woman duality.And now you say, “Who wants to be a man?” Judy, if you really don’t want to be a man you would not have written this.It is just like the ancient parable of the fox who was trying to reach the grapes and could not reach. The grapes were too high. She tried and tried, and failed again and again. Then she looked around – foxes are very cunning people – to see if anybody was watching; any journalist, any photographer. There was nobody, so she walked away.But a small hare was hiding in a bush. He said, “Auntie, what happened?”The fox puffed her chest up as big as she could and said, “Nothing. Those grapes are not worthwhile. They are not ripe yet. They are sour.”Why should you write “Who wants to be a man?” Deep down somewhere you must be hankering to be a man. Every man wants to be a woman. Every woman wants to be a man. For the simple reason that every man is both man-woman and every woman is both woman-man. Because you are born out of the meeting of male and female energies, half of you belongs to your father and half of you belongs to your mother. You are a meeting of two polar opposites, two energies.The only difference between man and woman is that the woman has the consciousness of a woman and the unconscious of a man, and the man has the consciousness of a man and the unconscious of a woman. But both are both!That’s why it is possible to be homosexuals, lesbians. Otherwise it would be impossible. This phenomenon has been happening down the ages. It is nothing new. The reason is simple: the man is only half man and half woman. The woman part is hidden deep in the darkness. But the conscious part can become tired, and when the conscious part becomes tired, the unconscious takes over. Hence he may have the body of a man, but he starts functioning like a woman. And the same happens to a lesbian. On the surface she is a woman, but deep down the unconscious male energy has taken possession. Things have become upside-down. It will affect her physiology too.There are a few lesbians here. Their physiology is bound to be affected by their psychology because psychology and physiology are not two separate phenomena. They are joined together. Mind and body are not two. You are mind-body. So whatsoever happens in your physiology affects your psychology. That’s why hormones can be given to you and your psychology can be changed. Now we know a man can be changed into a woman, a woman can be changed into a man.And it is my observation that in the coming century millions of people will change their sex. That will become something avant-garde. That will become something very progressive; that will be a new kind of freedom. Why remain confined to being a man your whole life when you can have both worlds? If you can afford it you can change your sex. For a few years you remain a man and you look at the world from the male’s viewpoint. Then you go for a simple operation and you are changed into a woman. Now you can look at the world through feminine eyes. And it is possible that a man may change many times. If the process becomes simpler and it will become simpler, that’s the whole work of science: to make things simpler and simpler. If the process becomes very simple, millions of people are bound to change.It will release a great freedom in the world, but a great confusion also, a great chaos also. One day suddenly your husband comes home and he is a woman! Or your wife returns from a holiday and she is no longer a woman.Each is both, hence the desire to be the other is in everybody. Judy, it must be there and very insistently there. Hence you are writing, “Who wants to be a man?” Judy wants to be a man! I don’t know about anybody else.And you say, “Osho, I am totally upset.” That’s good! So I am succeeding. I want you to be completely uprooted, upset, disturbed. I want to create a chaos in you because only out of chaos are stars born.You ask me, “How can you talk nonsense?” What else? Sense cannot be spoken; only nonsense is left. So I don’t take it as a criticism. It is a compliment, many, many thanks to you. At least you are talking some sense!You say, “My mind is having a fit and so is my heart. What to do?” I don’t think anything can be done now. It is too late. You can’t go back. I will haunt you! You can only go ahead. Drop all these ideas that you are carrying within yourself, this antagonism about men. Drop all these ideas. I am neither for men nor for women. I am only for transcendence.And don’t take my jokes seriously! You are such fools that you can’t even take jokes playfully. Another woman has written “Osho, you have been talking too much against women. The other day you called them ‘big-mouths.’” Now this woman simply proves that she is a big-mouth, nothing else. Nobody else has felt offended. A joke is a joke! But why are you so touchy? Now this woman must have a big mouth. At least her husband tells her again and again, “You big mouth, shut up!” And now she comes here to hear something beautiful said about her and I tell a joke – and again that big mouth comes in.Don’t take jokes seriously. In fact, don’t take anything seriously. You miss the point if you start taking things seriously. Even scriptures have to be taken nonseriously. Only then can you understand. Understanding has to be with a deep, relaxed, nonserious, playful attitude. When you become serious you become tense. When you become serious you become closed. When you are playful, many things can happen because in playfulness is creativity. In playfulness you can innovate.But your ideas are continuously there. You can’t put them aside. Now nothing can be done. You are a sannyasin; now, being a sannyasin means you are neither man nor woman. Finished, that game is finished!The third question.Osho,Aren't all people really the same?Essentially yes, but accidentally no. At the center, yes; on the circumference, no. Essentially we are made of the same stuff called God, but on the circumference God comes in every shape and size, in every color, in every form. There is such difference. And it is beautiful because if people were really the same, both at the center and on the circumference, the world would be a very boring place. But it is not a boring place. It is immensely interesting. It is immensely beautiful, rich. And the richness comes because of variety.No two persons are the same on the circumference, although everybody is the same at the center. Not only people but trees and rocks, they are also the same at the center. Call that center the soul and it will be easier for you to understand. Our souls are the same, there we meet and are one. But our bodies and minds are different, there we are separate.And no effort should be made to make us similar on the surface. Down the ages people have been trying to do that. That creates only fascism. That’s what Adolph Hitler was trying to do. That’s what happens in every army. We try to make people similar even on the surface. In the army names disappear, numbers take their place. If a person dies you read on the board, “Number 14 has fallen.” Now, number 14 has no personality. Anybody can replace number 14, anybody can be given number 14, number 14 is replaceable. But the person who has died, is he replaceable? Can anybody in the world ever replace him? Who will be the husband of his wife and who will be the father of his children? And who will be the son of his old parents? And who will be the friend of his friends? Number 14 cannot do that. Number 14 is perfectly okay in the army. He will carry the gun and he will do the same things; the same stupid things that the other number 14 was doing before. But as far as their real personality is concerned, number 14 is a different person.All the military leaders of the world have been trying to force a certain pattern on people. They would like machines, not men. They would like God to make men the way Ford cars are made, on an assembly line, so similar Fords keep on coming. God does not work with an assembly line. He creates each individual with uniqueness.So, you have to understand two things: the variety, the difference, and love the variety and love the difference.Mohammedans have been trying to convert the whole world to one religion. Hindus have been trying to do the same. Christians have been doing the same, Buddhists have been doing the same. The whole effort is to make all the world similar, so there are just Christians and Christians. It will be a poor world where no temple exists and no mosque, where there are only churches and churches, and the same prayer and the same scripture and the same silly Pope. It won’t be good. It is beautiful that there are three hundred religions in the world, more are needed.In my vision, each person should have his own religion. There should be as many religions as there are people. Only then this conflict, continuous conflict, will stop. This fight between religions will stop when everybody has a religion and it is something unique; like your signature, like the print of your thumb, unique. Then there will be no problem, no conflict. Nobody will try to convert anybody. You don’t try to convert people saying, “Make your signature just like I do.” In fact, if somebody does it you will inform the police, “This man is trying to imitate me.”Religion should be a personal, intimate phenomenon. But there are people who want to change the whole world into Christianity or Communism. They want to make the whole world Catholic or Mohammedan or Hindu.Mohammedans say there is only one God and only one prophet of God, that is Mohammed. Then God seems to be very poor: just one prophet? Can’t he create more prophets? Mohammed has not exhausted all the possibilities. Nobody can exhaust them, neither Buddha nor Jesus. They are all unique peaks. But no peak can exhaust all the peaks. The Himalayas have their own beauty, but it is different from the beauty of the Alps. And the Alps have their own beauty, but it is different from the beauty of the Vindhyas. Each mountain has its own beauty. Each peak has its own beauty and it contributes to the richness of the world.I would not like everybody to become Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan. I would like everybody to be free from these prisons, everybody to be just himself. This is a fascist idea that everybody should be like everybody else. And this fascist idea is being imposed in different ways on different aspects of humanity.The heterosexuals will not allow anybody to be homosexual. Why? Who are you to decide? Who has given you the right to decide? If two people are feeling joyous in being homosexual, it is nobody else’s business to interfere. But every society interferes.Just the other day Aditya said Hamid had suggested, “Why shouldn’t I think of turning into a gay person.” Hamid must have been joking. And when I talked about it Hamid was very disturbed, “What will people think about me now?” He must have been joking with Aditya. Now he is very disturbed about his reputation. And of course, he is our Ayatollah Hamidullah Khomaniac! So his prestige… Even Divya wept when she heard that Hamid had invited Aditya! He must have been joking because Iranians are very much against homosexuality.In Iran the punishment for homosexuality is death, although because of this punishment, more Iranians are homosexual than anybody else. Because when something is so dangerous, people become interested, “Naturally there must be something in it. When the punishment is death, that means there must be something higher than life in it, more than life in it. It is worth taking the risk!”But why should people be worried about others? The society remains alert about everything: nobody should have his own individual way about his sex, about his love, about his clothes, about his way of talking, manners. Every society imposes a fascist rule on its members. It destroys much that is beautiful. You ask me, “Aren’t all people really the same?” Not as you know them.The pretty coed nervously asked the doctor to perform an unusual operation: the removal of a large chunk of green wax from her navel.Looking up from the ticklish task, the physician asked, “How did this happen?”“Well, you see, doc,” said the girl, “my boyfriend likes to eat by candlelight.”Nothing is wrong in it. This should be nobody else’s business. If somebody wants to eat by candlelight he should be allowed. And where can you put the candle? The best place seems to be the navel, so natural. Some idea!Abe and Mel talked of their no-account sons.Abe said, “My no-good son – I give him a job in my clothing business. I give him $50,000 a year, a new car, a beautiful apartment, and what does he do? He stays up all hours of the night, comes into work eleven or twelve o’clock and plays around with the models all afternoon.”“You think you’ve got trouble?” Mel said. “My no-good son is worse. I give him a job in my clothing business. I pay him $50,000 a year and give him a new car and a beautiful apartment, and what does he do? He stays up all hours of the night, comes in eleven or twelve o’clock and plays around with the models all afternoon!”“What’s worse about that?” Abe questioned.“You forget,” Mel replied, “I am in men’s clothing!”On the circumference people are different and they should be different. And everybody should maintain his individuality on the circumference. One should never compromise for any reason. Only then can we create a really democratic world. Real democracy means that the mob, the crowd, is no longer in control of the individual life.Democracy is less a political phenomenon than a religious phenomenon. It is far more important than politics. Democracy is a totally new vision of life. It has not yet happened anywhere. It has yet to happen. Democracy means each individual has the right to live according to his light. He should not be prevented. Unless he becomes a disturbance or a nuisance to others he should be allowed every freedom in all aspects of life.That’s my vision of a really democratic world. That’s how I would like my sannyasins to function; no interference in anybody’s life. A great respect has to be given to the other.But at the center, everybody is the same. When you meditate you move toward the center. In the deepest moments of meditation, all differences disappear. You are universal there, not individual.You have to be both individual and universal. And you have to be very flexible and fluid between these two. It should be as easy as when you come out of your home, out of your house. When it is too cold inside you come out, you sit in the sun. When it becomes too hot you go in. It creates no problem. You just go in, you come out. There is no problem. It is your house.A person should be capable of living on the circumference and at the center easily. He should be able to move from the marketplace to the meditative space and from the meditative space to the marketplace, with no problem: playfully, easily, spontaneously.The fourth question.Osho,Most of my early life was spent in deadening myself to unbearable punishment. The deadening was entirely necessary for me to survive those times, but those days no longer exist, and after thirty-two years I am terrified and lack the courage to go within. From where is the source of forgiveness, and, Osho, what kind of foolish name have you given me?Devaprem, all names are foolish. That’s why I have to explain the name to you, so at least it looks as if it is not foolish. I have to give it a beautiful meaning – otherwise names are names! They are just labels. Devaprem means divine love. What a beautiful name I have given you! But still, names are names.There is an ancient Chinese ceremony in which the parents of a child choose the baby’s name. As soon as the baby is born, all the cutlery in the house of its parents is thrown in the air. The parents then listen to the falling knives, forks, and spoons and choose a name: Ping, Chang, Tang, Fung, Chung…That’s also perfectly right! That seems to be a wise way to find the name, as if God himself has chosen. And that’s how I go on choosing your names. Do you think there is much esoteric, secret knowledge behind it? Nothing of the sort! Just anything and I make a name out of it. I don’t even think twice.But I can understand why you feel that the name does not fit. You have become a closed person and love has become difficult. It happens to many people, in fact, to the majority of people, more or less.The child has to become unloving, unspontaneous. He has to deaden his sensitivity just to survive – every child, more or less. The difference is only of degrees. Every child has to learn tricks to survive. And the basic trick is never to be spontaneous. Be formal, never be natural, because your spontaneity is bound to be punished and your formality praised, rewarded.Parents enforce a subtle strategy. They create fear in the child if he says the truth. Nobody wants the child to say the truth and the child is not yet capable of lying. But he has to learn.When Cleo’s parents threatened to forbid her to see her boyfriend, unless she told them why he had been there so late the night before, she began to talk.“Well, I took him…him into the loving room, and…”“That is living, dear,” said the mother.“You’re telling me!”Children are careful watchers, observers of what is happening all around. Of course, their senses are very clear, unclouded. They see the truth immediately. You cannot cheat a child. He knows it immediately, intuitively. And he is so innocent that it is impossible for him to be formal. But he has to be formal to survive. And man’s child is very helpless. It is because of the child’s helplessness that our whole civilization exists. We can manage, mold, the child in every possible way, whatsoever way we want.Children are not supposed to say things that they know. They know much more than they ever tell you. They pretend to be innocent because you don’t want them to know more than is taught in the school, than is taught by the preacher, than is taught by you. And they certainly know more. They move in society, in life, with keen, alert senses. They are watching everything, whatsoever is happening all around. But they learn one thing sooner or later: that they have to be diplomatic. With the grown-ups you can’t be true, honest, sincere.Three young French boys were spending the summer in the country. One afternoon they were strolling through a field when they happened to see a couple lying under a tree, locked in a loving embrace.“Mon dieu,” exclaimed the youngest boy, who was only six, “those people are having a terrible fight.”“But no, mon petit,” replied the more sophisticated nine-year-old, “those people are making love.”“True,” agreed the oldest boy, a lad of eleven years, “but what amateurs!”But children cannot say these things to their parents or before their parents. They know much more than you think they know. They are so alert, so available to life. They are so open and vulnerable. They go on allowing every sensation to reach into their being. But they have to deaden themselves sooner or later, they have to become stiff, they have to become closed. They learn one thing: that unless they follow their parents, their priests, their politicians, they will have to suffer much. Respectability is only for those who are obedient.You say, “Most of my early life was spent in deadening myself to unbearable punishment. The deadening was entirely necessary for me to survive those times, but those days no longer exist, and after thirty-two years, I am terrified and lack the courage to go within.” Now there is no need to be terrified. That has to be understood. You can snap out of it! It is just an old habit. A little intelligence – and that much intelligence everyone has. If you had the intelligence in childhood to deaden yourself to survive, you are an intelligent person.Now, the parents are not there. Nobody is forcing anything on you, nobody is punishing you. It is just an old fear, a memory. You can snap out of it!You don’t need primal therapy: to go screaming against your parents for three years. That is not going to help. That is simply stupid. If it takes three years to shout and scream at your parents, and only then you come out of it, it means you don’t have any intelligence. And what is the guarantee that just by screaming for three years and shouting at your parents you will become intelligent? I think you will be less intelligent than you were before. Three years of screaming and shouting? You will lose any intelligence that is left by your parents in you! There is no need. One has simply to see that those days are over. Meditation is enough.Meditation means, becoming aware, that those days are over. The fear is no longer there. Nobody is going to punish you. It is just an old habit. Snap out of it with as little fanfare as possible; don’t make much fuss about it. Because you make much fuss about it, so many therapies have evolved. They are just aids for you so that you can make a fuss scientifically, so that your fuss is rationalized. But they are not needed by intelligent people.An intelligent person is one who can see that it is no longer night, it is day. Why are you afraid of darkness? Do you need first to scream for three hours against the night and the dark and the fear? That will be utterly stupid! That will destroy the day. Why waste it? The night is no more.That’s why in the East we have not developed any therapeutic methods like the West. For the simple reason that we came to understand one thing: that all that is needed is a little intelligence and everybody has it. And meditation helps the intelligence to become sharp.Just seeing is enough. Seeing brings transformation. And when transformation comes without any long process it is far deeper. When it takes a long process that means it will remain superficial.So, I have not come across a single person yet whose primal therapy has totally succeeded. It can never succeed. Psychoanalysis has not been able to create a single person who is totally psychoanalyzed. Even Sigmund Freud was not in that totality. Janov is not really what he is talking about: the primal man, the primal innocence. He is not. You can see in his face all kinds of tension, anguish, anxiety. It is so apparent. He needs a few more years of screaming and then too I don’t think those tensions will disappear. They may even become more subtle, more nourished, because if you scream for years, remember, you are practicing it. It is a kind of practice, a kind of cultivating it. Then you become addicted to it; without screaming for a few hours you won’t feel good. Then it is an intoxicating process, a kind of auto-hypnosis. Yes, screaming for one hour every day will make you feel a little relaxed but it is a stupid kind of relaxation.Seeing is transformation. That is our experience in the East. All the buddhas in the East have given only one meditation: watchfulness, awareness.Now you know, you are aware of how this fear has arisen in you. Out of thirty years of fear, continuous fear of punishment, you have become closed, encapsulated and you are always on guard. You cannot relax, you cannot be true, you cannot be honest. You cannot say the thing that you want to say. You cannot do the thing that you always wanted to do. You know – and now…It was right in those years, you behaved intelligently. Nothing was wrong. Otherwise you would not have survived. Now you have survived, get out of it. It is no longer needed. The disease is no more, why go on carrying the bottles of medicines and prescriptions? Do you need a therapy to throw away the bottles and the prescriptions? Will you go to a therapist and say, “Now the disease is no more, but I can’t let go of this prescription. I go on carrying it, and these bottles. I don’t need them anymore. How do I drop them?” Is any “how” needed? No “how” is needed. Go to the Rotary Club and donate them! They collect medicines, etcetera, which are not needed by anybody else. Their motto is “We Serve.” So help them serve people.It is very simple to come out. But why do people make so much out of it? Because that is part of your ego. You don’t want it to be so simple. Thirty years of life and I am making a joke of it! You would like to pay some therapist good money and you would like to invest some time. That feels good. It makes you feel important.In fact, in the West now people brag that they have been in psychoanalysis for three years or seven years. And somebody else brags: “Psychoanalysis is out of date. I have been in gestalt therapy, in primal therapy.” And there are groupies now who go on moving from one group to another group. Their whole life consists of moving from one group to another group.Many groupies come to me and they say, “We have done all the groups.” And they say it in the same way as in the old days people used to say, “We have fasted, prayed, and we have sacrificed all our joys. We are saints” In the same way! This is a new kind of holiness that is arising in the world, “I have passed through all kinds of groups.” I look in their eyes and they say, “And nothing has happened.”They are saying, “My problems are far more complex, far more deep-rooted than these therapies can go. They can’t help me. I am no ordinary person. My problems are extraordinary.”People enjoy saying it. I see a light in their eyes when they say, “Nobody has been able to help me. Osho, can you help me?” They are giving me a challenge! All that they want is to add one more name to their list, “I have been to this guy too and he cannot help. My problems are such… Not ordinary problems that anybody can help.”People brag about their diseases too, remember. They may just have some ordinary disease, but who wants to have some ordinary disease?Have you ever watched your own reaction? When you go to the doctor with a throbbing heart, thinking it is cancer, and he says, “It is nothing. It is just a common cold…” Have you observed? You feel a little sad. Just a common cold? A desire arises to visit another doctor. You and a common cold? You are not a common person, how can you have a common cold? Ego is such that it thrives on every kind of thing, right or wrong.So don’t be so worried about it. It is past, it is finished. Slip out of it without making any noise, without making any ceremony that you are getting out of it. Start being alive again, sensitive, as you had always been in your childhood. That is your nature so it can be reclaimed easily. What you have learned is not your nature so it can be unlearned very easily.The last question.Osho,Are all the journalists blind? Can't they see the truth? Why are they continuously spreading lies about you?The profession of a journalist is such that it lives on lies. Truth is not news. Lies are news, beautiful news. The bigger the lie the better the news, because it has a certain quality in it: the quality of creating a sensation. Journalism lives on lies. If journalists decide only to be true, there won’t be so many newspapers, so many magazines. And there will not be much news either. Truth you can write on a postcard.I have heard that in heaven there are no newspapers because no news ever happens there. George Bernard Shaw has defined news: “When a dog bites a man it is not news, but when a man bites a dog it is news.” In heaven no man bites a dog. In the first place it is very difficult to find a dog there. In the second place nobody is interested in biting anybody, so what news can you have?But in hell they have really great newspapers and there, circulation is in the millions. They have news there. Every day, every moment, things are happening. Everybody is biting everybody else!When journalists come, they come to find something sensational. If they cannot find it they have to invent it, otherwise their coming and going has been useless. And if a journalist goes again and again back to his office without any news, his job is gone. Either find something sensational or invent it.Journalism depends on invention. And then slowly, slowly a journalist starts having a certain kind of approach toward things. He immediately sees the negative. He can’t see the positive because the positive is not his business.It is like a shoemaker. He looks only at your shoes, not at your face. What does he have to do with your face? In fact, looking at your shoe he knows your whole biography. A real shoemaker looking at your shoe can say everything about your life far more accurately than any astrologer can. The condition of the shoe will show the condition, the financial condition, in which you are. If you have to walk too much, that will show that you don’t have a car, that you don’t have any money. The shoe will say so many things. The shoemaker looks only at the shoe. And the tailor looks only at your clothes. And the doctor looks only at the diseases. Bring a perfectly healthy man to a doctor and you will be surprised, he will find many diseases.I have heard that a doctor friend of Picasso had come to visit him. Picasso had just finished a portrait. He invited the friend to see the portrait. He looked. He looked from this side and from that side, and then he asked for a torch, in the daytime!Picasso was puzzled, but he was intrigued also so he gave him a torch. He looked into the eyes of the portrait and he said, “Pneumonia.”A doctor is a doctor! His profession gives him a certain eye.The journalist comes here with a certain eye, with certain fixed ideas, prejudices. He comes to pick up on something negative which can become sensational. And then, of course, he can find it and if he cannot find it he can invent it. They look only from the outside. They are too afraid to get involved any deeper. A few journalists have got involved. Once they get involved they are no longer journalists.You can ask Satyananda. He was a famous journalist in one of the most important magazines in Germany, Stern. He got so involved, he didn’t function here like a journalist. He tried to know things from the inside. He participated in groups, in meditations, and then he became a sannyasin.Stern refused to publish his story because they said, “You are no longer a journalist. Now you have become part of this orange movement, so whatsoever you say will be favorable.”For months he had to insist, “I have worked hard!” They cut his story almost by half. They destroyed his whole story, distorted the whole story, and only then did they print it. And he lost his job!Now he has come here forever. There are a few other journalists as well, at least a dozen. Subhuti is here and others are here.A journalist is taught by his profession to always remain at a distance. “Look from the outside” and from the outside you can never know how things are.A pretty young woman was traveling in a train across Texas. A dapper looking man walked up to her and whispered something in her ear, whereupon she gave him a stinging slap in the face. A tall Texan seated across the aisle stood up and asked her, “Is this man molesting you, Ma’am?”“He certainly is,” she replied. “He just offered me ten dollars if I would go with him to his sleeping compartment.”Without hesitation, the Texan pulled out his pistol and shot the man. “Good God!” cried the woman. “That’s no reason to kill him!”“I will kill any man,” replied the Texan, “who tries to raise the prices in Texas.”If you had looked only from the outside you would never have thought about this, what was inside the mind of the Texan. You would have thought him a great saint or something.But the journalist has to keep a distance. He thinks that by keeping a distance he will be able to know better. No, he will only gather information, bits of information; in fact irrelevant, unconnected with each other because he has no approach to the center. And he is going to distort it more to make it more sensational.A group of Osho sannyasins in Bonn, Germany, were taking a boat ride down the Rhine when they noticed that a well-known journalist was aboard the boat. They decided to do something to give sannyasins a more positive image in Germany. So, before the eyes of the journalist, they stepped off onto the water and did a whirling Sufi dance all the way around the moving boat. Then, completely dry, they climbed back onto the boat’s deck.The next day the sannyasins eagerly scanned the newspaper to see what the journalist had written about their fantastic feat.There, in the back pages, they found a small article with the headline: “When will Osho sannyasins finally learn to swim?”Enough for today.

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Ah This 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ah This 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Dogo had a disciple called Soshin. When Soshin was taken in as a novice, it was perhaps natural of him to expect lessons in Zen from his teacher the way a schoolboy is taught at school.But Dogo gave him no special lessons on the subject, and this bewildered and disappointed Soshin. One day he said to the master, “It is some time since I came here, but not a word has been given me regarding the essence of the Zen teaching.”Dogo replied, “Since your arrival I have ever been giving you lessons on the matter of Zen discipline.”“What kind of lesson could it have been?”“When you bring me a cup of tea in the morning, I take it; when you serve me a meal, I accept it; when you bow to me, I return it with a nod. How else do you expect to be taught in the discipline of Zen?”Soshin hung his head for a while, pondering the puzzling words of the master.The master said, “If you want to see, see right at once. When you begin to think, you miss the point.”Sujata has written to me, “How odd of God to choose the Jews!” Sujata, God has a tremendous sense of humor. Religion remains something dead without a sense of humor as a foundation to it. God would not have been able to create the world if he had no sense of humor. God is not serious at all. Seriousness is a state of disease, humor is health. Love, laughter, life, they are aspects of the same energy.But for centuries people have been told that God is very serious. These people were pathological. They created a serious God, they projected a serious God out of their own pathology. And we have worshipped these people as saints. They were not saints. They needed great awakening. They were fast asleep in their seriousness. They needed laughter; that would have helped them more than all their prayers and fasting! That would have cleansed their souls in a far better way than all their ascetic practices. They did not need more scriptures, more theologies. They needed only the capacity to laugh at the beautiful absurdity of life. It is ecstatically absurd. It is not a rational phenomenon, it is utterly irrational.Moses went up the mountain. After a long time God appeared: “Hello, Moses. Good to see you. Sorry you had to wait, but I think you will feel it was worth it because I have something very special for you today.”Moses thought for a second and then said, “Oh no, Lord, really. Thank you, but I don’t need anything right now. Some other time perhaps.”“Moses, this is free,” said the Lord.“Then,” said Moses, “give me ten!”That’s how the Jews got the Ten Commandments.Zen has something Jewish in it. It is really very puzzling why Zen did not appear in the Jewish world. But the Chinese also have a tremendous sense of humor. Zen is not Indian, remember. Of course, the origin is in Gautama the Buddha. But it went through a tremendous transformation passing through the Chinese consciousness.There are a few very wise people who think that Zen is more a rebellion against the Indian seriousness than a continuity of it. And they have a point there, a certain truth is there. Lao Tzu is more Jewish than Hindu, he can laugh! Chuang Tzu has written such beautiful and absurd stories. Nobody can conceive of an enlightened person writing such stories, which can only be called, at best, entertainment. But entertainment can become the door to enlightenment.Zen is originally connected with Buddha, but the color and the flavor that came to it came through Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu and the Chinese consciousness. And then it blossomed in Japan. It came to its ultimate peak in Japan. Japan also has a great quality of taking life playfully. The consciousness of Japan is very colorful.Zen could have happened in the Jewish world too. Something like it really did happen. That is Hasidism. This story must have come from Jewish sources, although it is about Jesus. But Christians have no sense of humor – and Jesus was never a Christian, remember. He was born a Jew, he lived as a Jew. He died as a Jew.Jesus is hanging on the cross singing, “Da-di-li-da-dum-dein…”Suddenly Peter hisses from underneath, “Hey, Jesus!”Jesus goes on, “Da-di-dum-da-dum-da-dei…”Peter, now more urgently, “Hey, Jesus, stop it!”Jesus continues happily with, “Di-duah-duah…”Finally Peter yells, “For God’s sake Jesus, cut it out! Tourists are coming!”Try to understand Zen through laughter, not through prayer. Try to understand Zen through flowers, butterflies, sun, moon, children, people in all their absurdities. Watch this whole panorama of life, all these colors, the whole spectrum.Zen is not a doctrine. It is not a dogma. It is growing into an insight. It is a vision, very light-hearted, not serious at all.Be light-hearted, light-footed. Be of light step. Don’t carry religion like a burden. And don’t expect religion to be a teaching. It is not. It is certainly a discipline, but not a teaching at all. Teaching has to be imposed upon you from the outside and teaching can only reach to your mind, never to your heart and never, never to your very center of being. Teaching remains intellectual. It is an answer to human curiosity and curiosity is not a true search.The student remains outside the temple of Zen because he remains curious. He wants to know answers and there are none. He has some stupid questions to be answered, “Who made the world? Why did he make the world?” And so on, and so forth. “How many heavens are there? And how many hells? And how many angels can dance on the point of a needle? And is the world infinite or finite? Are there many lives or only one?” These are all curiosities. Good for a student of philosophy but not good for a disciple.A disciple has to drop curiosity. Curiosity is something very superficial. Even if those questions are answered, nothing will have happened to your being. You will remain the same. Yes, you will have more information, and out of that information you will create new questions. Each question answered brings ten more new questions. The answer creates ten more new questions.If somebody says, “God created the world,” then the question is, “Why did he create the world? And why a world like this, so miserable? If he is omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent, couldn’t he see what he was doing? Why did he create pain, disease, death?” Now, so many questions… Philosophy is an exercise in futility.A student comes out of curiosity. Unless he becomes a disciple he will not become aware that curiosity is a vicious circle. You ask one question, you are given the answer. The answer brings ten more new questions, and so on, and so forth. And the tree becomes bigger and bigger; thicker and thicker is the foliage. And finally the philosopher has only questions and no answers at all.Surrounded by all those stupid questions… I call them stupid because they have no answers. I call them stupid because they are born out of childish curiosity. When one is surrounded by all those questions and there are no answers, one loses sharpness, one loses clarity. One is clouded. And one is no more intelligent. The more intellectual one becomes, the less intelligent he is.The professor who had committed his wife to a mental institution was talking to the chief of staff, “How will we know when my wife is well again, doctor?”“We have a simple test we give all our patients,” he replied. “We put a hose into a trough, turn on the water, give the patient a bucket, and tell him to empty out the trough.”“What does that prove?” inquired the professor.“Elementary, sir,” the doctor assured him. “Any sane person will turn off the hose.”“Isn’t science wonderful!” he replied. “I never would have thought of that!”He must be a professor of philosophy. He can’t be less than that. The philosopher only knows questions; he is lost in the jungle of questions. The philosopher remains immature. Maturity is of consciousness, not of intellectuality. It is not of knowledge, it is of innocence.Yes, not to know “… is the most intimate.” And to function out of that not-knowing is to function in an enlightened way. To respond out of not-knowing is to respond like a buddha. That is true response because it is not clouded, not distorted, not contaminated, not polluted and poisoned by your mind and your past. It is fresh, it is young, it is new. It arises from the challenge of the present. It is always in synchronicity with the new, with the present. And the present is always new, it is always moving: it is dynamic. All your answers are static and life is dynamic.Hence Zen is not interested in answers or in questions. It is not interested in teaching at all. It is not a philosophy. It is a totally different way of looking at things, at life, at existence, at oneself, at others. Yes, it is a discipline.Discipline simply means a methodology of becoming more centered, of becoming more alert, of becoming more aware, of bringing more meditativeness to your being. Not functioning through the head, not even through the heart, but functioning from the very core of your being, from the very innermost core, from the center of your being, from your totality. It is not a reaction. Reaction comes from the past. It is a response. Response is always in the present, to the present.Zen gives you a discipline to become a mirror so that you can reflect that which is. All that is needed is a thoughtless awareness.The first thing to be dropped is curiosity, because curiosity will keep you tethered to the futile. It will keep you being a student. It will never allow you to become a disciple.Boris, who was from Russia, had been in America only a few months. He did not speak English very well.One day he was asked, “Boris, what is it that you are most anxious to see in America?”“Well,” replied Boris, “I weesh most to meet the famous Mrs. Beech, who had so many sons in the last war.”Get it? He must have heard all the Americans calling each other “sonofabitch, sonofabitch.” So he is very interested, anxious, curious, to know about Mrs. Beech, the famous Mrs. Beech.Curiosity is always like that. It is foolish, but it can keep you tethered to the mind. And don’t think that there is some curiosity which is spiritual, metaphysical. No, nothing like that exists. All curiosity is the same. Whether you inquire about “the famous Mrs. Beech” or you inquire about God it is all the same. Inquiry from the mind will have the same quality of childishness.There is a totally different kind of inquiry that arises from the deeper recesses of your being.Zen is interested in discipline, not in teaching. It wants you to be more alert so you can see more clearly. It does not give you the answer, it gives you the eyes to see. What is the use of telling a blind man what light is and all the theories about light? It is futile. You are simply being stupid by answering the curiosity of a blind man. What is urgently needed is treatment of his eyes. He needs an operation, he needs new eyes. He needs medicine. That is discipline.Buddha has said: “I am a physician, not a philosopher.” And Zen is absolutely a treatment. It is the greatest treatment that has come to humanity, out of the work of thousands of enlightened people, very refined. It can help you to open your eyes. It can help you to feel again, to be sensitive to reality. It can give you eyes and ears. It can give you a soul. But it is not interested in answers.Meditate over this beautiful story:Dogo had a disciple called Soshin. When Soshin was taken in as a novice, it was perhaps natural of him to expect lessons in Zen from his teacher the way a schoolboy is taught at school.Yes, it is natural in a way, because that is how we are conditioned. Knowledge is given to us in the form of questions and answers. From the primary school to the university that’s how we are taught, conditioned, hypnotized. And naturally, after one third of your life is wasted in that way, you become accustomed to it. Then you start asking profound questions in the same way as one asks, “How much is two plus two?” You start asking about love, life, God, meditation. In the same way!In fact, even that ordinary question is not answerable. If you ask the real mathematicians, even this simple question “How much is two plus two?” is not answerable because sometimes it is five and sometimes it is three. It is very rarely four. It is an exception that two plus two comes to be four, very exceptional, for the simple reason that two things are never the same. It is an abstraction. You add two and two and you say four.Two persons and two persons are four different persons, so different that you cannot create an abstraction out of them. Even two leaves and two other leaves are so different you cannot simply call them four leaves. They are not the same. Their weights are different, their colors are different, their shapes are different, their tastes are different. No two things in the world are the same. So how can two plus two be four? It is just an abstraction. It is lower mathematics. Higher mathematics knows that this is only utilitarian, it is not a truth. Mathematics is an invention of man. It is a workable lie.What to say about love, which goes beyond all mathematics and all logic? In love, one plus one becomes one, not two. In deep love, the twoness disappears. Mathematics is transcended. It becomes irrelevant. In deep love, two people are no longer two people, they become one. They start feeling, functioning, as one unit, as one organic unity, as one orgasmic joy. Mathematics won’t do, logic won’t do, chemistry won’t do, biology won’t do, physiology won’t do. Love is something which has to be experienced in a totally different way. It cannot be taught in the ordinary ways of teaching. It cannot become part of pedagogy.But the disciple, Soshin, was a novice, a newcomer. …it was perhaps natural of him to expect lessons in Zen from his teacher the way a schoolboy is taught at school. It is natural in a state of unconsciousness.Remember, there are two natures. One is when you are asleep. Then many things are natural. Somebody insults you. You become angry and that is natural, but only in unconsciousness, in sleep. You insult the Buddha. He does not become angry. That is higher nature, a totally different kind of nature. He is functioning from a different center altogether. He may feel compassion for you, not anger. He functions through awareness, you function through unawareness.In sleep you cannot do anything of any value. You cannot do anything valuable. Whatsoever you do is all a dream. You imagine, you think you are doing good.Just the other day somebody asked, “I want to do good, I want to be good. Osho, help me.” I cannot help you directly to do good or to be good. I can help you only indirectly. I can help you only to be more meditative. And on the surface it may seem that your question is about one thing and my answer is totally different. You want to be good and I talk about meditation. How are they related? If you are asleep you may think you are doing good, you may do harm. You may think you are doing harm, you may do good. In your sleep everything is possible.You will become a do-gooder. And do-gooders are the most mischievous people. We have suffered much from these do-gooders. They don’t know who they are. They don’t know any silent state of consciousness; they are not aware, but they go on doing good. What to say about good? A sleepy person cannot even be certain of doing harm. He may think he is doing harm and the result may be totally different.That’s how acupuncture was discovered…A man wanted to kill somebody. He shot him with an arrow. And that man, the victim, had suffered his whole life from a headache. The arrow hit him on the leg and the headache disappeared, totally disappeared. He was puzzled.He went to his physician saying, “You have not been able to treat me and my enemy has treated me. He wanted to kill me, but something went wrong. My headache has disappeared. I am grateful to him.”Then the physicians started thinking about it, how it happened.Now that’s what acupuncturists go on doing. You can go to Abhiyana. You may have a headache and he may start putting needles all over your body. Those needle points were discovered because of this accident. Five thousand years have passed. In these five thousand years acupuncture has developed tremendously. Now there is much scientific support for it.In Soviet Russia they are working on acupuncture very seriously because it has great potential. It can cure almost all diseases. Those needles can change the currents of your body electricity.That man must have suffered from too much electricity in the head. The arrow hit a certain meridian, a certain electric current in his leg, and the electricity changed its course. It was no longer going to the head. Hence the headache disappeared.Now, the man who wanted to do harm did a great, beneficial act. Not only for that man, for the whole of humanity because in these five thousand years, millions of people have been helped by acupuncture. The whole credit goes to that unknown person who wanted to kill.In your unconsciousness it is difficult to decide what the outcome will be. You move in a dark, dark night. All is accidental.Sindenburg had lived a virtuous life. He was even president of the synagogue. But when he entered heaven the angel in charge said, “You can’t stay here.”“Why?” asked Sindenburg. “I always tried to be a good man.”“That is it,” explained the angel. “Everyone here was a good man, but they all committed at least one sin. Since you didn’t sin at all, the rest of the souls will resent you.”“But,” protested Sindenburg, “isn’t there something I can do?”“Well,” considered the angel, “you can have six more hours on earth to commit a sin, but you must do somebody a real injury.”Sindenburg went back to earth and suddenly he saw a middle-aged woman looking at him. They started talking. She invited him home with her. Soon they were making love like two teenagers. Six hours later Sindenburg said, “I am sorry, but I have to go now.”“Listen!” cried the woman. “I never married or even had a man. You just gave me the best time I had in my whole life. What a good deed you did today!”Now he came to do some real injury and what he has really done is a good deed. The woman is immensely happy and grateful. And those six hours are gone. Now there is no more time left. Again he will be in trouble!In sleep you cannot do good. You cannot even do bad! All is accidental. And when a person comes to a master he comes almost fast asleep. He comes out of curiosity, accidentally. He expects much, and his expectations are natural in his state. He expected: …lessons in Zen…Now that is absolutely foolish. There are no lessons in Zen. Zen, in the first place, is not a teaching but a device to awaken you. It is not information, it is not knowledge. It is a method to shake you up, to wake you up. Teaching means you are fast asleep and somebody goes on talking about what awakening is. And you go on snoring. And he goes on talking. You are asleep, he is asleep, otherwise he will not talk to you. At least when he sees that you are snoring he will not talk to you.When I was a student at university I had a great teacher, a very well-known philosopher. For three years nobody had joined his class. He was the head of the department. And people were afraid to join his class because he was a non-stop talker. Sometimes two hours, three hours, four hours… And he had this condition.He would say to every student, “If you want to participate in my classes, if you want to take my subject, then it must be remembered that I can start my lecture when the period starts, but I cannot stop when the period is over. Unless I am totally finished with the subject… And how can it be managed within forty minutes? Sometimes it takes two hours. Sometimes it takes only half an hour. So whenever it is finished, that is the end.”He also told me the same. I wanted to join his class. I was intrigued by the old man. He said, “Listen! Don’t blame me later on. Sometimes I speak for four hours, I have also spoken for five hours.”I said, “Don’t worry about that. I can speak longer than you.” And I told him, “Remember that when I start speaking I forget who is the teacher and who is the student. I don’t care! So you also keep it in mind that if I start speaking you cannot stop me.“And secondly, the time of your classes is such that those are the hours when I sleep. From twelve to two I must sleep. I have done that my whole life. I can sleep longer. I have slept from eleven to five, the whole day. But this much is absolutely necessary, that I cannot miss. So I will sleep. You can go on talking.”He said, “How can you sleep when I am talking?”I said, “I use earplugs! You go on talking. I am not concerned with your talk at all, that is up to you. You enjoy it to your heart’s content. I will be sleeping. And you cannot object to that.” He agreed to my condition, I agreed to his condition. And that’s how we became great friends. He would speak and I would sleep.Now this person must be fast asleep himself. Otherwise why… I was the only student in his class! To whom was he talking? He was unburdening himself. And he was very happy to find a student who would at least remain in the class, although asleep. But at least he was there.This is what goes on in the whole world. Priests are asleep talking to their congregations. Professors are asleep talking to their students: metaphysically asleep. I am not talking about ordinary sleep. Metaphysically everybody is snoring.Zen is not a teaching, because it knows you are asleep. The primary thing is not to teach you. The primary thing is to wake you up. Zen is an alarm. But Soshin naturally expected some lessons in Zen from his teacher: …the way a schoolboy is taught at school.Remember, if Zen is not a teaching then you cannot call the Zen master a teacher either. He is not a teacher, he is a master. And there is a great difference between a teacher and a master. But when you first come in close contact with a master you think of him as a teacher: maybe a great teacher, but still you think in terms of his being a teacher. And the reason is in your expectation that he is teaching something, that he is teaching great philosophy, that he is teaching great truths.No, a real master is not a teacher. A real master is an awakener. His function is totally different from a teacher. His function is far more difficult. And only very few people can stay with a master because to wake up after millions of lives is not an ordinary feat: it is a miracle. And to allow somebody to wake you up needs great trust, great surrender.So in Zen, first, people are accepted only as novices, as beginners. Only when the master sees some quality in them which can be awakened, when he sees something very potential, then they are accepted and initiated into higher things. Otherwise they remain novices for years, doing small things: cleaning the floor, cooking the food, chopping wood, carrying water from the well. And the master goes on watching and he goes on helping them to become a little more alert while they are chopping wood, while they are carrying water from the well, while they are cleaning the floor.You will see here in this commune at least one thousand sannyasins doing different kinds of things. When Indians come here for the first time they are puzzled, because their idea of an ashram, of a religious commune, is totally different. People should be sitting praying, doing bhajan. They can’t conceive that people should be working, cooking food, weaving, doing pottery, painting, photography, creating music, poetry, dancing. They can’t believe their eyes when they see the commune for the first time. They come with certain expectations. And they want you to look serious, religious, holy. And you look so joyous! You look so loving, so warm. They expect you to be utterly cold; as cold as corpses. And you are so warm and so loving and so alive that they are shocked at first.Zen does not believe that people should simply live a holy life, a virtuous life, doing nothing; just turning beads or repeating some mantra. Zen believes in creativity. Zen believes in the ordinary world. It wants to transform the mundane into the sacred.So the first message given to the beginners is to start work, but be alert. And it is easier to be alert while you are working than while you are simply chanting a mantra, because when you are chanting a mantra every possibility is that the mantra will function as a tranquilizer. When you repeat a single word again and again it creates sleep because it creates boredom. When you repeat a certain word again and again it changes your inner chemistry. It is one of the ancientmost ways of falling asleep.If you cannot fall asleep in the night, if you suffer from sleeplessness, then methods like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s Transcendental Meditation are perfectly good. That method has nothing to do with meditation. It is neither meditation nor transcendental. It is simply a non-medicinal tranquilizer. It is good as far as it can bring sleep, and without any drug. I appreciate it, but it has nothing to do with meditation.You can repeat your own name again and again and you don’t need to pay the fees to anybody and you don’t need any initiation. Just repeat your own name. Repeat it fast so that nothing else enters your mind, only your name resounds. Repeat loudly inside so that from your toes to the head it is resounding inside. Soon you will get bored, fed up. And that is the moment when you start falling asleep because there seems to be no other escape.All mothers know it. It is one of the ancientmost methods women have been using with their children, on their children. They didn’t call it Transcendental Meditation. They used to call it a lullaby. The child tosses and turns, but the mother goes on repeating the same line again and again. And finding no other escape outside, the child escapes inside: that means he falls asleep. He says, “I am so fed up that unless I fall asleep, this woman is not going to stop.” And soon he learns that the moment he falls asleep the woman stops. So it becomes a conditioning. Then it becomes a conditioned reflex. Slowly, slowly, the woman repeats the line just one or two times and the child is fast asleep.You can do this to yourself. It is a process of auto-hypnosis. Good as far as sleep is concerned but it has nothing to do with meditation. In fact, it is just the opposite of meditation because meditation brings awareness and this method brings sleep. Hence I appreciate it as a technique for sleep, but I am totally against it if it is taught to people as a method of meditation.Soshin expected: …lessons in Zen from his teacher the way a schoolboy is taught at school. This is your story. This is everybody’s story. Each seeker comes with such expectations.Sometimes foolish people come to me and they ask, “What is your teaching in short? Which of your books contains your total teaching?”I have no teaching! That’s why so many books are possible. Otherwise how can so many books be possible? If you have a certain teaching, then one or two books will do. That’s why I can go on talking forever, because I have no teaching. Every teaching will sooner or later be exhausted. I cannot be exhausted. There is no beginning and no end, we are always in the middle. I am not a teacher.Everybody grows physically but psychologically remains a child. Your psychological age is never more than thirteen, even less than that. It was a shock when it was discovered for the first time in the First World War that man’s average psychological age is only twelve or thirteen at the most. That means you may be seventy but your mind is only thirteen. So if somebody looks at your body you look so old, so experienced, but if somebody looks into your mind you are carrying the same childish mind still.Your God is nothing but a projected father. It is a father fixation. You cannot live without the idea of a father. Maybe your actual father is dead and you cannot conceive of yourself without a father. You need an imaginary father in heaven who takes care of you, who looks after you. And, certainly, the ordinary father is bound to die one day or other so you need a heavenly father who is eternal, who will never die, so he will become your safety and security. Once somebody asked George Gurdjieff, “Why do all the religions teach ‘Respect your parents’?” Gurdjieff said: “For a simple reason that if you respect your parents you will respect God, because God is nothing but the ultimate parent. If you don’t respect your parents you will not be bothered with God either.” A great insight: God is the great father. You are just small children searching for a lost father, searching for a lost childhood, searching for the security of childhood. Your behavior is childish.A young father was shopping at a department store with his daughter when the little girl suddenly said, “Daddy, I gotta go.”“Not right now,” replied the father.“I gotta go now!” shouted the girl.To avoid a crisis a saleslady stepped up and said, “That’s all right, sir, I will take her.”The saleslady and the little girl went off hurriedly, hand in hand. On their return, Tony looked at his daughter and said, “Did you thank the nice lady for being so kind?”“Why should I thank her?” retorted the little girl. “She had to go too!”Just watch your reactions and you will be surprised. They are childish. Your manners, howsoever sophisticated from the outside, deep down are childish. Your prayers, your church-going, are all childish.Zen is not concerned with your childish state of mind. It has no desire to nourish it any more. Its concern is maturity. It wants you to become mature. It wants you to become ripe. Hence it has no idea of God, no father in the sky. It leaves you totally alone because in aloneness, only maturity is possible. It leaves you totally in insecurity. It gives you no security, no guarantee. It gives you all kinds of insecurities to move into.And that’s also what sannyas is, a quantum leap into insecurity, a quantum leap into the unknown, because only with that encounter will you become mature. And maturity is freedom. Maturity is liberation.But Dogo gave him no special lessons on the subject….There are none.…and this bewildered and disappointed Soshin.Naturally, he was expecting and expecting, and expecting. And waiting and no special lessons were given. He wanted a few simple principles so he could cling to them: so that he could hold onto them, so that they would become his treasure, his knowledge. And the master had not given any special lesson. Naturally he was disappointed. If you are expecting something you are bound to be disappointed. Expectation always brings disappointment, frustration.One day he said to the master, “It is some time since I came here, but not a word has been given me regarding the essence of the Zen teaching.”People are in a hurry. I have come to know people who have meditated three days and on the fourth day they say, “Three days we have been meditating, nothing has happened yet.”As if they are obliging existence by meditating for so long: three days, one hour every day that means three hours. And if you actually look, in their meditation they were just daydreaming with closed eyes. They were daydreaming – they call it meditation! And just because for three days they have been sitting for one hour, with great difficulty, somehow managing: great noise inside, no silence, no peace, no consciousness just desires, thoughts, memories, imagination, constant traffic, a crowd, they come on the fourth day asking, “Osho, what is happening? Three days have passed and nothing has happened yet.”Time should not be taken into account at all. Three years, not even three lives. You should not think in terms of time because the phenomenon of meditation is non temporal. It can happen any moment. It can happen right now. It may take years, it may take lives. It all depends on your intensity, on your sincerity, and it all depends on your totality.A pretty young woman stepped onto a crowded streetcar and seeing that all the seats were taken she asked, “Would one of you gentlemen make room for a pregnant woman?”A middle-aged man quickly stood up and gave her his seat. After she was seated he solicitously asked her, “How long have you been pregnant?”“About fifteen minutes and God, am I tired!”Fifteen minutes pregnant! Even that is okay, but three days of meditation is even more stupid.Soshin said one day to the master… There must be some anger, frustration, disappointment. Has he chosen the wrong person to be with? No special teaching has been given yet. And the ego always wants something special.“It is some time since I came here,” he said, “but not a word has been given me regarding the essence of the Zen teaching.” In the first place, there is no Zen teaching as such. Zen is a method of awakening, not a theology. It does not talk about God. It forces you into God. It hits you in many ways so that you can be awakened into God. To be asleep is to be in the world, to be awake is to be in God. Methods are there, devices are there, but no teaching at all.In a little New Mexico town, a pretty young tourist overheard a virile Navajo saying “Chance!” to every passing female.Finally her curiosity got the better of her and she walked up to him and said, “Hello” to which he answered, “Chance!”“I thought all Indians said ‘How!’”“I know how. Just want chance!” he replied.All teachings are concerned about how to do it, why to do it, for what purpose, for what goal. Zen simply gives you a chance, an opportunity, a certain context, a space in which you can become awakened. And that’s exactly my work here: to create an opportunity, a space, a context, where you are bound to be awakened, where you cannot go on sleeping forever.Dogo replied, “Since your arrival I have ever been giving you lessons on the matter of Zen discipline.”“What kind of lesson could it have been?”Now Soshin is even more puzzled and bewildered because the master says: “Since your arrival I have ever been giving you lessons on the matter of Zen discipline.” Strange are the ways of the real masters. Indirect are their ways, subtle are their ways. Remember, he does not say on Zen teaching, he says on Zen discipline: …“on the matter of Zen discipline.” “What kind of lesson could it have been?”“When you bring me a cup of tea in the morning, I take it; when you serve me a meal, I accept it; when you bow to me, I return it with a nod.”The master is saying, “Have you observed me?” That is the essential core of Zen: watching, observing, being aware. The master is saying, “When you bring a cup of tea in the morning for me, have you watched me. How I take it, with what gratitude? Have you watched me, how I accept it with great awareness? It is not just tea!”Nothing is ordinary in the eyes of Zen. Everything is extraordinary because everything is divine. Zen masters have transformed ordinary things like tea-drinking into religious ceremonies.The tea ceremony is a great meditation. It takes hours. In every Zen monastery there is a separate place for the tea ceremony: a temple, a temple for tea! And when people are invited by the master they go to the temple in absolute silence. The temple is surrounded by rocks or a rock garden.Sanantano has just now made a small rock garden around my room, with a small waterfall. He has placed the rocks in such a beautiful way: he seems to have the insight, seems to have a communion with the rocks. The rocks have come alive and they don’t seem to be just put any way, haphazardly, they seem to be in a deep harmony.Now, Sanantano is going to create many rock gardens in the new commune so you can sit by those rocks; and small bamboo huts for the tea ceremony.And when the master invites someone for tea…When someone goes, he takes a bath, he meditates, he cools himself down. He prepares himself because it is no ordinary occasion, an invitation from the master. Then he walks the rocky path with full awareness, slowly. The closer he comes to the temple, the more alert he becomes. He becomes alert to the birds singing. He becomes alert to the flowers, their colors, their fragrance. And as he comes closer to the tearoom he starts hearing the noise of the samovar. He goes in. The shoes have to be left outside. He enters very silently, bows down to the master, sits quietly in a corner listening to the samovar, the humming sound of the samovar. And the subtle fragrance of tea filling the room… It is a prayerful moment.Then cups and saucers are given. The master himself gives those cups and saucers – the way he gives… He pours the tea – the way he pours… Then they all sip silently: the tea has to be sipped with tremendous awareness. Then it becomes a meditation.And if tea-drinking can become a meditation, then anything can become a meditation; cooking or washing your clothes, any activity can be transformed into meditation. And the real sannyasin, the real seeker, will transform all his acts into meditation. Only then, when meditation spreads over all your life, not only while you are awake in the day, slowly, slowly it starts penetrating and permeating your being in sleep too. When it becomes just part of you, like breathing, like your heartbeat, only then, have you attained the discipline, the essential discipline of Zen. The master said: “When you bring me a cup of tea in the morning…”“Have you observed or not? Are you asleep or awake? Can’t you see the way I take it? When you serve me a meal, can’t you see the way I accept it, with great gratitude, as if you have brought a treasure?”“…when you bow to me, I return it with a nod.” “Have I ever missed? Has it ever been noticed by you that I have not responded immediately? If you have been watching, then this is the real matter of Zen discipline. Do the same, do likewise!”“How else do you expect to be taught in the discipline of Zen?”“But you don’t watch, you don’t see. You go on rushing, doing things somehow, mechanically. And you go on falling into pitfalls, the same pitfalls again and again.”A black guy walks into a white bar with three friends, goes up to the barman and bets him $25 he can lick his own eye.The barman thinks, “God-damned stupid nigger, nobody can lick his own eye,” so he bets him the $25. The black guy takes out his glass eye and licks it and then bets the barman another $25 he can bite his other eye.The barman thinks, “Oh boy, is this nigger ever dumb! Nobody could come in here with two glass eyes,” and takes him up on the bet. The black guy takes his false teeth out and bites the other eye and the barman turns red with anger, “Smartass nigger!”Then the black guy says, “I will bet you another $25…”“Wait a minute,” says the barman. “No way. You think I’m stupid?”“Oh, come on,” says the black guy, “I’ll bet you double or nothing I can piss in that shot glass on the table on the other side of the room.”The barman stops, ponders a while, and says, “Okay, even a stupid god-damned nigger couldn’t do that! You’re on. I’ll bet you double or nothing!”The black guy proceeds to piss all over the bar, the floor, everywhere. The barman starts laughing like hell and wiping it up, says, “Boy, nigger, you are really dumb to think you could piss that far!”And the black guy replies, “I’m not so dumb. See those three dudes over there? I bet them $300 I could piss all over the bar and you would wipe it up laughing!”Man goes on doing the same, maybe a slightly different situation, but nothing very different. If you are asleep, if you are unconscious, you cannot watch, you cannot observe: again another pitfall; again you are going into another mistake, another error; again you are stumbling. Maybe it is a little bit different, because in life nothing is ever the same, but thousands of times you fall and still you don’t learn the single thing worth learning. You learn all kinds of things in life except the one thing which can transform you, and that is the art of awareness.Soshin hung his head for a while, pondering the puzzling words of the master.The master said, “If you want to see, see right at once. When you begin to think, you miss the point.”These are tremendously significant words: “If you want to see, see right at once. When you begin to think, you miss the point.” because thinking is only a way of missing the point. When you hear the truth, see it immediately. Don’t say, “I will think it over.” Don’t take notes saying, “Back home I will ponder over it.” You are missing the whole point! Truth has immediacy, and you are postponing it by thinking. And what can you think about truth? Whatsoever you will think is going to be wrong. Truth is truth and untruth is untruth. You cannot make an untruth truth by thinking for years, and you cannot make a truth untruth by thinking for years. Nothing can be done about it. Your thinking is absolutely irrelevant. See it. Seeing is relevant. Thinking is not relevant.That’s why in the East we don’t have any word to translate the English word philosophy. We have a word, darshan, which is ordinarily used as a translation for philosophy but it is not right to do that. Darshan means seeing, and philosophy means thinking. And there is such a tremendous difference, such a vast difference, between the two. What greater difference can there be between two things, seeing and thinking?Darshan simply means seeing. It is not thinking. It is awareness. Silently alert you sit by the side of the master. He says something or shows something rather. And you see it! If you are silent and aware you are bound to see it, you cannot miss it. If you hang your head and you start thinking, you have forgotten about the master. You are lost in your own words. You are translating the master into your own words. You cannot translate those heights, those depths. And whatsoever you translate will be something utterly different from what the master has said.Three Frenchmen, while practicing their English, got around to discussing the wife of a friend who was childless.“She is unbearable,” said one.“No, that is the wrong word. She is inconceivable.”“No, no, you are both wrong,” said the third. “What you mean is she is impregnable.”Now, you can go on thinking… When the master speaks, he speaks from the heights of awareness. And you listen in the darkness of your valley. Don’t translate and don’t try to figure out what he is saying. Just listen. Just the other day somebody asked, “Listening to you unquestioningly, accepting it, isn’t it a way of being conditioned by you?”Listening silently does not mean that you are agreeing with me. It is not a question of agreement or disagreement. Listening silently does not mean that you are accepting me or rejecting me. If you are accepting you are not silent, activity is there. The activity of accepting. If you are agreeing with me that means you are already translating me. If you are rejecting me that is negative activity, if you accept me that is positive activity. To be silent simply means no activity at all. You are simply here, just being here, only available, no question of agreeing or disagreeing.And the beauty of truth is that the moment you hear the truth something inside you responds, says yes. It is not agreement of the mind, remember. It comes from your totality. Every fiber of your being, every cell of your body, nods in tremendous joy, “Yes!” Not that you say yes. It is not said, it is not verbalized at all. It is silently there. And when you hear some untruth, in the same way there is a no. Your whole being says, “No.” That too is not mental.This is a totally different approach. The West has not been able to evolve it yet. The East has evolved it. For centuries we have been working on this subtle method, polishing it, polishing it. It has become a mirror.The East knows how to just sit in silence, without agreeing or disagreeing because we have discovered one fundamental thing: truth is already inside you. If you hear the truth from the outside your truth will be awakened, it will be provoked. Suddenly you will say, “Yes!” As if you had known it already. It is a recognition. It is a remembrance. You are simply being reminded by the master about that which you have forgotten. It is not a question of agreement or disagreement, no, not at all.I am not interested in creating beliefs in you. And I am not interested in giving you any kind of ideology. My whole effort here is, as it has always been of all the buddhas since the beginnings of time, to provoke truth in you. I know it is already there, it just needs a synchronicity. It just needs something to trigger the process of recognition in you.The master speaks not to give you the truth, but to help you to recognize the truth that is already within you. The master is only a mirror. You see your own original face in deep silence, sitting by his side. The master said, “If you want to see, see right at once. When you begin to think, you miss the point.”Enough for today.

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Ah This 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ah This 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,When I am working in the West I feel like a sannyasin warrior and I like it. When I am here I feel meditative and I like it. Is the part of myself that still needs to fight an obstacle to becoming a good disciple?A sannyasin has to be liquid, flowing. He has not to be stonelike, fixated. He has to be like flowing water so he can take any form. Whatever is the need of the moment, he responds accordingly; not according to any fixed pattern, not according to any a priori idea of how a sannyasin should be. There is nothing like that in my vision of sannyas.Never ask me how a sannyasin should be because that will become a pattern and you will act out of the pattern. And any action out of a patterned life is wrong. One has to be loose, relaxed, so that one can respond to the situation. And situations go on changing. In the West it is different, here it is different.So when it is needed to be a warrior, be a warrior, and when it is needed to be meditative, be meditative. When it is needed to be an extrovert, be an extrovert, and when it is needed to be an introvert, be an introvert. This fluidity is sannyas. If you become fixated then you are no longer alive, you have become obsessed. Then you are an extrovert or an introvert, worldly or otherworldly, but you are no more my sannyasin.My sannyasin is indescribable, as indescribable as God himself, as life itself, as love itself: as inexpressible as existence itself. A sannyasin is in total harmony with existence. So whatsoever the need of the moment, the sannyasin goes with the moment, flows with the river. He does not go upstream. He does not have any idea of how things should be, he has no “ought.” He has no commandments in his mind to be fulfilled, to be followed.This is true discipline: discipline that brings freedom, discipline that liberates.The second question:Osho,I cannot drop the habit of chain-smoking. I have tried hard but I have failed always. Is it a sin to smoke?Don’t make a mountain out of a molehill! Religious people are very skillful in doing that. Now, what are you really doing when you are smoking? Just taking some smoke inside your lungs and letting it out. It is a kind of pranayama, filthy, dirty, but still a pranayama! You are doing yoga, in a stupid way. It is not a sin. It may be foolish but it is not a sin, certainly.There is only one sin and that is unawareness, and only one virtue and that is awareness.Do whatsoever you are doing, but remain a witness to it and immediately the quality of your doing is transformed. I will not tell you not to smoke, that you have tried. You must have been told by many so-called saints not to smoke, “Because if you smoke you will fall into hell.” God is not as stupid as your saints are. Throwing somebody into hell just because he was smoking cigarettes will be absolutely unnecessary.One morning, Weintraub went to a restaurant and ordered bacon with his eggs. He was an orthodox Jew and his wife kept a strictly kosher home, but Weintraub felt the need just this once. As Weintraub was about to leave the restaurant, he stopped in the door frozen with terror. The sky was filled with black clouds, there was lightning, and the ground shook with the rumble of thunder.“Can you imagine!” he exclaimed. “All that fuss over a little piece of bacon!”But that’s what your so-called saints have been telling you down the ages, for centuries. Smoking is unhealthy, unhygienic, but not a sin. It becomes a sin only if you are doing it unconsciously. It is not smoking that makes it a sin but unconsciousness.Let me emphasize the fact. You can say your prayer every day unconsciously then your prayer is a sin. You can become addicted to your prayer. If you miss the prayer one day, the whole day you will feel something is wrong, something is missing, some gap. It is the same with smoking or with drinking. There is no difference in it. Your prayer has become a mechanical habit. It has become a master over you. It bosses you. You are just a servant, a slave to it. If you don’t do it, it forces you to do it.So it is not a question of smoking. You may be doing your Transcendental Meditation every day regularly, and it may be just the same. If the quality of unconsciousness is there: if mechanicalness is there, if it has become a fixed routine, if it has become a habit and you are a victim of the habit and you cannot put it aside, you are no longer a master of yourself, then it is a sin. But it being a sin comes out of your unconsciousness, not out of the act itself.No act is virtuous, no act is a sin. What consciousness is behind the act? Everything depends on that. You say, “I cannot drop the habit of chain-smoking.” I am less interested in your chain-smoking. I am more interested in your habit. Any habit that becomes a force, a dominating force over you, is a sin. One should live more in freedom. One should be able to do things not according to habits but according to the situations.Life is continuously changing: it is a flux. And habits are stagnant. The more you are surrounded by habits, the more you are closed to life. You are not open, you don’t have windows. You don’t have any communication with life. You go on repeating your habits. They don’t fit. They are not the right response to the situation, to the moment. They are always lagging behind, they are always falling short. That’s the failure of your life.So remember, I am against all kinds of habits. Good or bad is not the point. There is no good habit as such. There is no bad habit as such. Habits are all bad because habit means something unconscious has become a dominating factor in your life, has become decisive. You are no more the deciding factor. The response is not coming out of awareness but out of a pattern, a structure that you have learned in the past.Two members of the Shalom Retirement Home, Blustein and Levin, were strolling past the home of Nelson Rockefeller. “If I only had that man’s millions,” sighed Blustein, “I would be richer than he is.”“Don’t be a dummy,” said Levin. “If you had his millions you would be as rich as he is, not any richer.”“You are wrong,” said Blustein, “don’t forget, I could give Hebrew lessons on the side!”That’s what he has been doing. Even if he becomes Nelson Rockefeller he will go on giving Hebrew lessons on the side. That’s how people are living, just according to habits.I have seen many rich people living very poor lives. Before they became rich their habits became settled. Their habits became settled when they were poor. That’s why you find so much miserliness in rich people. It comes from the habits that became ingrained in them when they were poor.One of the richest men in the world – not one of the richest but the richest man in the world – it is thought, was the Nizam of Hyderabad. His collection of diamonds was the greatest in the world because he owned the diamond mines of Golconda which have provided the greatest diamonds to the world. The Kohinoor comes from Golconda. It was once in the Nizam’s possession. He had so many diamonds that it is said that no one has ever been able to calculate exactly the price of his collection. Thousands and thousands of diamonds: they were not counted, they were weighed!But he was one of the most miserly men in the world. He used a single cap for thirty years. It was stinking but he wouldn’t change it. He continued to wear the same coat for almost his whole life and he would not give it to be washed because they might destroy it. He was so miserly; you cannot imagine that he would collect half-smoked cigarettes from the guests’ ashtrays and then smoke them. The richest man in the world smoking cigarette butts smoked by others! The first thing he would do whenever a guest left was to search in the ashtrays and collect the ends of the cigarettes.When he died, his greatest diamond was found in his dirty shoes. He was hiding it in his shoe! Maybe he had some idea behind it. Maybe he can take it with him to the other world. Maybe he was afraid, “When I am dead, people may steal it.” It was the greatest diamond. He used that diamond as a paperweight on his table. Before he died he must have put it inside his shoe.Even when one is dying, one is moving in old habits, following old patterns.I have heard that old Mulla Nasruddin had become a very rich man. When he felt death approaching, he decided to make some arrangements for his funeral, so he ordered a beautiful coffin made of ebony with satin pillows inside. He also had a beautiful silk caftan made to dress his dead body in.The day the tailor delivered the caftan, Mulla Nasruddin tried it on to see how it would look, but suddenly he exclaimed, “What is this! Where are the pockets?”Smoking or no smoking, that is not important. Maybe if you continue to smoke you will die a little earlier. So what? The world is so overpopulated you will do some good by dying a little earlier. Maybe you will have tuberculosis. So what? Tuberculosis is now almost like the common cold. In fact, there is no cure for the common cold but there is a cure for tuberculosis. I know it because I suffer from a common cold. To have tuberculosis is to be very fortunate.A man was suffering from a common cold for many years. All the doctors were tired of the man because nobody was able to cure him. Then a new doctor came to the town. All the other doctors told the new doctor, “Beware of this man! He is going to haunt you. He is a nuisance. His cold cannot be cured.” In fact, there is no cure for the common cold. They say that if you take medicine it goes within seven days, if you don’t take the medicine it goes in one week.So the new doctor was ready and the man appeared, as predicted by the others. The new doctor said, “I can cure it. Do one thing…” It must have been wintertime, just like this morning. He told him, “Do one thing. Tomorrow, early in the morning, before sunrise, go to the lake. Swim in the lake naked, then stand on the bank in the cold wind.”The man said, “Are you mad or something? How is that going to cure my common cold?”The doctor said, “Who told you that it is going to cure your common cold? It will give you influenza and I can cure that!”So it is possible that you may die two years earlier, you may have tuberculosis. But it is not a sin. Don’t be worried about that.If you really want to do something about your life, dropping smoking is not going to help because I know people who drop smoking and then they start chewing gum. The same old stupidity! Or if they are Indians they start chewing pan. It is the same. You will do something or other. Your unconsciousness will demand some activity, some occupation. It is an occupation. And it is only a symptom; it is not really the problem. It is not the root of the problem.Have you not observed? Whenever you feel emotionally disturbed you immediately start smoking. It gives you a kind of relief. You become occupied. Your mind is distracted from the emotional problem. Whenever people feel tense they start smoking. The problem is tension, the problem is emotional disturbance. The problem is somewhere else, smoking is just an occupation. So you become engaged in taking the smoke in and out and you forget for the time being. The mind cannot think of two things together, remember. One of the fundamentals of the mind is that it can think only of one thing at one time. It is one-dimensional. So if you are smoking and thinking of smoking, then from all other anxieties you are distracted.That’s the whole secret of the so-called spiritual mantras. They are nothing but distractions, like smoking. You repeat “Om, om, om,” or “Ram, Ram, Ram,” or “Allah, Allah, Allah.” That is just giving the mind an occupation. And all these people who teach mantras say, “Repeat it as quickly as possible, so that between two repetitions there is not even a small gap. Let them overlap. So ‘Ram Ram Ram’ don’t leave a gap between two Rams, otherwise some thought may enter. Repeat like crazy!”Yes, it will give you a certain relief: the same relief that comes from smoking, because your mind will be distracted from the anxieties and the world. You will forget about the world. You have created a trick. All mantras are tricks, but they are spiritual. Chain-smoking is also a mantra. It is a worldly mantra. Nonreligious you can call it, secular.The real problem is the habit. You say, “I have tried hard to drop it…”You have not tried to be conscious of it. Without trying to be conscious you have tried to drop it. It is not possible. It will come back because your mind is the same: its needs are the same, its problems are the same, its anxieties, tensions are the same. Its anguish is the same. And when those anxieties arise, what will you do? Immediately, mechanically, you will start searching for the cigarettes.You may have decided again and again; and again and again you have failed. Not because smoking is such a great phenomenon that you cannot get out of it, but because you are trying from the wrong end. Rather than becoming aware of the whole situation: why you smoke in the first place – rather than becoming aware of the process of smoking – you are simply trying to drop it. It is like pruning the leaves of a tree without cutting the roots.And my whole concern here is to cut the roots, not to prune the tree. By pruning the leaves and the branches the tree will become thicker, the foliage will become thicker. You will not destroy the tree you will be helping it, in fact. If you really want to get out of it you will have to look deeper, not into the symptoms but the roots. Where are the roots?You must be a deeply anxiety-ridden person. Otherwise chain-smoking is not possible. Chain-smoking is a by-product. You must be so concerned about a thousand and one disturbances inside. You must be carrying such a big load of worries on your heart, on your chest, that you don’t know how to forget them. At least you don’t know how to drop them. Smoking at least helps you to forget about them. You say, “I have tried hard…”Now one thing has to be understood. The hypnotists have discovered a fundamental law. They call it the “Law of Reverse Effect.” If you try hard to do something without understanding the fundamentals, just the opposite will be the result. It is like when you are learning to ride a bicycle…You are on a silent road, no traffic, early in the morning, and you see a red milestone just standing there by the side of the road like Hanuman. A sixty-foot-wide road and just a small milestone, and you become afraid. You may get to the milestone, you may hit against the milestone. Now you forget about the sixty-foot-wide road. In fact, even if you go blindfolded there is not much chance of your encountering the milestone, crashing into the milestone. But with open eyes, now the whole road is forgotten. You have become focused. In the first place, that redness is very focusing. And you are so much afraid! You want to avoid it. You have forgotten that you are on a bicycle. You have forgotten everything. Now the only problem for you is how to avoid this stone, otherwise you may harm yourself. You may crash into it.Now the crash is absolutely inevitable. You are bound to crash into the stone. And then you will be surprised: “I tried hard.” In fact it is because you tried hard that you reached the stone. And the closer you come, the harder you try to avoid it. But the harder you try to avoid it, the more focused you become on it. It becomes a hypnotic force. It hypnotizes you. It becomes like a magnet.It is a very fundamental law in life. Many people try avoiding many things and they fall into the same things. Try to avoid anything with great effort and you are bound to fall into the same pit. You cannot avoid it. That is not the way to avoid it.Be relaxed. Don’t try hard because it is through relaxation that you can become aware, not by trying hard. Be calm, quiet, silent.I will suggest smoke as much as you want to smoke – it is not a sin in the first place. I give you the guarantee. I will be responsible; I take the sin on myself. So if you meet God on Judgment Day, you can just tell him that this fellow is responsible. And I will stand there as a witness for you that you are not responsible. So don’t be worried about it being a sin. Relax and don’t try to drop it with effort. No, that is not going to help.Zen believes in effortless understanding.So this is my suggestion. Smoke as much as you want to smoke. Just smoke meditatively. If Zen people can drink tea meditatively, why can’t you smoke meditatively? In fact, tea contains the same stimulant as the cigarettes contain. It is the same stimulant, there is not much difference. Smoke meditatively, very religiously. Make it a ceremony. Try it my way!Make a small corner in your house just for smoking. A small temple devoted, dedicated, to the god of smoking. First bow down to your cigarette packet, have a little chit-chat. Talk to the cigarettes, inquire, “How are you?” And then very slowly take a cigarette out. Very slowly, as slowly as you can, because only if you take it very slowly will you be aware. Don’t do it in a mechanical way, as you always do. Then tap the cigarette on the packet very slowly and for as long as you want. There is no hurry either. Then take the lighter, bow down to the lighter. These are great gods, deities! Light is God, so why not the lighter?Then start smoking very slowly, just like vipassana. Don’t do it like a pranayama, quick and fast and deep, but very slowly. Buddha says breathe naturally. So smoke naturally, very slow, no hurry. If it is a sin, you are in a hurry. If it is a sin, you want to finish it as soon as possible. If it is a sin, you don’t want to look at it. You go on reading the newspaper and you go on smoking. Who wants to look at a sin? But it is not a sin, so watch it. Watch each of your acts.Divide your acts into small fragments so you can move very slowly. And you will be surprised, by watching your smoking, slowly, slowly smoking will become less and less. And one day suddenly, it is gone. You have not made any effort to drop it. It has dropped of its own accord because by becoming aware of a dead pattern, a routine, a mechanical habit you have created, you have released a new energy of consciousness in you. Only that energy can help you. Nothing else will ever help.And it is not only so with smoking, it is so with everything else in life. Don’t try too hard to change yourself. That leaves scars. Even if you change, your change will remain superficial. And you will find a substitute somewhere. You will have to find a substitute, otherwise you will feel empty.When something withers away of its own accord because you have become so silently aware of the stupidity of it that no effort is needed, when it simply falls just like a dead leaf falling from a tree, it leaves no scar behind. And it leaves no ego behind.If you drop something by effort, it creates great ego. You start thinking, “Now I am a very virtuous man because I don’t smoke.” If you think that smoking is a sin, naturally, obviously, if you drop it you will think you are a very virtuous man.That’s how your virtuous men are. Somebody does not smoke, somebody does not drink. Somebody eats only once a day, somebody does not eat in the night. Somebody has even stopped drinking water in the night. And they are all great saints! These are saintly qualities, great virtues!We have made religion so silly. It has lost all glory. It has become as stupid as people are. But the whole thing depends on you. If you think something is a sin, then your virtue will be just the opposite of it.I emphasize that not-smoking is not virtue, smoking is not sin. Awareness is virtue, unawareness is sin. And then the same law is applicable to your whole life.The third question:Osho,The other day in discourse you said that sannyas only comes when the point of suicide has been reached. But I did not feel suicidal when I took sannyas, only in deep love with you. My life seemed rich, but you have made it infinitely richer. Am I not a true sannyasin because I don't feel suicidal?And what is love? It is the greatest suicide in the world! Love means committing suicide: the suicide of the ego. Love means dropping the ego. That’s why people are so afraid of love. They talk about it. They also pretend. They manage to befool others and themselves too that they love. But they avoid love, because love requires you first to die. Only then are you resurrected.So what I said is absolutely true and absolutely applicable to you. And life certainly becomes richer. The more you die to the ego, the richer your life is, the more your life is full of overflowing love and joy and ecstasy.No, you are my true sannyasin. But love is the ultimate in suicide. All other suicides are small suicides. Somebody commits suicide. That is only physical. Love is psychological suicide and meditation is spiritual suicide. In love you die psychologically, you drop the psychological ego. And in meditation you drop the very idea of the self, even of the supreme self. You become a nothingness and in that nothingness blooms the white lotus of a buddha.The fourth question:Osho,How can I learn the secrets of life?There are no secrets in life. Or you can say life is an open secret. Everything is available, nothing is hidden. All that you need is just eyes to see.It is like a blind man asking, “I want to learn the secret of light.” All that he needs is treatment of the eyes so that he can see. Light is available, it is not a secret. But he is blind, for him there is no light. What to say about light? For him there is not even darkness, because even to see darkness eyes are needed. A blind man cannot see darkness. If you can see darkness you can see light. They are two aspects of the same coin. The blind man knows nothing of darkness and nothing of light. Now he wants to learn the secrets of light.We can only help him, not by teaching him great truths about light, they will be useless, but by operating on his eyes.That’s exactly what is being done here. This is an operating theater. The moment you become a sannyasin you are getting ready for the operating table, and you have to pass through many surgical operations. That’s what all the therapies are. And if you survive all the therapies, then I am there finally to finish you off!The moment the ego disappears all the secrets are open secrets. Life is not like a fist. It is an open hand.But people enjoy the idea that life has secrets, hidden secrets. Just to avoid their blindness they have created the idea of hidden secrets, of esoteric knowledge which is not available to anybody. Or is available only to great adepts who live in Tibet or in the Himalayas, or who are no longer in their bodies and live only in astral bodies, appearing only to a few chosen people. All kinds of nonsense has been perpetuated down the ages for the simple reason that you want to avoid seeing, recognizing the simple fact of your blindness. Rather than saying “I am blind,” you say “Life is very hidden, its secrets are very hidden. They are not easily available. You will need great initiation.”Life is not esoteric at all. It is written on each leaf of each tree, on each pebble on the seashore. It is contained in each ray of the sun. Whatever you come across is life in all its beauty. And life is not afraid of you, so why should it hide itself? In fact, you are hiding, continuously trying to hide yourself. You are closing yourself against life because you are afraid of life. You are afraid to live because life requires a constant death.One has to die every moment to the past. That is a great requirement of life. Simple if you understand that the past is no more. Slip out of it. Snap out of it! It is finished. Close the chapter, don’t go on carrying it. And then life is available to you.But you remain in the past. The past goes on hanging around you, the hangover never ends. And rather than coming to the present, the hangover of the past pushes you toward the future. So either you are in the memories or you are in your imagination. These are the two ways to miss life. Otherwise there is no need to miss life. Just drop out of memories and out of imagination. Past is no more. Future is not yet. Both are nonexistential. All that exists is the present, the now. Now is God.Enter the doors of now and all is revealed, instantly revealed, immediately revealed. Life is not a miser. It never hides anything. It does not hold anything back. It is ready to give all, totally and unconditionally. But you are not ready.And you ask, “How can I learn the secrets of life?” It is not a question of learning. It is more a question of unlearning. You have already learned too much: the Vedas, the Upanishads, the Gita, the Koran, the Bible, the Talmud. Thousands of scriptures are there inside you, clamoring, making noise, fighting with each other: all kinds of ideologies constantly trying to attract your attention. Your mind is a mess! It is overcrowded, it is a multitude. Unlearn. All that you have accumulated up to now, as knowledge, unlearn it.Zen people are right when they say, “Not knowing is the most intimate.” Unlearning is the process that can bring you to that beautiful space of not knowing. And then observe. Observe life, without any knowledge interpreting it. You have become so accustomed to interpretation.The moment you see the sunset, immediately, habitually, you repeat words that you have heard from others, “What a beautiful sunset!” You don’t mean anything by it. You are not even looking at the sunset. You have not allowed it to penetrate to your heart. You are not feeling any wonder. You are not in a state of awe. You have not fallen on your knees. You are not looking with unblinking eyes, absorbing. Nothing of that, just a casual remark, “What a beautiful sunset!” Just a way of speaking, a mannerism, showing that you are cultured, sophisticated, that you know what beauty is, that you have a great aesthetic sense, that you have great sensitivity toward nature. You are not looking at the sunset. Have you ever looked at the sunset? If you had looked you would not have asked this question. The sunset would have told you all.Have you ever looked at a rose flower? Yes, you say, “It is beautiful!” You may repeat the famous saying “A rose is a rose is a rose,” but you are not seeing the rose. You are full of words, all kinds of jargon, poetic, philosophic but between you and the rose flower there is such a wall, a Wall of China. Behind that wall you are hiding.And you ask, “How can I learn the secrets of life?” Life goes on utterly nude, utterly naked, absolutely available. All that is required is a not-knowing state: an empty space which can absorb it, which can receive it. Only when you are in a state of not knowing are you a host and then life becomes a guest.Just observe, with no evaluation. Don’t say “good,” don’t say “bad,” don’t say “beautiful,” don’t say “ugly.” Don’t say anything at all! Without saying anything, without bringing your mind in, just watch with utterly empty eyes, like a mirror. Reflect the moon, the stars, the sun, the trees, the people, the animals, the birds. And life will pour itself into your being. It is an inexhaustible source of energy. And energy is delight.William Blake is right when he says: “Energy is delight.” When life pours its energy into your being it rejuvenates you, it revitalizes you. You are constantly reborn. A real, alive person is born again and again, every moment. He is fresh, he is always young. Even when he dies he is fresh and young. Even in the moment of death, life is pouring more and more energy into him. His way of approaching life, without mind, helps him to see not only life but death too. When you are able to see life, you are able to see death. And to see death means there is no death. All is life and eternal, beginningless, endless. You are part of this infinite celebration.Just watch, be alert, and function from a state of innocence. Your question seems to be knowledgeable. You say, “How can I learn the secrets of life?” You are still asking like a student, a schoolboy.Life is ready to embrace you every moment. You are hiding away from life because you are afraid. You want life on your terms. You want life to be Hindu or Mohammedan or Christian and life cannot do that. You want life according to the Gita or the Koran and life cannot do that.Don’t put conditions on life. Putting conditions on life is ugly, violent, stupid. Remain unconditionally open and suddenly some bells in your heart start ringing in tune with the whole. Music arises. A melody is born. You are no longer separate as a learner, as a knower. Finally you are not even separate as an observer. The observer and the observed become one ultimately.That is the moment of enlightenment, of buddhahood, when you are part of this whole, an intrinsic part, inseparable. Then you are life. What is the need to learn anything? You are it. You are not separate from it. Who is going to learn and about what? You are life. Then experiencing arises. Not knowing but experiencing, not knowledge but wisdom.Raul was sitting against the wall of his friend Pablo’s adobe shack. Pablo came out of the house with a butterfly in his hand. “Ay, Pablo,” called Raul. “Where are you going with the butterfly?”“I am going to get some butter,” replied Pablo.“Oh, you foolish fellow!” said Raul. “You cannot get butter with a butterfly!” A few minutes later, to Raul’s astonishment, Pablo returned with a bucket of butter. In a little while Pablo came out, this time carrying a jar of horseflies.“Ay, Pablo,” called Raul, “where are you going with them horseflies?”“Where you think?” answered Pablo. “To get horses of course!” Pablo returned in a few minutes leading a pair of beautiful stallions.“See, I told you!” said Pablo to the amazed Raul. Ten minutes later Pablo came out clutching a handful of pussy willows.“Ay, Pablo!” shouted Raul. “Wait for me. I go with you!”Just observe. Nothing is hidden, just observe. And slowly, slowly you will start going with life. Slowly, slowly you will not remain separate, you will follow life. And to follow life is to be religious. Not to follow Christ, not to follow Buddha, but to follow life is to be religious.The fifth question:Osho,I can find the answer to all the questions I ask you within myself, but still I would like to ask you one, just for fun, simply taking up your invitation. Is it really possible for an ordinary person like myself to live in this world, earning and spending, and still be in the state of no-mind constantly?I will not answer this question, just for fun! If you can find the answer to all the questions, find the answer to this one too!And you don’t seem to be an ordinary person. One who can find all the answers to all the questions within himself can’t be an ordinary person. Otherwise how will you define the extraordinary?No, I will not bother you with an answer. You find it within yourself. When you cannot find it, ask me again.The sixth question:Osho,Can't one believe in God without seeing him?Who is telling you to believe in God? I am against all belief. You must be a very new arrival here. Belief is irreligious, as much as disbelief is. Belief means you don’t know, yet you have accepted something. It is cowardly. You have not inquired, you are pretending. You are a hypocrite.All believers are hypocrites. Catholic and communist, Jainas and Jews: all. Believers are hypocrites. They don’t know and yet they pretend as if they know. What is belief? It is playing the game of “as if.” And the same is true about disbelief.The communist knows not that there is no God, just as the Hindu knows not that there is a God. The Hindu believes there is a God. The communist believes there is no God. Disbelief is also a kind of belief, a negative kind of belief. And that’s why it is so easy to become a Hindu from being a communist or a communist from being a Hindu.It is a well-known fact that before the Russian revolution Russia was one of the most religious countries in the world. Then what happened? After ten years of revolution, the whole country became atheistic. The same people who were fanatical believers became fanatical disbelievers! On the surface it looks puzzling, but it is not. The fanaticism is the same. Nothing has changed. They were fanatic Christians, now they are fanatic communists. They believed madly, now they disbelieve madly. Their madness is the same. Their belief was wrong because they had not experienced it. And their disbelief is wrong because they have not yet experienced the absence of God.You ask me, “Can’t one believe in God without seeing him?” In the first place there is no need to believe in God. And if you believe you will never be able to know him. Belief will become a barrier. Belief is always a barrier. Belief means you are carrying a prejudice and you will not be able to see that which is. You will project your own idea.That’s why a Hindu, when he comes to a vision of God, will see Krishna with the flute. He will never see Christ, he will never see Mahavira, he will never see Buddha. And the Christian, he has never seen Krishna or Buddha. And a Jew, he has his own ideas. So when you see, what you see is not really the real but your own projection, your own idea. Remember, as long as you have even a single idea inside you, your experience is going to be distorted by it.My suggestion to my people is don’t carry any idea of God, for or against. Don’t carry any image of God. In fact, God is absolutely irrelevant: be meditative! And meditation means drop all thoughts, drop all ideologies, drop all knowledge. Drop the mind itself.And then when you are in a state of no-mind, something unimaginable, unbelievable, unpredictable, inexpressible, is experienced. You can call it God, you can call it truth, you can call it nirvana, or whatsoever you want to call it. You are free because no word describes it. Hence any word is as good as any other. But don’t carry any belief.And what do you mean “…without seeing him”? Do you think someday you will see God? Is God a person? That’s how people think. God is like Rama, always carrying a bow with arrows. Now, in the twentieth century, carrying a bow would look so foolish. Give him an atom bomb. That will look far more contemporary! Jesus on the cross… Twenty centuries have passed; now we have electric chairs! Give him an electric chair. At least he can rest on the chair! Still you go on giving him a cross. Make your ideas a little more contemporary. They are all out of date.What do you mean by “seeing God”? Is he a person? Will you say hello and will you shake hands with him? God is not a person. Hence God cannot be seen in that sense. God is a presence.There is no God but godliness. It is a quality, a fragrance. You experience it, you don’t see it. And when you experience it, it is not something out there as an object. It is something in here in the heart of your hearts. It is your subjectivity. It is your consciousness.So there is no question of belief and there is no question of seeing either.But people are brought up in all kinds of beliefs and they go on seeing, through their prejudices. So anything that fits with their prejudices enters inside. Anything that does not fit with their prejudice is prevented from entering.An elephant escaped from the local zoo and made his way into the vegetable garden of one of the town’s most prominent matrons. Unfortunately this lady had only just returned from a cocktail party where she had had just a little too much to drink. She was not too drunk, however, to see the beast in her garden. And she had the presence of mind to call the police.“Quick,” she said, “there is some kind of huge, strange looking animal in my garden.”“What is he doing?” asked the desk sergeant.“He seems to be picking lettuce with his tail!”“Oh, really?” replied the wary policeman. “And what is he doing with it?”The lady peered out into her garden once more and then said, “Sergeant, even if I told you, you would never believe it!”God has been experienced. Nobody has ever been able to say exactly what that experience is. And even if somebody tries to say it, you are not going to believe it. Your prejudices, your a priori ideas, will prevent you.No, no need to believe in God. No need even to believe that one day you are going to see him. In fact, God is not a religious subject at all. You will be surprised when you hear it. God is a philosophic subject. It is for those useless people who go on endlessly into logic-chopping and hairsplitting. It is for those people to discuss God.A religious person is not interested in God. He is more interested in the very source of his being, who he is. “Who am I?” That is the most fundamental religious question, not God, not heaven, not hell, but “Who am I?” And if you can find the truth of your own being, you will have found all the truth that is necessary to know and is worth knowing. You will have found God and you will have found nirvana and you will have found all that the seers, the rishis, the buddhas, the prophets, have been telling you to inquire into down the ages.But don’t make a philosophical inquiry. Otherwise you will end up with a conclusion. And all conclusions are dangerous because once you conclude you become fanatical about your conclusion, you start clinging to it. You become afraid of truth, because who knows? Truth may disturb your conclusion, and your conclusion is so cozy and so convenient. And it has helped to give you a certain feeling of security. So you go on clinging to your conclusion and your conclusion is your conclusion.If you are unaware, what value can your conclusion have? Your conclusion cannot be bigger than you. Your conclusion cannot be higher than you. Your conclusion will be as high, as deep, as you are high and you are deep. Your conclusion will only reflect you.God is not a conclusion. It is not arrived at by logical processes; by believing, by discussing, by analyzing, no. All mind processes have to cease. When all processes have ceased, something, call it xyz, suddenly wells up within you. A few qualities can be indicated. You will feel tremendously ecstatic, blissful, at home, at ease. For the first time existence will be your home. You will not be an outsider, a stranger. For the first time there will be no conflict between you and existence, no struggle for the survival of the fittest. For the first time you will be in a state of “let-go” and in let-go, wells up great joy.You will be able to sing the song that you have brought in your heart and is still unsung. You will be able to bloom into thousands of flowers. Or as in the East we say, you will bloom into a thousand-petaled lotus of consciousness, of awareness. That is God, or better, godliness.The seventh question:Osho,I know you are against marriage, but I still want to get married. Can I have your blessings?Meditate over Murphy’s maxim: “A fool and his cool are soon parted.” It is not yet published anywhere, but Asha is the custodian of Murphy’s unpublished manuscripts, so she goes on supplying these maxims of Murphy to me. Meditate over it: “A fool and his cool are soon parted.”That’s what marriage is going to be. Only fools think in terms of legality. Otherwise, love is enough. And I am not against marriage. I am for love. If love becomes your marriage, good, but don’t hope that marriage can bring love. That is not possible. Love can become a marriage. You have to work very consciously to transform your love into a marriage.Ordinarily, people destroy their love. They do everything to destroy it and then they suffer. And they go on saying, “What went wrong?” They destroy. They do everything to destroy it.There is a tremendous desire and longing for love, but love needs great awareness. Only then can it reach its highest climax. And that highest climax is marriage. It has nothing to do with law. It is a merging of two hearts into totality. It is the functioning of two persons in synchronicity: that is marriage.But people try love and because they are unconscious… Their longing is good, but their love is full of jealousy, full of possessiveness, full of anger, full of nastiness. Soon they destroy it. Hence for centuries they have depended on marriage. Better to start by marriage so that the law can protect you from destroying it. The society, the government, the court, the policeman, the priest, will all force you to live in the institution of marriage. And you will be just a slave. If marriage is an institution, you are going to be a slave in it. Only slaves want to live in institutions.Marriage is a totally different phenomenon. It is the climax of love. Then it is good. I am not against marriage. I am for the real marriage. I am against the false, the pseudo, that exists. But it is an arrangement. It gives you a certain security, safety, occupation. It keeps you engaged. Otherwise, it gives you no enrichment, it gives you no nourishment.So, if you want to get married according to me, only then can I give you my blessings.Learn to love, and drop all that goes against love. It is an uphill task. It is the greatest art in existence, to be able to love. One needs such refinement, such inner culture, such meditativeness, so that one can see immediately how one goes on destroying. If you can avoid being destructive, if you become creative in your relationship; if you support it, nourish it; if you are capable of compassion for the other person, not only passion… Passion alone is not able to sustain love. Compassion is needed. If you are able to be compassionate toward the other; if you are able to accept his limitations, his imperfections; if you are able to accept him the way he is or she is and still love, then one day a marriage happens. That may take years. That may take your whole life.You can have my blessings, but for a legal marriage you need not have my blessings. My blessings won’t be of any help either. And beware! Before you jump into it, give it a second thought.A woman walks into a pet shop and sees a bird with a big beak. “What is that strange looking bird?” she asks the proprietor.“That is a gobble bird,” he answers.“Why do you call him a gobble bird?”The man says to the bird, “Gobble bird, my chair!”The bird immediately starts pecking away and gobbles up the chair.“I will buy him,” the woman says.The owner asks why.“Well,” she says, “when my husband comes home he will see the bird and ask, ‘What is that?’ I will say, ‘A gobble bird.’ And then he will say, ‘Gobble bird, my foot!’”Just be a little aware before you move! My blessings won’t help. Marriage is a trap and your wife sooner or later will find a gobble bird.Mrs. Moskowitz loved chicken soup. One evening she was spooning it up when three of her husband’s friends came in.“Mrs. Moskowitz,” the spokesman said, “we are here to tell you that your husband, Izzy, has been killed in an automobile accident.”Mrs. Moskowitz continued eating her soup. Again they told her. Still no reaction.“Look,” said the puzzled speaker, “we are telling you that your husband is dead!” She went right on with the soup.“Gentlemen,” she said between mouthfuls, “soon as I am finished with this chicken soup, you gonna hear some scream!”Marriage is not love. It is something else.A woman at the grave of her husband was wailing, “Oh, Joseph, it is four years since you have gone, but I still miss you!”Just then Grossberg passed by and saw the woman crying. “Excuse me,” he said, “who are you mourning?”“My husband,” she said. “I miss him so much!”Grossberg looked at the stone and then said, “Your husband? But it says on the gravestone ‘Sacred to the memory of Golda Kreps’.”“Oh, yes, he put everything in my name.”So be a little aware before you are trapped! Marriage is a trap. You will be trapped by the woman and the woman will be trapped by you. It is a mutual trap. And then legally you are allowed to torture each other forever. Particularly in this country, not only for one life but for lives together! Divorce is not even allowed after you are dead. Next life also you will get the same wife, remember!And the last question:Osho,What is going on?I am surprised, because that’s exactly what I was going to ask you all! I don’t know. But “Not knowing is the most intimate.”Enough for today.

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Ah This 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ah This 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The ancients said: “(Self-) cultivation takes an unimaginable time (while) enlightenment in an instant is attained.” If the training is efficient, enlightenment will be attained in one finger-snap.In days gone by, Ch’an master Hui Chueh of Lang Yeh mountain, had a disciple who called on him for instruction. The master taught her to examine into the sentence: “Take no notice.”She followed his instruction strictly without backsliding.One day her house caught fire, but she said, “Take no notice.”Another day, her son fell into the water and when a bystander called her, she said, “Take no notice.”She observed exactly her master’s instruction by laying down all casual thoughts.One day, as her husband lit the fire to make fritters of twisted dough. She threw into the pan full of boiling (vegetable) oil a batter which made a noise. Upon hearing the noise, she was instantly enlightened.Then she threw the pan of oil on the ground, clapped her hands and laughed. Thinking she was insane, her husband scolded her and said: “Why do you do this? Are you mad?”She replied, “Take no notice.”Then she went to the master Hui Chueh and asked him to verify her achievement. The master confirmed that she had obtained the holy fruit.There are two paths to the ultimate truth. The first is of self-cultivation and the second is of enlightenment. The first is basically wrong. It only appears to be a path. It is not. One goes on and on in circles, but one never arrives. The second does not appear to be a path because there is no space for a path when something happens instantly, when something happens immediately. When something happens without taking any time, how can there be a path?This paradox has to be understood as deeply as possible. The first appears to be a path but is not. The second appears not to be a path but is. The first appears to be a path because there is infinite time. It is a time phenomenon. But anything happening in time cannot lead you beyond time. Anything happening in time only strengthens time.Time means mind. Time is a projection of mind. It does not exist; it is only an illusion. Only the present exists and the present is not part of time. The present is part of eternity. The past is time, the future is time. Both are nonexistential. The past is only memory and the future is only imagination: memory and imagination. Both are nonexistential. We create the past because we cling to memory. Clinging to memory is the source of the past. And we create the future because we have so many desires yet to be fulfilled, we have so many imaginations yet to be realized. And desires need a future like a screen onto which they can be projected.The past and the future are mind phenomena. And the past and the future make your whole idea of time. Ordinarily you think that time is divided into three divisions: past, present, and future. That is totally wrong. That is not how the awakened ones have seen time. They say time consists only of two divisions: past and future. The present is not part of time at all. The present belongs to the beyond.The first path, the path of self-cultivation, is a time path. It has nothing to do with eternity. And truth is eternity.The second path, the path of enlightenment, Zen masters have always called the pathless path because it does not appear to be a path at all. It cannot appear as a path, but just for the purposes of communication we will call it “the second path,” arbitrarily. The second path is not part of time. It is part of eternity. Hence it happens instantaneously. It happens in the present. You cannot desire it. You cannot be ambitious for it.On the first path, the false path, all is allowed. You can imagine, you can desire, you can be ambitious. You can change all your worldly desires into otherworldly desires. That’s what the so-called religious people go on doing. They don’t desire money any more. They are fed up with it, tired of it, frustrated with it, bored with it. But they start desiring God. Desire persists, it changes its object. Money is no longer the object of desire but God. Pleasure is no longer the object of desire but bliss. But what bliss can you imagine? Whatsoever you imagine in the name of bliss is nothing but your idea of pleasure. Maybe a little bit refined, cultivated, sophisticated, but it can’t be more than that.The people who stop desiring worldly things start desiring heaven and heavenly pleasures. But what are they? Magnified forms of the same old desires, in fact more dangerous than the worldly desires because with the worldly desires one thing is absolutely certain, you are bound to get frustrated sooner or later. You will get out of them. You cannot remain in them forever. The very nature of them is such that they promise you, but they never fulfill their promises. The goods are never delivered. How long can you remain deceived by them? Even the most stupid person has glimpses, once in a while, that he is chasing illusions which cannot be fulfilled by the very nature of existence. The intelligent one comes to the realization sooner.But with the otherworldly desires there is far greater danger because they are otherworldly. To see them and to experience them you will have to wait till death. They will happen only after death so you cannot be free of them in life, while you are alive. And a man who has lived unconsciously his whole life, his death is going to be the culmination of unconsciousness. He will die in unconsciousness. In death also he will not be able to disillusion himself. The person who dies in unconsciousness is born again in unconsciousness. It is a vicious circle. It goes on and on. The person who is born in unconsciousness will repeat the same stupidities that he has been repeating for millions of lives.Unless you become alert and aware in life, unless you change the quality of your living, you will not die consciously. Only a conscious death can bring you to a conscious birth. And then a far more conscious life opens its doors.Changing worldly desires into otherworldly desires is the last strategy of the mind to keep you captive, to keep you a prisoner, to keep you in bondage.So the first path is not really a path but a deception, a very alluring deception. In the first place, it is self-cultivation. It is not against the ego. It is rooted in the refinement of the ego. Refine your ego of all grossness then you become a self. The ego is like a raw diamond. You go on cutting it and polishing it and then it becomes a Kohinoor, very precious. That is your idea of “self,” but it is nothing but the ego with a beautiful name, with a spiritual flavor thrown in. It is the same old illusory ego.The very idea that “I am” is wrong. The whole is. God is. I am not. Either I can exist or God can exist. We cannot both exist together because if I exist, then I am a separate entity. Then I have my own existence, independent of God. But God simply means the total, the whole. How can I be independent of it? How can I be separate from it? If I exist, I destroy the very idea of totality.The people who deny God are the most egoistic people. It is not an accident that Friedrich Nietzsche declared God dead. He was one of the most egoistic persons possible. It was his ego that made him, finally, insane. Ego is insanity, the basic insanity, the most fundamental, out of which all other insanities arise. He said, “God is dead and man is free.” That sentence is significant. In one sentence he has said the whole thing. Man can be free only if God is dead: if God is alive, then man cannot be free, in fact man cannot exist.The very idea that “I am” is unspiritual. The idea of the self is unspiritual.And what is self-cultivation? It is an effort to polish. It is an effort to create a beautiful character, to drop all that is unrespectable and to create all that is respectable. That’s why in different countries different things are cultivated by the spiritual people, the so-called spiritual. It depends on the society. What the society respects, that will be cultivated.In Soviet Russia, before the revolution, there was a Christian sect that believed the sexual organs should be cut off, only then are you real Christians. The statement of Jesus was taken literally. Jesus has said: “Be eunuchs of God.” These fools followed it literally. Every year they would gather in thousands and in a mad frenzy they would cut their sexual organs. Men would cut their genital organs, women would cut their breasts. Those who were able to do it were thought to be saints. They were very much respected. They had made a great sacrifice.Now, anywhere else they would have been thought utterly insane; but because in that particular society it was respected, they were saints.In India you can find many people lying down on beds of thorns or needles and they are thought to be great sages. If you look into their eyes, they are just stupid people. Lying down on a bed of thorns can’t make one spiritual. It will simply deaden your body, your sensitivity. Your body will become more and more, dull. It will not feel.That’s how it happens. Your face does not feel the cold because it remains open. It becomes insensitive to the cold. Your hands don’t feel the cold so much because they are open. They become insensitive to the cold. Exactly in the same way you can live naked. Only in the beginning, for a few months, will you feel the cold; slowly, slowly your body will adjust.That’s how the Jaina monks live naked. And their followers praise them like anything. They think, “This is what real spirituality is. Look, they have gone beyond the body!” They have gone nowhere; just the body has become dull. And when the body becomes dull it naturally creates a dullness of the mind too, because body and mind are deeply one. The body is the outer shell of the mind and the mind is the inner core of the body.If you really want to have a sensitive, intelligent mind, you need a sensitive, intelligent body too. Yes, the body has its own intelligence. Don’t kill it. Don’t destroy it. Otherwise you will be destroying your intelligence. But if it is respected, then it becomes something religious, spiritual, holy.Anything that the society respects becomes a nourishment for your ego. And people are ready to do any stupid thing. The only joy is that it will bring respectability. Self-cultivation is nothing but another name for ego-cultivation. It is not a real path. In fact, no real path is needed. It looks like a long, long, arduous path. It needs many lives. The people who have been preaching self-cultivation know perfectly well that one life is not enough, otherwise they will be exposed. So they imagine many, many lives: a long, arduous journey of many lives. Then finally, after an unimaginable time, you arrive. In fact, you never arrive. You cannot arrive because you are already there. Hence this very idea of a path leading to a goal is meaningless.Try to understand the paradox. It is very significant in understanding the spirit of Zen.Zen is not a way, is not a path. Hence they call it the gateless gate, the pathless path, the effortless effort, the actionless action. They use these contradictory terms just to point toward a certain truth. That a path means there is a goal and the goal has to be in the future. You are here, the goal is there, and between you and the goal a path is needed, a bridge, to join you. The very idea of a path means you have yet to arrive home, you are not at home already.The second path, the pathless path, the path of enlightenment has a totally different revelation to make. A totally different declaration of immense value, that you are already it: “Ah, this!” There is nowhere to go, no need to go. There is no one to go. We are already enlightened. Only then can it can happen in an instant, because it is a question of awakening.For example, if you have fallen asleep and you are dreaming, you can dream that you are on the moon. Do you think that if somebody wakes you up, you will have to come back from the moon? Then it will take time. If you have already reached the moon, then you will have to come back and it will take time. The airship may not be available right now. There may be no tickets available. It may be full. But you can be awakened because it is only a dream that you are on the moon. In fact you are in your bed, in your home. You haven’t gone anywhere. Just a little shaking and you are suddenly back, back from your dreams.The world is only a dream. We need not go anywhere. We have always been here. We are here and we are going to be here. But we can fall asleep and we can dream.The All-Indian National Guard was out on maneuvers. They were about to begin a mock battle between the “red” team and the “blue” team when they received a telegram from Delhi: “Because of recent budget cuts we cannot supply weapons or ammunition, but please continue with your battle for training purposes.”The General called his troops together and said, “We will simulate the battle. If you are within a hundred yards of the enemy, point your arm and shout ‘Bang, bang’ for a rifle. If you are within fifty feet, throw your arms over your head and shout ‘Boom’ for a hand grenade. If you are within five feet, wave your arms and shout ‘Slash, slash’ for a bayonet.”Private Abul was put on scout patrol and apparently all the action went in another direction. He was out for three days and three nights, but did not see another person. On the fourth day Abul was sitting under a tree, discouraged, when he saw a figure coming across the hill in his direction. He got down on his hands and knees and crawled through the mud and weeds, as he had been trained. Sure enough, it was a soldier from the other team.Abul raised his arm and shouted “Bang, bang!” but he got no response. So he ran up closer, threw his arm over his head, and shouted “Boom!” very loudly. The other soldier did not even turn in his direction. So he ran right up to the soldier and shouted in his ear “Slash, slash! Slash, slash!” but still he got no reaction.Abul was angry. He grabbed the other soldier by the arm and shouted, “Hey! You are not playing according to the rules. I went ‘Bang, bang,’ I shouted ‘Boom,’ and I came right up to you and said ‘Slash, slash,’ and you have not even indicated that you have seen me yet.”At this point, the other soldier wheeled around to Abul and said in a deep voice, “Rumble, rumble, I am a tank!”This is the situation. You are not what you think you are, you are not what you believe you are. All your beliefs are dreams. Maybe you have been dreaming for so long that they appear almost like realities.So the question is not of self-cultivation. The question is of enlightenment.Zen believes in sudden enlightenment because Zen believes that you are already enlightened; just a certain situation is needed which can wake you up. Just a little alarm may do the work. If you are a little alert, just a little alarm and you are suddenly awake. And all the dreams with all their long, long desires, journeys, kingdoms, mountains, oceans, have all disappeared in a single instant.This beautiful story:The ancients said: “(Self-) cultivation takes an unimaginable time…”It is bound to take an unimaginable time because you will be fighting with shadows. You cannot conquer them, you cannot destroy them either. In fact, the more you fight with them, the more you believe in their existence. If you start fighting with your own shadow, do you think there is any possibility of your ever becoming victorious? It’s impossible. It is not because the shadow is stronger than you that the victory is impossible. Just the contrary: the shadow has no power, it has no existence. And you start fighting with something nonexistential. How can you win? You will be dissipating your energy. You will become tired and the shadow will remain unaffected. It will not get tired. You cannot kill it, you cannot burn it, you cannot even escape from it. The faster you run, the faster it comes behind you.The only way to get rid of it is to see that it is not there at all. Seeing that a shadow is a shadow is liberation. Just seeing, no cultivation! And once the shadows disappear, your life has a luminosity of its own. Certainly there will arise great perfume, but it will not be something cultivated; it will not be something painted from the outside.That’s the difference between a saint and a sage. A saint follows the path of self-cultivation. He practices nonviolence, like Mahatma Gandhi. He practices truth, truthfulness. He practices sincerity, honesty. But these are all practices. And whenever you are practicing nonviolence, what are you doing? What is really happening inside you? You must be repressing violence. When you are practicing, when you have to practice truth, what does it mean? It simply means untruth arises in you and you repress it and you go against it. And you say the truth but the untruth has not disappeared from your being. You can push it downward into the very basement of your being; you can throw it into the deep darkness of the unconscious. You can become completely oblivious of it. You can forget that it exists, but it exists and it is bound to function from those deep, dark depths of your being in such a subtle way that you will never be aware that you are still in its grip. In fact, far more so than before because when it was consciously felt you were not so much in its grip. Now the enemy has become hidden.That’s my observation of Mahatma Gandhi. He observed, cultivated nonviolence. But I have looked deeply into his life. He is one of the most violent men this century has known. But his violence is very polished; his violence is so sophisticated that it looks almost like nonviolence. And his violence has such subtle ways that you cannot detect it easily. It comes from the back door; it is never at the front door. You will not find it in his drawing-room; it is not there. It has started living somewhere in the servants’ quarters at the back of the house where nobody ever goes, but it goes on pulling his strings from there.For example, if ordinarily you are angry, you are angry with the person who has provoked it. Mahatma Gandhi would be angry with himself, not with the person. He would turn his anger upon himself; he would make it introverted. Now it is very difficult to detect it. He would go on a fast, he would become suicidal, he would start torturing himself. And in a subtle way he would torture the other by torturing himself.In his ashram, if somebody was found drinking tea… Now, tea is so innocent, but it was a sin in Mahatma Gandhi’s ashram. These ashrams exist by creating guilt in people. They don’t miss any opportunity to create guilt. That is their trade secret, so no opportunity has to be missed. Even tea is enough. It has to be used. If somebody is found drinking tea, he is a sinner. He is committing a crime; far more than a crime, because a sin is something far deeper than a crime.If somebody was found… And people used to drink tea. They would drink tea in hiding. They had to hide. Just to drink tea they had to be thieves, deceivers, hypocrites! That’s what your so-called religions have done to millions of people. Rather than making them spiritual they have simply made them, reduced them, to hypocrites.They would pretend that they didn’t drink tea, but once in a while they would be found red-handed. And Gandhi was searching, looking; he had agents planted to find out who was going against the rules. Whenever somebody was found he would be called and Gandhi would go on a fast to punish himself.“What kind of logic is this?” you will ask. It is a very simple logic. In India it has been followed for centuries. The trick is that Gandhi used to say, “I must not yet be a perfect master, that’s why a disciple can deceive me. So I must purify myself. You could deceive me because I am not yet perfect. If I was perfect, nobody could deceive me. How can you imagine deceiving a perfect master? So there is some imperfection in me.”Look at the humbleness! And he would torture himself; he would go on a fast. Now Gandhi is fasting because you have taken a cup of tea. How will you feel? His three days’ fast for you, just for a single cup of tea! It will be too heavy on you. If he had hit you on the head it would not have been so heavy; if he had insulted you, punished you, told you to go on a fast for three days, it would have been far simpler and far more compassionate. But the old man himself is fasting, torturing himself, and you are condemned by every eye in the ashram. Everybody is looking at you as a great sinner: “It is because of you that the master is suffering. And just for a cup of tea? How low you have fallen!”And the person would go and touch his feet and cry and weep, but Gandhi wouldn’t listen. He had to purify himself. This is all violence; I don’t call it non-violence. It is violence with a vengeance, but in such a subtle way that it is very difficult to detect. Even Gandhi may not have been aware at all of what he was doing. Because he was not practicing awareness, he was practicing nonviolence.You can go on practicing… There are a thousand and one things to be practiced. And when will you be able to get out of all that is wrong in your life? It will take an unimaginable time. And then, too, do you think you will be out of it? It is not possible; you will not be out of it.I have never seen anybody arriving at truth by self-cultivation. In fact, the people who go for self-cultivation are not very intelligent people because they have missed the most fundamental insight: that we are not going anywhere, that God is not something to be achieved. God is already the case in you. You are pregnant with God. You are made of the stuff called God. Nothing has to be achieved – only a certain awareness, a self-awareness.There is an unusual store in New York where one can buy exotic foods from all over the world. Mulla Nasruddin visited this store recently. He found rare tropical fruits from the jungles of South America and many strange delicacies from Africa and the Middle East.In one corner he found a counter with several trays of human brains. There were politicians’ brains at $1 per pound, engineers’ brains at $2 per pound, and there was one tray of saints’ brains at $50 per pound. Since all the brains looked very much alike, he asked the man behind the counter, “Why do you charge so much more for the saints’ brains?”The man peered out from behind his glasses and answered, “Do you have any idea how many saints we have to go through to get a pound of brains?”My observation of your so-called saints is exactly the same. I don’t think they are very intelligent people, basically stupid, because unless one is stupid one cannot follow the path of self-cultivation. It appears only as a path; it is not. And it is tedious and it is long; in fact, it is unending.You can change one habit. It will start asserting itself in something else. You can close one door and another door immediately opens. By the time you close that door, a third door is bound to open because basically you remain the same, the same old unconscious person. Trying to be humble you will simply become more and more egoistic and nothing else: your humbleness will be simply a new way of fulfilling your ego. Deep down you will imagine yourself to be the humblest person in the world. There is nobody who is more humble than you. Now, this is ego speaking a new language, but the meaning is the same. The language is changed but the meaning is the same. Translated into a different language it does not change. First you were the greatest man in the world, now you are the humblest man in the world, but you remain special. You remain extraordinary, you remain superior. First you were this, now you are that, but deep down nothing has changed. Nothing can ever change by self-cultivation.A man spent thousands of dollars going from doctor to doctor trying to find a cure for his insomnia. Finally a doctor was able to help him. “You must be terribly relieved,” said one of his friends sympathetically.“You said it!” replied the former insomniac. “Why, sometimes I lie awake all night thinking of how I used to suffer.”So what has changed? Self-cultivation only gives you a deception. The deception that something is happening; that you are doing something, that something great is on the way, that if not today, tomorrow it is going to happen.Hornstein manufactured coats, but business was so bad the poor man could not sleep. “Count sheep,” advised Slodnick, his friend. “It is the best-known cure.”“What can I lose?” said Hornstein. “I will try tonight.”The next morning he looked more bleary-eyed than ever.“What happened?” asked Slodnick.“Sheep I could count,” moaned Hornstein. “I counted up to fifty thousand. Then I sheared the sheep and made up fifty thousand overcoats. Then came the problem that kept me awake all the rest of the night. Where could I get fifty thousand linings?”No such things are going to help because if the mind is the same, it will go on creating the same problem in different ways. Basically the roots have to be transformed; just pruning the leaves is not going to help. And self-cultivation is only pruning of the leaves.The ancients said: “(Self-) cultivation takes an unimaginable time (while) enlightenment in an instant is attained.”Enlightenment is attained in a single moment. Why? Because you are already enlightened, you have simply forgotten it. You have to be reminded, that’s all.The function of the master is to remind you. Not to give you a path but to give you a remembrance; not to give you methods of cultivation, not to give you a character, virtue, but only awareness, intelligence, awakening.In a single moment it can be attained because you have never lost it in the first place. You are dreaming that you are unenlightened. You can dream you are in heaven. You can dream you are in hell. And you know: you dream sometimes you are in heaven and sometimes in hell. In the morning you can be in heaven and by the evening you can be in hell. One moment you can be in heaven, another moment you can be in hell. It all depends on you. It is something to do with your psyche. It is not something outside you.A man died, arrived at the Pearly Gates, and was shown by St. Peter to a waiting room. He sat there naturally anxious to know whether he would be sent to Heaven or to Hell. The door opened and a famous saint walked in. The man rejoiced, “I must be in Heaven!”Just then the door opened again and a famous prostitute walked in. The man was confused. “In that case I must be in Hell!” he thought.While he was still wondering, the saint grabbed the prostitute and started making love to her. The man, flabbergasted, ran to St. Peter and asked, “You must tell me is this Heaven or Hell?”“Can’t you see?” answered St. Peter. “It is Heaven for him and Hell for her!”Heaven and hell are not geographical; they are not something outside you. They are something that belongs to your interiority. If you are awake, then you are in a totally different universe – as if in your awakening the whole of existence becomes awakened. It takes a new color, a new flavor, a new fragrance. When you are asleep, the whole existence sleeps with you. It all depends on you.So the question is not of cultivating any character, of becoming virtuous, of becoming a saint. The question is how to come out of dreams: how to come out of the past and the future, how to be just herenow.That’s what enlightenment is…“Ah, this!”When Alice was at the Mad Hatter’s tea party, she noticed that no jam was available. She asked for jam, and the Mad Hatter said, “Jam is served every other day.”Alice protested, “But there was no jam yesterday either!”“That’s right,” said the Mad Hatter. “The rule is always jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, never jam today – because today is not every other day!”That’s how you are living. Jam yesterday, jam tomorrow, never jam today. And that’s where jam is! So you only imagine; you go on in a drugged, sleepy state. You have forgotten completely that this moment is the only real moment there is. If you want to have any contact with reality, wake up herenow!Hence this strange idea of Zen that enlightenment happens in an instant. Many people become puzzled, “How can it happen in an instant?” Indians particularly become very puzzled because they have the idea that first you have to get rid of all the past karmas. And now this foolish idea has reached the West. Now in the West people are talking about past karma, first you have to get rid of the past karma.Do you know how long the past is? It is eternity! And if you are to get rid of all past karma, you are never going to get rid of it. That much is certain. And meanwhile you will be creating other karmas and the past will go on becoming bigger and bigger, every day. If that is the only way out that one has to get rid of all past karmas, then there is no possibility of enlightenment. Then there has never been any buddha and there is never going to be any buddha. It is impossible. Just think of all the past lives and all the karmas that you have made. First you have to get rid of them. And how are you going to get rid of them? In trying to get rid of them you will have to create other karmas. And this is a vicious circle.“And to be totally enlightened,” the people who believe in the philosophy of karma say, “not only are you to get rid of the bad karmas, you have to get rid of the good karmas too. Because bad karmas create iron chains and good karmas create golden chains. But chains are chains, and you have to get rid of all kinds of chains.” Now things become even more complicated. How can you get rid of bad karmas? If you ask them they say, “Create good karma to get rid of bad karmas.” And how can you get rid of good karmas? Then the saints become angry. They say, “Stop! You are arguing too much. This is not a question of argument. Believe, trust, have faith!”It is not really a question of getting rid of karmas. When in the morning you wake up, do you have to get rid of all the dreams first? You have been a thief in the dreams, a murderer, a rapist, or a saint… You can be all kinds of things in a dream. Do you have to get rid of all those dreams first? The moment you are awake you are out of all those dreams. They are finished! There is no question of getting rid of them.That is the essential message of Zen. You need not be worried about the past karmas. They were all dream acts. Just wake up and they are all finished.But we are sleepy people and anything that fits with our sleep has great appeal. We listen only according to our state of mind. The whole world is asleep. There is rarely, once in a while, a person who is not asleep, who is awake. When he speaks to you there is misunderstanding, obviously. He speaks from his standpoint, from his awakening. And he says, “Forget all about your dreams. That is all nonsense! Good and bad, they are all alike; saint and sinner, they are all alike. Simply wake up! Don’t worry that first you have to become a saint in your dream, that you have to change from being a sinner into being a saint first, then you can wake up. Why go by such a long route? You can wake up directly! You can wake up while you are committing a sin; while you are murdering somebody in your dream you can wake up. There is no problem.”In fact, if you are a saint you may not like to wake up. A murderer will find it easier to wake up because he has nothing to lose. But the saint has great prestige to lose. Maybe he is being garlanded and a Nobel Prize is being given and people are clapping and touching his feet… And suddenly the alarm goes. Is this the time for the alarm? Can’t the alarm wait a little more? When things are going so sweetly and so beautifully the alarm can wait a little. A murderer has nothing to lose. He is already suffering. He is in a deep inner torture. In fact, he will feel relieved if the alarm goes off. He will feel a great freedom coming out of that nightmare.Hence it happens more often that sinners wake up earlier than the saints, because the sinners go through nightmares and saints are having such sweet dreams. Who wants to wake up when you are a king with a golden palace and enjoying all kinds of things? Maybe you are in paradise in your dream.But one thing is certain. When you are asleep you have a certain language, the language of sleep. And you can understand other people who are asleep and speak the same language. That’s why the philosophy of karma became so important, so prevalent, so dominant. It has ruled almost all the religions of the world in different ways.In India there have been three great religions: Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism. They disagree on every point except on the philosophy of karma. They disagree on every point possible. They disagree on the existence of God, they disagree even on the existence of the soul, they disagree on the existence of the world. But they don’t disagree on the philosophy of karma. It must have some deep appeal for the sleeping mind. And these people cannot understand Zen.When a Hindu pundit or a Jaina muni comes to me he is very puzzled. He says, “Are you teaching instant, sudden enlightenment? Then, what about Mahavira, who had to struggle for many, many lives to become enlightened?”I say to them, “Those stories are invented by you. The Mahavira that you talk about is an invention of your dream. You don’t know about the real Mahavira. How can you know about his past lives? You don’t even know about your past lives!” And there is no agreement even on his last life amongst his followers. What is there to say about his past lives?On such factual matters…for example, whether he was married or not. One sect of Jainas says he was not married. Because to them, a man like Mahavira getting married looks insulting, humiliating. And the other sect of the Jainas says he was not only married, he had a daughter too. Now that is going too far, having a daughter! That means he must have indulged in sex. Because at that time the story of Jesus had not happened, virgin birth was not yet known!They can’t agree; the disciples can’t agree on Mahavira’s last life, on factual matters like marriage, daughter, etcetera. And they talk about his past lives!Anything that helps you to go on sleeping, postponing, appeals. “Even Mahavira had to work hard for many, many lives, so how can we become enlightened in this life? It will take many lives. So there is no need to do anything right now. We can wait! And it is not going to happen right now anyway. It will take many, many lives. Meanwhile, why not do other things? Accumulate more money, prestige, power. Do other things: eat, drink, be merry. Because this is not going to happen, this enlightenment, right now; it will take many, many lives. And meanwhile you cannot just go on sitting and waiting. One has to do something.”Sleeping people can understand a language which appeals to their sleep. We understand only that which triggers some process in our being.The Sisters of Mercy were about to be sent as missionaries out into the world of sin. Mother Superior had one last question to ask each nun before deciding which of them were best fitted for the hazardous tasks ahead.“Sister Agatha,” she asked the first. “What would you do if you were walking along a deserted street at night and a strange man approached you and made indecent advances?”“Oh, Holy Mother of God!” gasped the nun. “May all the saints forbid! Why, I would get down on my knees and pray to the Holy Virgin that my soul might be saved.”Mother Superior noted that Sister Agatha might be better suited to more domestic work.The same question was asked of Sister Agnes, who replied, “Why, I would punch him in the nose and then start running down the street as fast as I could, shouting ‘Help, help!’”Mother Superior noted Sister Agnes as one of the possible candidates for the missionary work.Next she asked Sister Theresa, who began, “Well, first I would pull his trousers down…” Mother Superior choked a little, but Sister Theresa continued. “And then I would pull my dress up, and then…”“Sister Theresa,” interrupted the senior nun. “Now what kind of an answer is that?”“Well,” said the other, “I just figure that I can run faster with my dress up than he can with his trousers down!”We understand only that which we can understand. Sleeping humanity can understand only certain things. It can hear only certain things. The other things are not heard or even if heard, they are not understood. They are misunderstood.Zen has been misunderstood very much. You will be surprised to know that even Buddhists don’t understand Zen. Many orthodox Buddhists have come to me asking why I emphasize Zen so much, because it is not the main Buddhist tradition. That is true; the main Buddhist tradition is against Zen. Zen seems to be a little outlandish, a little eccentric. For the simple reason that it brings such a totally new truth to you: instant enlightenment. Never has any other religion emphasized so much that you are capable of becoming enlightened right now. It is all up to you.If the training is efficient, enlightenment will be attained in one finger-snap.There is no path as such, but there is a certain discipline to wake you up. That is called “training.” Training has nothing to do with your character but something to do with your consciousness. Training simply means a certain space, a certain context has to be created around you in which awakening is easier than falling asleep. Just as if you want somebody to be awake, you throw cold water into his eyes. Not that you teach him to be virtuous. Not that you teach him to be nonviolent. Those things are not going to help him to be awake. But cold water, that is a totally different phenomenon; that is creating a context. Or you give him a cup of tea; that helps him to wake up. Or you tell him to jog, run, shout; that will help him to wake up more quickly.All Zen methods are like that: cold water thrown in your eyes, a hammer hit on your head. Zen is totally different from other religions. It does not give you a certain character; it certainly gives you a context.In days gone by, Ch’an master Hui Chueh of Lang Yeh mountain, had a woman disciple who called on him for instruction. The master taught her to examine into the sentence: “Take no notice.”Now, this is creating a context. The master told her to meditate on this small sentence: “Take no notice.” And it has to be meditated on in different situations, in all possible situations. It has not to be forgotten any time. It has to be remembered continuously, whatsoever happens.She followed his instruction strictly without backsliding.One day her house caught fire, but she said: “Take no notice.”Now, this is creating a context. This is real training, this is discipline. The house is on fire and she remembers the instruction: “Take no notice.” It is easy when the house is not on fire and everything is running smoothly, well. And you can sit silently in a small corner you have made in the house to meditate. You can say: “Take no notice.” It is easy, but it is not going to wake you up. It may even help you to fall asleep. But when the house is on fire it is difficult, very difficult. Your possessiveness is at stake, your life is in danger, your security is gone, your safety is gone. You may be just a beggar the next day on the street with nothing left.But the woman must have been a real disciple. She said: “Take no notice.” And not only did she say it, she took no notice. She relaxed, as if nothing was happening. The moment you can see your house on fire and can see it as if, nothing is happening, nothing happens. The house will be burned, but you will come out of that experience for the first time with clarity, with no dust on your mirror, with great insight. Everything is on fire! The whole life is on fire because we are dying every moment. Nothing is secure, nothing is safe. We only go on believing that everything is secure and safe. In this world of flux and change, where death is the ultimate end of everything, how can there be any security?If you can see your own house on fire and go on meditating silently, relaxedly, in a deep let-go: “Take no notice,” you will come out of it a totally different person, with a new consciousness, reborn.Another day, her son fell into the water and when a bystander called her, she said, “Take no notice.”Now, this is even more difficult because a house is after all a dead thing. We can make another house, money can be earned again. But your son falls into the water, is drowning… This is a more difficult situation, more attachment: your own son. And for a mother, the son is her extension; part of her, part of her soul, of her being. Still she says: “Take no notice.”She observed exactly her master’s instruction by laying down all casual thoughts.If this is possible… These are the two problems in the world: possessiveness of things and relationships with people. These are your problems too. That’s where people are asleep. Either they are possessive with things or they are in heavy relationships with people. These are the two points which keep you clouded, confused, unaware.She passed both the tests. And if you can pass these two things: if you can become aware that you possess nothing… Use everything but possess nothing, and relate with people but don’t become part of any relationship.Relating is one thing, a relationship quite another. Relating does not take you into any bondage; a relationship is a bondage. Love people, but don’t be jealous, don’t be possessive. Relate with as many people as possible, but remain free and let them also be free of you. Don’t try to dominate and don’t allow anybody to dominate you either.Use things, but remember you come into the world with empty hands and you will go from the world again with empty hands. So you cannot possess anything.If these two insights become clear and you start taking no note, all casual thoughts will disappear from your mind. And all thoughts are casual, no thought is essential. The essential is silence; thoughts are all casual. The essential surfaces when thoughts disappear. Great silence explodes in a tremendous melody. And that experience is liberating, that experience is divine.One day, as her husband lit the fire to make fritters of twisted dough, she threw into the pan full of boiling (vegetable) oil a batter which made a noise.Upon hearing the noise, she was instantly enlightened.That’s what I call… If you are ready, if the context is ready, then anything can trigger the process of enlightenment, anything. Just: Upon hearing the noise, she was instantly enlightened.Nothing special was happening, just an ordinary noise. You come across that kind of noise every day many times But if the right context is there, you are in a right space…and she was in a right space: non-possessive, unrelated to anything, to any person, non-dominating. She was in a state of liberation, just on the borderline. One step more and she would move into the world of the buddhas. And that small step can be caused by anything whatsoever.Upon hearing the noise… That noise became the last alarm, the last straw on the back of the camel.…she was instantly enlightened.Then she threw the pan of oil on the ground, clapped her hands and laughed.Why did she do that: …clapped her hands and laughed? When one becomes enlightened, laughter is almost a natural by-product. Spontaneously, it comes for the simple reason that we have been searching and searching for lives for something which was already there inside. Our whole effort was ridiculous! Our whole effort was absurd. One laughs at the great cosmic joke. One laughs at the sense of humor that God or existence must have. That we have it with us already and we are searching for it. One laughs at one’s own ridiculous efforts. Long, long journeys, pilgrimages, for something which was never lost in the first place, hence the laughter, hence the clapping.Thinking she was insane, her husband scolded her and said…And of course, anybody who is still asleep seeing somebody suddenly becoming enlightened, clapping hands and laughing, is bound to think that the person has gone insane. This breakthrough will look to the sleeping person like a breakdown. It is not a breakdown. But the sleeping person can’t help it. He can understand only according to his values, criteria.…he scolded her and said: “Why do you do this? Are you mad?”She replied: “Take no notice.”She continues. Her meditation is still there. She is following her master’s instruction to the very end. The husband is calling her mad and she says: “Take no notice.”The world will call you mad. The world has always been calling buddhas mad. “Take no notice.” It is natural; it should be accepted as a matter of course.Then she went to master Hui Chueh and asked him to verify her achievement.The master’s functions are many. First, to help you to wake up, to provoke you into an awakening; to create the situation in which sleep becomes more and more difficult and awakening becomes more and more easy. And when for the first time you are awakened, to confirm it, because it is very difficult for the person himself. The territory is so unknown. The ego is lost, all old values are gone. The old mind is no longer functioning. Everything is so new; nothing seems to be continuous with the old. There seems to be no way to judge, evaluate, be certain. One is in deep awe and wonder. One does not know what is happening, what has happened, what it is all about. One is simply at a loss.Hence the last function of the master is to confirm, to say, “Yes, this is it.”The master confirmed that she had obtained the holy fruit.Zen people call this “the holy fruit,” the fruition, the flowering: coming to the ultimate awakening, coming to the ultimate experience of yourself and existence. But remember, it can only happen in the moment. It can only happen in the instant. It can only happen now, now or never.You will ask, “Then why all these methods, trainings?” They are just to bring you back to the now. You have gone too far away in the memories and in imagination. They are not to create any cultivation. They are not for self-cultivation but for bringing you back home.Here we are using all kinds of methods and as many more people will be coming we will be devising new methods, because different people will need different methods. In the new commune we are going to have all possible methods. It has never been tried on such a scale. Every religion has a few methods, but we are going to have all the methods of all the religions of the past and of all the religions that are going to happen in the future. We are going to create a space for all kinds of people, not for any particular type. The old religions are missing in that way.For example, only a particular type of person can be helped by Mahavira’s methods. Only the type who belongs to Mahavira’s type can be helped. It is a very limited methodology. Mahavira attained the holy fruit. He taught the same method by which he attained. Jesus had his own method, Mohammed had his own method. So no religion of the past could be universal because it belonged to a certain type and only that type could be benefited by it.Hence one problem has arisen. You may be born in a Jaina family and you may not be of the same type as the Jaina method can help. Then you are in difficulty. Your whole life will be a wastage. You will try the method. It won’t suit you and you will not change your method. You will think it is because of your past karmas that the method is not working, that it will take time. You will rationalize. You may be born in a Hindu family and Hindu methods may not work.There are so many types of people in the world. And as the world has grown and people’s consciousnesses have grown, more and more new types. More and more crossbreeds have come into existence which were never there before, which never existed in Mahavira’s time, which never existed in Krishna’s time. There are many new types, crossbreeds. And in the future this is going to happen more and more. The world is becoming a small village.My effort is to use all the methods of the past, to make them up-to-date; to make them contemporary and to create new methods for the future, for the future of humanity. Hence what I am teaching is neither Hinduism nor Buddhism nor Christianity. And yet I am teaching the essence of all the religions.You are here not to cultivate a certain spiritual ego but to dissolve all the ego, to dissolve all sleep. You are here to wake up. The situation is being created. Use this situation as totally as possible.Remember this woman who was meditating on: “Take no notice.” Such totality is needed. The house is on fire and she says: “Take no notice.” Her son falls into the water and she says: “Take no notice.” Her husband calls her mad and she says: “Take no notice.” Then such a simple meditation of “taking no notice” creates the necessary milieu in which she becomes aflame, afire. Her inner being explodes. She is no longer the same old person; she is reborn. She is reborn as enlightened. She becomes a buddha.You are all buddhas. Sleeping, dreaming, but you are buddhas all the same. My function is not to make buddhas out of you, because you are already that, but just to help you remember it, to remind you.Enough for today.

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Ah This 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ah This 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/ah-this-08/

The first question:Osho,Is awareness a higher value than love?The highest peak is the culmination of all the values: truth, love, awareness, authenticity, totality. At the highest peak they are indivisible. They are separate only in the dark valleys of our unconsciousness. They are separate only when they are polluted, mixed with other things. The moment they become pure they become one; the more pure, the closer they come to each other.For example, each value exists on many planes. Each value is a ladder of many rungs. Love is lust: the lowest rung, which touches hell. And love is also prayer: the highest rung, which touches paradise. And between these two there are many planes easily discernible.In lust, love is only one percent. In ninety-nine percent there are other things: jealousies, ego trips, possessiveness, anger, sexuality. It is more physical, more chemical. It has nothing deeper than that. It is very superficial, not even skin-deep.As you go higher, things become deeper. They start having new dimensions. That which was only physiological starts having a psychological dimension to it. That which was nothing but biology starts becoming psychology. We share biology with all the animals. We don’t share psychology with all the animals.When love goes still higher, or deeper which is the same, then it starts having something of the spiritual in it. It becomes metaphysical. Only Buddhas, Krishnas, Christs, know that quality of love.Love is spread all the way and so are other values. When love is one hundred percent pure you cannot make any distinction between love and awareness. Then they are no longer two. You cannot make any distinction between love and God; even they are no longer two. Hence Jesus’ statement that God is love. He makes them synonymous. There is great insight in it.On the periphery everything appears separate from everything else; on the periphery existence is many. As you come closer to the center, the manyness starts melting, dissolving, and oneness starts arising. At the center, everything is one.Hence your question is right only if you don’t understand the highest quality of love and awareness. It is absolutely irrelevant if you have any glimpse of the Everest, of the highest peak.You ask, “Is awareness a higher value than love?” There is nothing higher and nothing lower. In fact, there are not two values at all. These are the two paths from the valley leading to the peak. One path is of awareness, meditation. The path of Zen, we have been talking about these days. And the other is the path of love, the path of the devotees, the bhaktas, the Sufis. These two paths are separate when you start the journey; you have to choose. Whichever you choose is going to lead to the same peak. And as you come closer to the peak you will be surprised. The travelers on the other path are coming closer to you. Slowly, slowly, the paths start merging into each other. By the time you have reached the ultimate, they are one.The person who follows the path of awareness finds love as a consequence of his awareness, as a by-product, as a shadow. And the person who follows the path of love finds awareness as a consequence, as a by-product, as a shadow of love. They are two sides of the same coin.And remember, if your awareness lacks love then it is still impure. It has not yet known one hundred percent purity. It is not yet really awareness, it must be mixed with unawareness. It is not pure light. There must be pockets of darkness inside you still working, functioning, influencing you, dominating you. If your love is without awareness, then it is not love yet. It must be something lower, something closer to lust than to prayer.So let love be a criterion if you follow the path of awareness. Let love be the criterion: when your awareness suddenly blooms into love, know perfectly well that awareness has happened. Samadhi has been achieved. If you follow the path of love, then let awareness function as a criterion, as a touchstone. When suddenly, from nowhere, at the very center of your love a flame of awareness starts arising, know perfectly well…rejoice! You have come home.The second question:Osho,Why isn't knowledge of the scriptures helpful in finding the truth?Knowledge is not yours, that is why. It is borrowed. And can you borrow truth? Truth is untransferable. Nobody can give it to you. Not even an alive master can transmit it to you. You can learn, but it cannot be taught. So what to say about dead scriptures, howsoever holy they may be? They must have come from some original source. Some master, someone awakened must have been at the very source of them, but now they are only words. They are only words about truth, information about truth.To be with Krishna is a totally different matter from reading the Bhagavadgita. To be with Mohammed, attuned, in deep harmony, overlapping with his being; allowing his being to stir and move your heart, is one thing. And just to read the Koran is a far, faraway cry. It is an echo in the mountains. It is not the truth itself. It is a reflection, a full moon reflected in the lake. If you jump into the lake you are not going to get to the moon. In fact, if you jump into the lake even the reflection will disappear. Scriptures are only mirrors reflecting faraway truths.Now the Vedas have existed for at least five thousand years. They reflect something five thousand years old. Much dust has gathered on the mirror. Much interpretation, commentary, that’s what I mean by dust. Now you cannot know exactly what the Vedas say. You know only the commentators, the interpreters, and they are thousands. There is a thick wall of commentaries and it is impossible to just put it aside. You will know only about truth. And not only that, you will know commentaries and interpretations of people who have not experienced at all.Knowledge is imparted for other purposes. Yes, there is a possibility of imparting knowledge about the world because the world is outside you, it is objective. Science is knowledge. The very word science means knowledge. But religion is not knowledge.Religion is experience, for the simple reason that its whole concern is your interiority: your subjectivity, which is available only to you and to nobody else. You cannot invite even your beloved into your inner being. There, you are utterly alone. And there resides the truth.Knowledge will go on enhancing, decorating, enriching your memory, but not your being. Your being is a totally different phenomenon. In fact, knowledge will create barriers. One has to unlearn all that one has learned. Only then does one reach the being. One has to be innocent: “Not knowing is the most intimate.” Knowing creates distance.You ask me, “Why isn’t knowledge of the scriptures helpful in finding the truth?” For the simple reason that if you accumulate knowledge you will be starting to believe in conclusions. You will already conclude what truth is without knowing it. And your conclusion will become the greatest hindrance. Truth has to be approached in utter nudity, in utter purity, in silence, in a state of innocence, child-like wonder and awe. Not knowing already, not full of the rubbish called knowledge, not full of the Vedas and the Bibles and the Korans, but utterly silent. Without any thought, without any conclusion, without knowing anything about truth. When you approach in this way, suddenly truth is revealed. And truth is revealed here and now: “Ah, this!” A great rejoicing starts happening inside you.Truth is not separate from you. It is your innermost core. So you need not to learn it from somebody else. Then, what’s the function of the masters?The function of the masters is to help you drop your knowledge, to help you unlearn, to help you toward a state of unconditioning. Your knowledge means you will be always looking through a curtain and that curtain will distort everything. And knowledge is dead. Consciousness is needed, knowing is needed, a state of seeing is needed, but not knowledge. How can you know the alive through the dead?A man stepped into a very crowded bus. After a while he took out his glass eye, threw it up in the air. Then put it back in again. Ten minutes later he again took out his glass eye, threw it up in the air. Then put it back in again. The lady next to him was horrified. “What are you doing?” she cried.“I am just trying to see if there is any room up front.”That’s what knowledge is, a glass eye. You cannot see through it. It is impossible to see through it.Drop all your conclusions: Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan, Jaina, Jewish. Drop all knowledge that has been forced upon you. Every child has been poisoned: poisoned by knowledge, poisoned by the parents, the society, the church, the state. Every child has been distracted from his innocence, from his not-knowing. And that’s why every child, slowly, slowly becomes so burdened that he loses all joy of life, all ecstasy of being. And he becomes just like the crowd, part of the crowd.In fact, the moment a child is perfectly conditioned by you, you are very happy. You call it “religious education.” You are very happy that the child has been initiated into the religion of his parents. All that you have done is you have destroyed his capacity to know on his own. You have destroyed his authenticity. You have destroyed his very precious innocence. You have closed his doors and windows. Now he will live an encapsulated existence. He will live in his inner darkness, surrounded by all kinds of stupid theories; systems of thought, philosophies, ideologies. He will be lost in a jungle of words and he will not be able to come out of it easily.Even if he comes across a master, if he meets a buddha, then too it will take years for him to unlearn because learning becomes almost your blood, your bones, your marrow. And to go against your own knowledge seems to be going against yourself, against your tradition; against your country, against your religion. It seems as if you are a traitor, as if you are betraying. In fact, your society has betrayed you, has contaminated your soul.Every society has been doing that up to now and every society has been very successfully doing it. That’s why it is so rare to find a buddha. It is so rare to escape from the traps the society puts all around the child. And the child is so unaware. He can easily be conditioned, hypnotized. That’s what goes on and on in the temples, in the churches; in the schools, colleges, universities. They all serve the past. They don’t serve the future. Their function is to perpetuate the past, the dead past.My work here is just the opposite. I am not here to perpetuate the past, hence I am against all knowledge. I am all for learning, but learning means innocence, learning means openness, learning means receptivity. Learning means a non-egoistic approach toward reality. Learning means: “I don’t know and I am ready, ready to know.” Knowledge means: “I know already.” Knowledge is the greatest deception that society creates in people’s minds.My function is to serve the future, not the past. The past is no more, but the future is coming every moment. I want you to become innocent, seers, knowers – not knowledgeable – alert, aware not unconsciously clinging to conclusions.The third question:Osho,Why does it take so long for me to get it?Pankaja, it is because of your knowledge. Pankaja has written many books. She has been a well-known author. And here I have given her the work of cleaning. In the beginning it was very hurtful to her ego. She must have been hoping someday to get a Nobel Prize! And she has been wondering what she is doing here. Her books have been praised and appreciated and, rather than giving her some work nourishing to her ego, I have given her very ego-shattering work: cleaning the toilets of the ashram. It was difficult for her to swallow but she is a courageous soul. She swallowed it. And slowly, slowly she has become relaxed.Pankaja, it is not special to you. It takes time for everybody. And the more successful you have been in life, the more it takes for you to get it. Because your very success is nothing but a prop, a new prop for the ego and the ego is the barrier. The ego has to be shattered, uprooted totally, smashed, burned, so nothing remains of it. It is arduous work, hard work.And sometimes it looks as if the master is cruel. But the master has to be cruel because he loves you, because he has compassion for you. It may appear paradoxical in the beginning because if you have compassion, then you can’t be cruel. That is the complexity of the work. If the master is really compassionate he cannot sympathize with anything that nourishes your ego.So I have been in every way shattering Pankaja’s ego. She has been crying and weeping and freaking out, but slowly, slowly things have settled. The storm is no more and a great silence has come in.In fact, if you think of your many past lives – such a long, long sleep, such a long, long dreaming – then just being here with me for two, three years is not a long time if the silence has started permeating your being. Even if it happens in thirty years’ time it is happening soon.Many people come to me and ask, “Osho, when is my satori going to happen?” I say, “Very soon.” But remember what I mean by “very soon.” It may take thirty years, forty years, fifty years, but that is very soon. Looking at your long, long journey of darkness, if within thirty years we can create the light, it is really as fast as it can be.But things are happening far more quickly. Every situation is being created here so processes can be quickened. It is not too late Pankaja, it is too early. And I can see the change happening. The spring is not far away. The first flowers have already appeared.In fact, this was your vocation, but it took so many years of your life to reach me. What you were doing before you came to me was not really part of your heart. It was just a head trip. Hence it was not a fulfillment. Successful you could become, famous. Yes, that was possible. But it would not have been contentment. It would not have been a deep, deep joy because unless something that belongs to your heart starts growing, contentment is not possible. Fulfillment is not possible.Now you are on the right track. Now things will happen at a faster pace. Speed also is accumulative. If you have watched the spring: first only one flower blooms, and then ten flowers, then hundreds of flowers, and then thousands, and then millions…Just like that it happens in spiritual growth too. But everybody is stumbling in darkness, groping in darkness. Somebody becomes a poet not knowing whether that is his vocation, his heart’s real desire. Somebody becomes a musician not knowing whether that is going to fulfill his life. Somebody becomes a painter. People have to become something. Some earning is needed and one has to do something to prove oneself. So people go on groping and they become something.And you are fortunate Pankaja that you came to realize that what you were doing was not the real thing for you. There are many unfortunate people, after their whole lives are wasted then they recognize that they have been into something which was not their real work. They were doing somebody else’s work.I have heard about a famous surgeon, one of the world’s most famous surgeons. He was retiring. Even at the age of seventy-five his hands were as young as they had been before. He was able to do brain surgery even at the age of seventy-five. His hands were not yet shaky.Everybody was happy: his disciples, students, colleagues. And they were celebrating. But he was sad. Somebody asked him, “Why are you sad, you are the world’s most famous brain surgeon? You should be happy!”He said, “Yes, I should be happy, I also think so, but what can I do? I never wanted to be this “famous surgeon” in the first place. I wanted to be a dancer. And I am the lousiest dancer you can find. My father forced me to be a surgeon. He was right in a way because what can you get by dancing? The very idea was silly in his eyes, so he forced me to be a surgeon. I became a surgeon, I became famous. Now I am retiring, but I am sad. My whole life has gone down the drain. I never wanted to be a surgeon in the first place. So who cares whether I am famous or not? I would have loved to be just a good dancer, even if unknown, anonymous. That would have been enough.”While questioning a suspect, the police detective leafed through the man’s folder. “I see here,” he said, “that you have a string of previous arrests. Here is one for armed robbery, breaking and entering, sexual assault, sexual assault, sexual assault…”“Yes, sir,” replied the felon modestly, “it took me a little while to find out what I do best.”Pankaja, you came to me in the right time. Rejoice! Celebrate! Things have started happening. You were like a hard rock when you came; now you are becoming soft like a flower. The spring is not far away.The fourth question:Osho,Most religions have a negative attitude toward work, as if it is a punishment and a labor and not at all spiritual. Could you speak to us more about working?The buddhas have always been life-affirmative, but the religions that arose afterward have all been life-negative. This is a strange phenomenon, but there is something which has to be understood: why it happened in the first place. And it happened again and again.It seems that the moment a buddha speaks he is bound to be misunderstood. If you don’t understand him, that’s okay, but people don’t stop there. They misunderstand him because people cannot tolerate the idea that they don’t understand. It is better to misunderstand than not to understand. At least you have some kind of understanding. All the buddhas have been misunderstood, wrongly interpreted. Whatsoever they were standing for has been forgotten as soon as they were gone. And just the opposite was organized.Jesus was a lover of life, a very affirmative person, but Christianity is life-negative. The seers of the Upanishads were absolutely life-affirmative people. They loved life tremendously, but Hinduism is life-negative, Buddhism and Jainism are life-negative.Just look at the statue of Mahavira and you will see. He must have loved his body. He must have loved life and existence. He is so beautiful! It is said about Mahavira that, it is possible, never before and never again has a more beautiful person walked on the earth. But look at the Jaina munis, the Jaina monks and you will find them the ugliest. What has happened?Buddha is very life-affirmative. Of course, he does not affirm your life, because your life is not life at all. It is death in disguise. He condemns your life but he affirms the real life, the eternal life. That’s how he was misunderstood. His condemnation of your false life was taken to be condemnation of life itself. Nobody bothered that he was affirming life: real life, eternal life, divine life, the life of the awakened ones. That is true life. What life do you have? It is just a nightmarish experience. But the Buddhists, the Buddhist monks and nuns have lived against life.It is because of this misunderstanding, which seems to be inevitable. I can see it happening with me: whatsoever I say is immediately misunderstood all over the world. I really enjoy it! Strange, but somehow it seems to be natural. The moment you say something you can be sure that it is going to be misunderstood; for the simple reason that people are going to interpret it according to their minds. And their minds are fast asleep. They are hearing in their sleep; they can’t hear rightly. They can’t hear the whole thing. They hear only fragments.Even a man like P. D. Ouspensky, who lived with Gurdjieff for years, could not hear the whole teaching as it was. When he wrote his famous book In Search of the Miraculous and showed it to Gurdjieff, his master, Gurdjieff said, “It is beautiful, but it needs a subtitle: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching.”Ouspensky said, “But why, why fragments?”Gurdjieff said, “Because these are only fragments. What I have told you, you have not heard in its totality. And whatsoever you have written is beautiful…”Ouspensky was really one of the most skillful writers the world has ever known, very artistic, very logical, a superb artist with words.So Gurdjieff said, “You have written well, you have written beautifully, but these are only fragments. And the fragments cannot reveal the truth. On the contrary, they conceal it. So call it: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching. The teaching still remains unknown. You just had a few glimpses here and there and you have put all those glimpses together. You have somehow made a whole out of them, but it is not the truth. It is not the real teaching.”Ouspensky understood it. Hence the book still carries the subtitle: Fragments of an Unknown Teaching.What to say about ordinary people? Ouspensky cannot be called an ordinary person; he was extraordinarily intelligent. If fact, it was because of him that Gurdjieff became famous in the world, otherwise nobody may have heard about him. His own writings are very difficult to understand. There are very few people in the world who have read his books. They are very difficult to read. Gurdjieff writes in such a way that he makes it in every possible way difficult for you to grasp what he is saying, what he wants to say. Sentences go on and on. By the time the sentence comes to a full stop you have forgotten the beginning! And he uses words of his own invention which exist nowhere, which nobody knows. What is the meaning of those words? No dictionary has those words. In fact, they never existed before. He invented them.And he writes in such a boring way that if you suffer from insomnia they are good, those books. You can read three or four pages at the most and you are bound to fall asleep. I have never come across a single person who has read his books from the beginning to the end.When for the first time his first book was published, All and Everything, one hundred pages were open and the remaining nine hundred pages were not cut yet. And the book was sold with a note saying, “Read the first hundred pages, the introductory part. If you still feel like reading, then you can open the other pages. Otherwise return the book and take your money back.” Even to read those hundred pages is very difficult.It was a device. It needs great awareness to read: the book is not written to inform you about something. The book is only a device to make you aware. You can read it only if you are very conscious, if you have decided consciously, “I have to go through it from the beginning to the end and I am not going to fall asleep. And I am not going to stop whatsoever happens. And whatsoever my mind says I am going to finish it.”If you make that decision… And it is very difficult to keep it for one thousand pages of such nonsense. Yes, here and there, there are beautiful truths, but you will come across those truths only if you go through much nonsense. You will find gems, but they are few and far between. Once in a while you will come across a diamond, but for that you will have to read fifty, sixty very boring pages.I have seen thousands of books but Gurdjieff is extraordinary. I have seen nobody else who can create such boring stuff. But he is deliberately doing it. That was his method.If you went to see him, the first thing he would tell you was to read fifty pages of his book loudly in front of him. That was the greatest task! You don’t understand a single word, you don’t understand a single sentence, and it goes on and on, and he sits there looking at you. You have to finish fifty pages then you can be accepted as a disciple. If you cannot do this, this simple feat, then you are rejected.Ouspensky made him famous in the world. But even Ouspensky could not get to the very core of his teaching, only fragments. He understood only in part. And remember always, truth cannot be divided into fragments. You cannot understand only parts of it. Either you understand the whole of it or you don’t understand it at all.It is very difficult to recognize the fact that you don’t understand. And knowledgeable people: scholars, professors, cannot accept that they don’t understand, so they go on misinterpreting. And the most fatal misinterpretation has been that all affirmative teachings have been turned into negative ones. In fact, you live in a negative darkness. When Buddha speaks, he speaks from a positive state of light. By the time his words reach you they have reached into a negative darkness. Your negative darkness changes the color of those words, the meaning of those words; the connotations of those words, the nuances of those words. And then you create the church. You create Christianity, Hinduism, Mohammedanism, Jainism; you create all kinds of “isms” and you create all kinds of religions.Yes, most religions have a negative attitude toward work because they are against life. Hence they can’t be for work. They can’t be creative. They teach renunciation of life – how can they teach creativity? And they teach that life is a punishment, so how can they say life is spiritual? You are being punished for your past-life karmas, that’s why you are born. It is a punishment. Just as in Soviet Russia, if you are punished you are sent to Siberia.In the days of the British Raj in India, if somebody was to be really punished they used to send him to a faraway island: Andaman, Nicobar. The climate is bad, not healthy at all; no facilities to live, nothing grows, hard work. That was punishment.All these life-negative religions have been telling you, directly or indirectly, that this earth is like Andaman, Nicobar, or like Siberia and you are prisoners. You have been thrown here, thrown into life, to be punished. This is utter nonsense.Life is not a prison. It is a school. You are sent here to learn. You are sent here to grow. You are sent here to become more conscious, more aware. This earth is a great device of God.This is my approach toward life. Life is not a punishment but a reward. You are rewarded by being given a great opportunity to grow, to see, to know, to understand, to be. I call life, spiritual. In fact, to me, life and God are synonymous.The fifth question:Osho,Why do Indians think they are more spiritual than others?Please forgive the poor Indians. They don’t have anything else to brag about. You can brag about other things: money, power, atomic or hydrogen bombs, airplanes; that you have walked on the moon; that you have penetrated the very secrets of life, your science, technology. You can brag about your affluence. Poor India has nothing else to brag about. It can only brag about something invisible so there is no need to prove it. Spirituality is such a thing, you can brag about it and nobody can prove it, nobody can disprove it.For thousands of years India has suffered starvation, poverty, so much so that it has to rationalize it. It has rationalized it as if to be poor is something spiritual. The Indian spiritual man renounces all comforts and becomes poor. When he becomes poor, only then do Indians recognize him as spiritual. If he does not become poor, how can he be spiritual?Poverty has become the very foundation of Indian spirituality. The poorer you are, the more spiritual you are. Even if you are unhealthy, that is good for being spiritual. That shows your antagonism toward the body. Torture your body, fast, don’t eat, don’t fulfill the needs of the body and you are doing some spiritual work.So you will look at Indian so-called spiritual saints and many of them will look physically ill, in deep suffering, in self-torture. Their faces are pale because of fasting. But if you ask their disciples they will say, “Look, what a golden aura around the face of our saint!” I know such people: just a feverish aura around their faces, nothing else! But their disciples will say, “A golden aura: this is spirituality!”Count Keyserling writes in his diary that when he came to India he understood for the first time that poverty, starvation, ill health are necessary requirements for spirituality. These are rationalizations. And everybody wants to be higher than the other, superior to the other.Now, there is no other way for Indians to declare their superiority. They cannot compete in science, in technology, in industry, but they can compete in spirituality. They are more able to fast, to starve themselves. For thousands of years they have practiced starvation. So they have become very, very accustomed to it. It is easy for them.For an American to go on a fast is very difficult. Eating five times a day means almost the whole day you are eating. And I am not counting things that you eat in between. For an American it is difficult to fast, but for the Indian it has become almost natural. His body has become accustomed to it. The body has a tremendous capacity to adjust itself.The Indian can sit in the hot sun, almost in a state of fire from the showering of the sun, undisturbed. You cannot sit there. You have become accustomed to air conditioning. The Indian can sit in the cold weather, naked in the Himalayas. You cannot. You have become accustomed to central heating. The body becomes accustomed.And then India can claim “This is spirituality. Come and compete with us!” And you cannot compete. And certainly, when you cannot compete, you have to bow down to the Indians and you have to accept that they must have some clue. There is no clue, nothing, just a long, long history of poverty.In a cannibal village in the heart of Africa, the wife of the chief headhunter went to the local butcher’s shop in search of a choice rib for her husband’s dinner. Inspecting the goods, she asked the butcher, “What is that one?”The butcher replied, “That is an American, seventy cents a pound.”“Well, then what about that one?” asked the woman.The butcher replied, “That is an Italian, ninety-five cents a pound. He is a little spicy.”“And,” asked the woman, “what about that one there in the corner?”“He is an Indian,’’ replied the butcher, “two dollars a pound.”The woman gasped, “Two dollars a pound? What makes him so expensive?”“Well, lady,” the butcher replied, “have you ever tried cleaning an Indian?”But that has become spirituality. Do you know, Jaina monks never take a bath? To take a bath is thought to be a luxury. They don’t clean their teeth. That is thought to be a luxury. Now, to be spiritual in the Jaina sense of the term you have to stop taking a bath, cleaning your teeth, even combing your hair, even cutting your hair. If it becomes too messy, too dirty, you have to pull it out by hand. You can’t use any razor or any other mechanical device because a spiritual person should be independent of all machines. So Jaina monks pull their own hair out. And when a Jaina monk pulls his hair out, mostly once a year, then a great gathering happens because it is thought to be something very special.I have been to such gatherings. Thousands of Jainas gather together simply to see this poor man, hungry, dirty, pulling his hair out. Crazy! And you will see people watching with great joy and with great superiority: “This is our saint! Who else can compete with us?”No nation is spiritual. It has not happened yet. One can hope that it happens someday, but it has not happened yet. In fact, only individuals can be spiritual, not nations; and individuals have been spiritual all over the world, everywhere. But ignorance prevents people from recognizing others’ spirituality.One day I was talking to an Indian and I told him that everywhere spirituality has been happening. It is nothing to do with India as such.He said, “But so many saints have happened here. Where else have so many saints happened?”I said, “Do you know how many saints have happened in China? Just tell me a few names.” He had not even heard of a single name.He does not know anything about Lao Tzu, he does not know about Chuang Tzu, he does not know about Lieh Tzu.He does not know anything of the long, long tradition of Chinese mysticism. But he knows about Nanak, Kabir, Mahavira, Krishna, Buddha. So he thinks all the great saints have happened only in India. That is sheer stupidity. They have happened in Japan. They have happened in Egypt. They have happened in Jerusalem. They have happened everywhere! But you don’t know and you don’t want to know either. You simply remain confined to your own sect.In fact, you may have lived in the neighborhood of the Jainas your whole life but you cannot tell the twenty-four names of their great tirthankaras. Who bothers to know about the others? Only one name, Mahavira is known. The twenty-three other names are almost unknown. Even Jainas themselves cannot say the twenty-four names in exact sequence. They know three names: the first Adinatha, the last Mahavira and the one before Mahavira, a cousin-brother of Krishna, Neminatha. These three are known. The remaining twenty-one are almost unknown even to the Jainas. And this is how it is.Do you know how many Hasid mystics have attained God? Do you know how many Zen masters have attained buddhahood? Do you know how many Sufis have attained the ultimate state? Nobody cares, nobody wants to know. People live in a small, cozy corner of their own religion and they think this is all.Neither Indians nor anybody else are especially spiritual or holy. Spirituality is something that happens to individuals. It is the individual becoming aflame with God. It has nothing to do with any collectivity: nation, race, church.The sixth question:Osho,Why are the Jews so notorious for their greed for money?Do you think others are in any way different from the Jews? Unless love flowers in your being, you are bound to remain greedy. Greed is the absence of love. If you love, greed disappears. If you don’t love, greed remains.Greed is rooted in fear. And of course, the Jews have lived in tremendous fear for centuries. For the two thousand years since Jesus they have lived in constant fear. Fear creates greed. Because they lost their nation, they lost everything; they became uprooted, they became wanderers. The only thing they could trust was money. They could not trust anything else. Hence, naturally, they became greedy. Don’t be too hard on them for that. They are greedy, maybe a little more than others, but that is only a difference of quantity, not of quality.In India we have Marwaris, who are the Indian Jews. The Jainas are no less greedy – and others too! Maybe they are not so notorious. The Jews become notorious because whatsoever they do, they do with a flavor. Whatsoever they do, they do without any disguise. They are not very deceptive people, intelligent but not deceptive. Whatsoever they want to do, they do it directly. And they are very earthly people. That is one of the qualities I appreciate. The earth is our home and we have to be earthly.A real spirituality must be rooted in earthliness. Any spirituality that denies the earth, rejects the earth, becomes abstract, becomes airy-fairy. It no longer has any blood in it. It is no longer alive. Yes, the Jews are very earthbound.And what is wrong in having money? One should not be possessive. One should be able to use it – and the Jews know how to use it! One should not be miserly. Money has to be created and money has to be used. Money is a beautiful invention, a great blessing, if rightly used. It makes many things possible. Money is a magical phenomenon.If you have a ten-rupee note in your pocket, you have thousands of things in your pocket. You can have anything with those ten rupees. You can materialize a man who will massage your body the whole night! Or you can materialize food or you can materialize anything! That ten-rupee note carries many possibilities. You cannot carry all those possibilities with you. If there is no note, your life will be very limited. You can have a man who can massage your body, but then that is the only possibility you have. If you suddenly feel hungry or thirsty, that man cannot do anything else. But a ten-rupee note can do many things, millions of things. It has infinite possibilities. It is one of the greatest inventions of man. There is no need to be against it. I am not against it.Use it. Don’t cling to it. Clinging is bad; the more you cling to money, the poorer the world becomes because of your clinging: because money is multiplied if it is always moving from one hand to another hand.In English we have another name for money which is more significant. It is currency. That simply indicates that money should always remain moving like a current. It should always be on the move from one hand to another hand. The more it moves the better.For example, if I have a ten-rupee note and I keep it to myself, then there is only one ten-rupee note in the world. If I give it to you and you give it to somebody else and each person goes on giving, if it goes through ten hands then we have a hundred rupees. We have used a hundred rupees’ worth of utilities. The ten rupees is multiplied by ten.And the Jews know how to use money, nothing is wrong in it. Yes, greed is bad. Greed means you become obsessed with money. You don’t use it as a means, it becomes the end. That is bad. And it is bad whether you are a Jew or a Jaina, a Hindu or a Mohammedan; it doesn’t matter.Four Jewish mothers were talking, naturally of their sons.One said, “My son is studying to be a doctor, and when he graduates he will make $50,000 a year.”Said the second, “My son is studying dentistry, and when he graduates he will make $100,000 a year.”The third said, “My son is studying to be a psychoanalyst, and when he graduates he will make $200,000 a year.”The fourth one remained silent. The other ones asked her, “And what about your son?”“He is studying to become a rabbi,” she answered.“And how much does a rabbi make?”“$10,000 a year.”“$10,000? Is this a job for a Jewish boy?”Gropestein’s clothing store stood on New York’s Lower East Side. One day, Gropestein went out for lunch and left Salter, his new salesman, in charge. When he came back Salter proudly announced, “I sold that black cloth coat.”“For how much?” asked Gropestein.“Ninety-eight cents, like it said on the tag.”“Ninety-eight cents?” screamed the owner. “The tag said ninety-eight dollars, you idiot!” The clerk looked as if he would die of embarrassment.“Let this be a lesson to you,” said Gropestein. “But don’t feel bad, we made ten percent profit!”A famous anti-Semite was dying. He gathered his sons around his deathbed and said, “Sons, my last wish and command is that whenever you need anything, go buy it from a Jew and give him the first price he asks.”The sons in surprise said, “Father, has your mind gone crazy in this your last hour?”“Ah, no,” smiled the anti-Semite wickedly, “he is going to eat himself up he has not asked for more.”The seventh question:Osho,What is the future of morality concerning sex?There is no future of any morality concerning sex. In fact, the very combination of sex and morality has poisoned the whole past of morality. Morality became so sex-oriented that it lost all other dimensions which are far more important. Sex should not really be so much of a concern for moral thinking.Truth, sincerity, authenticity, totality: these things should be the real concerns of morality. Consciousness, meditation, awareness, love, compassion: these should be the real concerns of morality.But sex and morality became almost synonymous in the past. Sex became overpowering, overwhelming. So whenever you say somebody is immoral you simply mean that something is wrong with his sexual life. And when you say somebody is a very moral person, all that you mean is that he follows the rules of sexuality laid down by the society in which he lives. Morality became one-dimensional. It has not been good. There is no future for that morality; it is dying. In fact, it is dead. You are carrying a corpse.Sex should be more fun than such a serious affair as it has been made in the past. It should be like a game, a play: two persons playing with each other’s bodily energies. If they are both happy, it should be nobody else’s concern. They are not harming anybody; they are simply rejoicing in each other’s energy. It is a dance of two energies together. It should not be a concern of the society at all. Unless somebody interferes in somebody else’s life – imposes himself, forces somebody, is violent, violates somebody’s life – only then should society come in. Otherwise there is no problem. It should not be any concern at all.The future will have a totally different vision of sex. It will be more fun, more joy, more friendship. More a play than a serious affair as it has been in the past. It has destroyed people’s lives, has burdened them so much – unnecessarily! It has created so much jealousy, possessiveness, domination; nagging, quarreling, fighting, condemnation: for no reason at all.Sexuality is a simple, biological phenomenon. It should not be given so much importance. Its only significance is that the energy can be transformed into higher planes. It can become more and more spiritual. And the way to make it more spiritual is to make it a less serious affair.Doctor Biber was perplexed by the case at hand. He had given the sorority girl all sorts of tests, but his results were still inconclusive. “I am not sure what it is,” he finally admitted. “You either have a cold or you are pregnant.”“I must be pregnant,” said the girl. “I don’t know anybody who could have given me a cold.”This is something of the future.Clarice and Sheffield were having a mid-afternoon breakfast. Their Park Avenue apartment was completely askew after a wild, all-night party. “Dear, this is rather embarrassing,” said Sheffield, “but was it you I made love to in the library last night?”“About what time?” asked Clarice.Another story about the future:The schoolteacher was complaining rather bitterly to Cornelia about the behavior of little Nathaniel. “He is always picking on boys smaller than he is and beating them up,” she said.“My goodness!” said Cornelia, “That boy is just like his pappy.”“And several times I have caught him in the cloak-room with one of the little girls,” continued the teacher.“Just the sort of thing his pappy would do.”“Not only that, but he steals things from the other children.”“The very same as his pappy. Lord, I sure am glad I didn’t marry that man!”Don’t be worried about the future of morality concerning sex. It is going to disappear completely. The future will know a totally different vision of sex. And once sex no longer overwhelms morality so powerfully, morality will be free to have some other concerns which are far more important.Truth, sincerity, honesty, totality, compassion, service, meditation, these should be the real concerns of morality. Because these are things which transform your life, these are things which bring you closer to God.And the last question:Osho,Why do you speak at all if the truth is inexpressible?“Take no notice!”Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Gosa Hoyen used to say, “When people ask me what Zen is like I tell them this story:Noticing that his father was growing old, the son of a burglar asked his father to teach him the trade so that he could carry on the family business after his father had retired. The father agreed, and that night they broke into a house together.Opening a large chest the father told his son to go in and pick out the clothing. As soon as the boy was inside, the father locked the chest and then made a lot of noise so that the whole house was aroused. Then he slipped quietly away.Locked inside the chest the boy was angry, terrified, and puzzled as to how he was going to get out. Then an idea flashed to him – he made a noise like a cat.The family told a maid to take a candle and examine the chest. When the lid was unlocked the boy jumped out, blew out the candle, pushed his way past the astonished maid, and ran out. The people ran after him.Noticing a well by the side of the road the boy threw in a large stone, then hid in the darkness. The pursuers gathered around the well trying to see the burglar drowning himself.When the boy got home he was very angry at his father and he tried to tell him the story. But the father said, ‘Don’t bother to tell me the details. You are here – you have learned the art.’”Being is one, the world is many, and between the two is the divided mind, the dual mind. It is just like a big tree, an ancient oak: the trunk is lone, then the tree divides into two main branches, the main bifurcation from which a thousand and one bifurcations of branches grow.The being is just like the trunk of the tree: one, non-dual. The mind is the first bifurcation where the tree divides into two, becomes dual, becomes dialectical: thesis and antithesis, man and woman, yin and yang, day and night, God and Devil, Yoga and Zen.All the dualities of the world are basically in the duality of the mind, and below the duality is oneness of being. If you slip below, underneath the duality, you will find one – call it God, call it nirvana or whatsoever you like. If you go higher through the duality, you come to the many millionfold world.This is one of the most basic insights to be understood: that mind is not one. Hence whatsoever you see through the mind becomes two. It is just like a white ray entering a prism: it is immediately divided into seven colors and the rainbow is created. Before it entered the prism it was one; through the prism it is divided and the white color disappears into seven colors of the rainbow.The world is a rainbow, the mind is a prism, and the being is the white ray.Modern research has come to a very significant fact, one of the most significant achieved in this century, and that is that you don’t have one mind, you have two minds. Your brain is divided into two hemispheres: the right hemisphere and the left hemisphere. The right hemisphere is joined with the left hand, and the left hemisphere is joined with the right hand – crosswise. The right hemisphere is intuitive, illogical, irrational, poetic, platonic, imaginative, romantic, mythical, religious; the left hemisphere is logical, rational, mathematical, Aristotelian, scientific, calculative. These two hemispheres are constantly in conflict. The basic politics of the world is within you, the greatest politics of the world is within you. You may not be aware of it but once you become aware, the real thing to be done is somewhere between these two minds.The left hand is concerned with the right hemisphere that is intuition, imagination, myth, poetry, religion. The left hand is very much condemned. The society is of those who are right-handed; right-handed means left hemisphere. Ten percent of children are born left-handed but they are forced to be right-handed. Children who are born left-handed are basically irrational, intuitive, non-mathematical, non-Euclidian. They are dangerous to the society; the society forces them in every way to become right-handed. It is not just a question of hands, it is a question of inner politics: the left-handed child functions through the right hemisphere. That, society cannot allow, it is dangerous; he has to be stopped before things go too far.It is suspected that in the beginning the proportion must have been fifty-fifty: left-handed children fifty percent and right-handed children fifty percent. But the right-handed party has ruled so long that by and by the proportion has fallen to ten percent and ninety percent. Even among you here, many will be left-handed but you may not be aware of it. You may be writing with the right hand and do your work with the right hand, but in your childhood you may have been forced to be right-handed. This is a trick because once you become right-handed, your left hemisphere starts functioning. The left hemisphere is reason, the right hemisphere is beyond reason. Its functioning is not mathematical – it functions in flashes, it is intuitive, very graceful, but irrational.The left-handed minority is the most oppressed minority in the world, even more than the Negroes, even more than the poor people. Now if you understand this division you can understand many things. The bourgeoisie and the proletariat: the proletariat is always functioning through the right hemisphere of the brain; poor people are more intuitive. Go to primitive people – they are more intuitive. The poorer the person, the less intellectual. And that may be the cause of his being poor. Because he is less intellectual he cannot compete in the world of reason: he is less articulate as far as language is concerned, reason is concerned, calculation is concerned; he is almost a fool. That may be the cause of his being poor.And the rich person is functioning through the left hemisphere of the brain: he is more calculative, arithmetical in everything; cunning, clever, logical, planning. That may be the reason why he is rich.Now the proletariat and the bourgeoisie cannot disappear through communist revolutions, no, because the communist revolution is by the same kind of people. The czar ruled Russia; he ruled it through the left hemisphere of the mind. Then he was replaced by Lenin who is again of the same type. Then Lenin is replaced by Stalin who is even more the same type. The revolution is false because deep down the same type of people are ruling: the ruler and the ruled remain the same; the ruled are of the right-sided hemisphere. So whatsoever you do in the outside world makes no difference really; it is superficial.The same applies to men and women. Women are right-hemisphere people, men are left-hemisphere people. Men have ruled women for centuries. Now a few women are revolting, but the amazing thing is that these are the same type of women. In fact they are just like men: rational, argumentative, Aristotelian.It is possible that one day, just as the communist revolution has succeeded in Russia and China, one day somewhere – maybe in America – women can succeed and overthrow men. But by the time women succeed, the women will no longer be women; by that time they will have become left-hemisphered – because to fight one has to be calculative, and to fight with men you have to be like men, aggressive.That very aggressiveness is shown all over the world in women’s liberation. Women who have become part of that liberation movement are very aggressive; they are losing all grace, all that comes out of intuition – because if you have to fight with men you have to learn the same trick, if you have to fight with men you have to fight with the same techniques. Fighting with anybody is very dangerous because you become like your enemy.That is one of the greatest problems of human history. Once you fight with somebody, by and by you have to use the same technique and the same way. The enemy may be defeated, but by the time he is defeated you have become your own enemy. Stalin is more czar-like than any czar, more violent than any czar. Of course, it has to be so: to overthrow czars, very violent people are needed, more violent than the czar himself. Only they will become the revolutionaries, only they will come out on top. By the time they reach there, they have become czars themselves, and society continues in the same way. Just superficial things change; deep down the same conflict remains.The conflict is in man. Unless it is resolved there, it cannot be resolved anywhere else. The politics is within you, it is between your two parts of the mind. A very small bridge exists. If that bridge is broken through some accident, through some physiological defect or something else, the person becomes split, the person becomes two persons and the phenomenon of schizophrenia or split personality happens. If the bridge is broken – and the bridge is very fragile – then you become two, you behave like two persons. In the morning you are very loving, very beautiful, in the evening you are very angry, absolutely different. And you don’t remember your morning – how can you remember? – another mind was functioning and the person becomes two persons. If this bridge is strengthened so much that the two minds disappear as two and become one, then integration, then crystallization arises.What George Gurdjieff used to call the crystallization of being is nothing but these two minds becoming one, the meeting of the male and the female within, the meeting of yin and yang, the meeting of the left and right, the meeting of logic and illogic, the meeting of Plato and Aristotle.If you can understand this basic bifurcation in your tree of life then you can understand all the conflict that goes on around you and inside you.Let me tell you an anecdote:Among the Germans, Berlin is considered to be the very epitome of Prussian brusqueness and efficiency, while Vienna is the essence of Austrian charm and slipshoddiness.There is the tale of a Berliner visiting Vienna who was lost and in need of directions. What would such a Berliner do? He grabbed at the lapel of the first passing Viennese and barked out, “The Post Office, where is it?”The startled Viennese carefully detached the other’s fist, smoothed his lapel and said in a gentle manner, “Sir, would it not have been more delicate of you to have approached me politely and to have said, ‘Sir, if you have a moment and happen to know, could you please direct me to the Post Office?’”The Berliner stared in astonishment for a moment, then growled, “I would rather be lost!” and stomped away.That very same Viennese was visiting Berlin later that year and it turned out that now it was he who had to search for the Post Office. Approaching a Berliner he said politely, “Sir, if you have a moment and happen to know, could you please direct me to the Post Office?”With machinelike rapidity the Berliner replied, “About face, two blocks forward, sharp turn right, one block forward, cross a street, half turn on the right, walk left over railroad tracks, pass newsstand into Post Office lobby.”The Viennese, more bewildered than enlightened, nevertheless murmured, “A thousand thanks, kind sir,” whereupon the Berliner snatched furiously at the other’s lapel and shouted, “Never mind the thanks, repeat the instructions!”The male mind, the Berliner; the female mind, the Viennese… The female mind has a grace, the male mind has efficiency. And of course, in the long run, if there is a constant fight, the grace is bound to be defeated. The efficient mind will win because the world understands the language of mathematics, not of love. But the moment your efficiency wins over your grace, you have lost something tremendously valuable, you have lost contact with your own being. You may become very efficient but you will no longer be a real person. You will become a machine, a robotlike thing.Because of this there is constant conflict between man and woman. They cannot remain separate; they have to get into relationship again and again. But they cannot remain together either. The fight is not outside, the fight is within you. And this is my understanding: unless you have resolved your inner fight between the left and the right hemispheres, you will never be able to be peacefully in love, never – because the inner fight will be reflected outside. If you are fighting inside and you are identified with the left hemisphere, the reason hemisphere, and continuously trying to overpower the right hemisphere, you will try to do the same with the woman you fall in love with. If the woman is continuously fighting her own reason inside, she will continuously fight the man she loves.All relationships – almost all, the exceptions are negligible, can be left out of account – become ugly. In the beginning they are beautiful. In the beginning you don’t show the reality, in the beginning you pretend. Once the relationship settles and you relax, your inner conflict bubbles up and starts being mirrored in your relationship – then fights, then a thousand and one ways of nagging each other, destroying each other. Hence the attraction for homosexuality: whenever a society has become too much – because at least a man in love with a man is not that much in conflict. The love relationship may not be very satisfying, may not lead to tremendous bliss and orgasmic moments, but at least it is not as ugly as the relationship between a man and a woman. Women become lesbians whenever the conflict becomes too much, because at least the love relationship between two women is not so deep in conflict. The same meets the same, they can understand each other.Yes, understanding is possible, but the attraction is lost, the polarity is lost. It is at a very great cost. Understanding is possible, but the whole tension, the challenge, is lost. And if you choose challenge, then conflict comes because the real problem is somewhere within you. Unless you have settled, come to a deep harmony between your female and male mind, you will not be able to love.People come to me and they ask how to go deep in a relationship. I tell them, “First, go deeply into meditation. Unless you are resolved within yourself you will create more problems than you already have. If you move in relationship all your problems will be multiplied.” Just watch. The greatest and the most beautiful thing on earth is love, but can you find anything more ugly, more hell-creating?Mulla Nasruddin once told me, “Well, I’ve been putting off the evil day for months, but I have got to go this time.”“Dentist or doctor?” I enquired.“Neither,” he said, “I am getting married.”People go on avoiding marriage, people go on putting it off. When some day they find it impossible to get out of it, only then do they relax.Where is the problem? Why are people so afraid of getting deeply involved? Involvement immediately creates fear; commitment immediately creates fear – and the modern man wants to have sex but no love.A woman told me that she wants sex only with strangers. Traveling in a train, meeting a stranger, that’s okay, but not even with someone who is friendly or familiar.I asked, “Why?”She said that once you make love to someone who is known to you, some involvement starts. In a train, on a journey, you meet, make love – you don’t know even what the other person’s name is, who he is, from where he comes. You get down when your station comes and he moves away, forgotten forever. He leaves no scratch, you remain completely clean. You come out of it completely clean and unscratched.I can understand. This is the difficulty of the whole modern mind. All relationships are becoming casual by and by. People are afraid of any sort of commitment because they have come to know at least one thing out of bitter experience: whenever you become too much related, the reality erupts and your inner conflicts start being reflected by the other. And then life becomes ugly, horrible, intolerable.It happened once: I was sitting with a few friends in a university campus ground. One of the professors said, “On the day my wedding occurred…”But the other professor stopped him immediately and said, “Pardon the correction, but affairs such as marriages, receptions, dinners, and things of that nature, take place. It is only calamities which occur. Do you see the distinction? Please don’t say, ‘The day my marriage occurred’ or ‘The day my wedding occurred.’”The other was a professor of language and of course he was right. But the first man said, “Yes, many, many things…” and again started. “…and as I was saying, the day my wedding occurred, it was a calamity.”If you are outside it, it may look like a beautiful oasis in the desert, but as you come closer the oasis starts drying and disappearing. Once you are caught in it, it is an imprisonment. But remember, the imprisonment doesn’t come from the other, it comes from within you.If the left-hemisphere brain goes on dominating you, you will live a very successful life, so successful that by the time you are forty you will have ulcers, by the time you are forty-five you will have at least one or two heart-attacks, by the time you are fifty you will be almost dead – but successfully dead. You may become a great scientist but you will never become a great being. You may accumulate enough wealth but you will lose all that is of worth. You may conquer the whole world like an Alexander but your own inner territory will remain unconquered.There are many attractions of following the left-hemisphere brain, that is the worldly brain. It is more concerned with things: cars, houses, money, power, prestige. That is the orientation of the man who in India we call a grihastha, a householder.The right-hemisphere brain is the orientation of a sannyasin, one who is more interested in his own inner being, his inner peace, his blissfulness, and is less concerned about things. If they come easily, good; if they don’t come that too is good. He is more concerned with the moment, less concerned with the future; more concerned with the poetry of life, less concerned with the arithmetic of it.I have heard an anecdote:Finkelstein had made a huge killing at the races and Muscovitz, quite understandably, was envious.“How did you do it, Finkelstein?” he demanded.“Easy,” said Finkelstein, “it was a dream.”“A dream?”“Yes. I had figured out a three-horse parlay, but I was not sure about the third horse. Then, the night before I dreamed that an angel was standing at the head of my bed and kept saying, ‘Blessings on you, Finkelstein, seven times seven blessings on you.’ When I woke up I realized that seven times seven is forty-eight and that horse number forty-eight was Heavenly Dream. I made Heavenly Dream the third horse in my parley and I just cleaned up, simply cleaned up.”Muscovitz said, “But Finkelstein, seven times seven is forty-nine!”And Finkelstein said, “So you are a mathematician!”There is a way to follow life through arithmetic, and there is another way to follow life through dreams and visions. They are totally different.Just the other day somebody asked, “Are there ghosts, fairies, and things like that?” Yes, there are – if you move through the right-hemisphere brain there are, if you move through the left-hemisphere brain there are not. All children are right-hemisphered: they see ghosts and fairies all around. But you go on talking to them and putting them in their places and saying to them, “Nonsense! You are stupid. Where is the fairy? There is nothing, just a shadow.” By and by you convince the child, the helpless child; by and by you convince him and he moves from right-hemisphered orientation to left-hemisphered orientation. He has to; he has to live in your world. He has to forget his dreams, he has to forget all myths, he has to forget all poetry – he has to learn mathematics. Of course he becomes efficient in mathematics and becomes almost crippled and paralyzed in life. Existence goes on getting farther and farther away and he becomes just a commodity in the market. His whole life becomes just rubbish, but of course, valuable in the eyes of the world.A sannyasin is one who lives through the imagination, who lives through the dreaming quality of his mind, who lives through poetry, who poeticizes about life, who looks through visions. Then trees are greener than they look to you, then birds are more beautiful, then everything takes a luminous quality. Ordinary pebbles become diamonds, ordinary rocks are no longer ordinary – nothing is ordinary. If you look from the right hemisphere, everything becomes divine, sacred. Religion is from the right hemisphere.A man was sitting with his friend in a cafeteria drinking tea. He studied his cup and said with a sigh, “Ah, my friend, life is like a cup of tea.”The other considered that for a moment and then said, “But why? Why is life like a cup of tea?”The first man replied, “How should I know? Am I a philosopher?”The right-hemisphere brain only makes statements about facts, it cannot give you reasons. If you ask, “Why?” it can only remain silent, there comes no response from it. If you are walking and you see a lotus flower and you say, “Beautiful!” and somebody says, “Why?” what will you do? You will say, “How am I to know? Am I a philosopher?” It is a simple statement, a very simple statement, in itself total, complete. There is no reason behind it and no result beyond it; it is a simple statement of fact.Read the Upanishads – they are simple statements of facts. They say, “Godliness is.” Don’t ask why, or they will say, “Are we philosophers? How are we to know? Godliness is.” They say godliness is beautiful, they say godliness is near, closer than your heart – but don’t ask why, they are not philosophers.Look at the gospels and the statements of Jesus: they are simple. He says, “My God is in heaven. I am his son, he is my father. Don’t ask why.” He will not be able to prove it in a court, he will simply say, “I know.” If you ask him by whom he has been told, by what authority he says these things, he will say, “It is by my own authority. I have no other authority.” That is the problem when a man like Jesus moves in the world: the rational mind cannot understand. He was not crucified for any other reason – he was crucified by the left hemisphere because he was a right-hemisphere man. He was crucified because of the inner conflict.Lao Tzu says, “The whole world seems to be clever, only I am muddle-headed. The whole world seems to be certain, only I am confused and hesitant.” He is a right-hemisphered man.The right hemisphere is the hemisphere of poetry and love. A great shift is needed and that shift is the inner transformation. Yoga is an effort to reach the oneness of being through the left hemisphere, using logic, mathematics, science and trying to go beyond. Zen is just the opposite: the aim is the same but Zen uses the right hemisphere to go beyond. Both can be used, but to follow Yoga is a very, very long path. It is almost an unnecessary struggle because you are trying to reach from reason to super-reason, which is more difficult. Zen is easier because it is an effort to reach super-reason from irreason. Irreason is almost like super-reason – there are no barriers. Yoga is like penetrating a wall. And Zen is like opening a door – the door may not be closed at all, you just push it a little and it opens.Now the story… It is one of the most beautiful among Zen anecdotes. Zen people talk through stories. They have to talk through stories because they cannot create theories and doctrines, they can only tell stories. They are great storytellers. Jesus goes on talking in parables, Buddha goes on talking in parables, Sufi mystics go on talking in parables – it is not coincidental. The story, the parable, the anecdote, is the way of the right hemisphere. Logic, argument, proof, syllogism, is the way of the left hemisphere.Listen to it…Gosa Hoyen used to say, “When people ask me what Zen is likeI tell them this story…”This story really tells what Zen is like without defining. It indicates. A definition is not possible because Zen, in its basic quality, is indefinable. You can taste it but you cannot define it, you can live it but language is not sufficient to say it, you can show it but you cannot say it. But through a story the quality can be transferred a little bit. And this story really indicates perfectly the quality of what Zen is like. This is just a gesture. Don’t make it a definition, don’t philosophize around it. Let it be like lightning – a flash of understanding. It is not going to increase your knowledge but it can give you a shift, a jerk, a change of gestalt. You can be thrown from one corner of the mind to another – and that is the whole point of the story.Noticing that his father was growing old, the son of a burglar asked his father to teach him the trade so that he could carry on the family business after his father had retired.Now the trade of a burglar is not a scientific thing, it is an art. Burglars are as much born as poets; you cannot learn, learning won’t help. If you learn you will be caught – because then the police know more than you, they have accumulated centuries of learning. A burglar is a born burglar: he lives through intuition – it is a knack – he lives through hunches. A burglar is feminine; he is not a businessman, he is a gambler. He risks all for almost nothing; his whole trade is of danger and risk.It is just like a religious man. Zen people say that religious people are also like burglars: in search of truth, they are also burglars. There is no way to reach truth through logic or reason or accepted society, culture, civilization. They break the wall somewhere, they enter from the back door. If in the daylight it is not allowed, they enter in the dark. If it is not possible to follow the crowd on the superhighway, they make their own individual paths in the forest. Yes, there is a certain similarity. You can reach truth only if you are a burglar – an artist of how to steal the fire, how to steal the treasure.The father was going to retire and the son asked, “Before you retire, teach me your trade.”The father agreed, and that night they broke into a house together.Opening a large chest the father told his son to go in and pick out the clothing.As soon as the boy was inside, the father locked the chest and then made a lot of noise so that the whole house was aroused. Then he slipped quietly away.He must have been a real master, no ordinary burglar.Locked inside the chest the boy was angry, terrified, and puzzled…Of course, naturally! What type of teaching was this? He had been thrown into a dangerous situation. But that is the only way to teach something of the unknown, that is the only way to teach something of the right-hemisphere brain. The left hemisphere can be taught in schools: learning is possible, discipline is possible, gradual courses are possible. Then by and by, moving from one class to another, you become masters of art and science and so many things. But there cannot be any schools for the right hemisphere: it is intuitive; it is not gradual, it is sudden. It is like a flash, a lightning in the dark night. If it happens, it happens, if it doesn’t happen, it doesn’t happen – nothing can be done about it. You can only leave yourself in a certain situation where there is more possibility for it to happen. That’s why I say the old man must have been a real master.Locked inside the chest the boy was angry, terrified, and puzzled… These are the three states your reason will pass through. In all my meditations the same is being done to you. Locked in a chest, with the key thrown away, first you feel angry. Many sannyasins come to me and they say they feel very angry with me. I can understand; it is natural: I am forcing them into situations where their old mind cannot function. That is the root cause of anger. They simply feel impotent, their old mind cannot function, they cannot make anything out of it: “What is happening?” And when you feel a situation where your mind is simply useless, you feel angry against me, angry and then terrified. Then one understands the whole situation and all that you have learned seems simply useless; hence fear.Now there was no logical way to get out of that chest: it was locked from the outside, the father had made a noise and the whole house was awake, people were moving around, searching, and the father had escaped. Now is there any logical way to get out of this chest? Logic simply fails, reason is of no use. What can you think? Mind suddenly stops – and that is what the father is doing, that is what it is all about. He is trying to force the son into such a situation where the logical mind stops because a burglar does not need a logical mind. If he follows a logical mind he will be caught sooner or later by the police because they also follow the same logic.It happened in the Second World War…For three years Adolf Hitler continued to win, and the reason was that he was illogical. All the other countries that were fighting with him were fighting logically. Of course, they had a great science of war, military training, this and that, and they had experts who would say, “Now, Hitler is going to attack from this side.” And if Hitler was also in his senses he would have done that because that was the weakest point in the enemy’s defense. Of course the enemy has to be attacked where he is the weakest, it is logical. So they were expecting Hitler at the weakest point, they were gathering around the weakest point and he would hit anywhere, unpredictably. He would not even follow his own generals’ advice.He had an astrologer who would suggest where to attack. Now this is something never done before: a war is not run by astrologers. Once Churchill understood, once the spies came with the report that they were not going to win with this man because he was absolutely illogical, that a foolish astrologer who didn’t know anything about war, who had never been on the front, was deciding things and deciding by the stars – what have stars got to do with a war going on, on the earth?So Churchill immediately appointed a royal astrologer to the king and they started following the royal astrologer. Then things started falling in line because now two fools were predicting. Things became easier.If a burglar is going to follow Aristotle he will be caught sooner or later because the same Aristotelian logic is followed by the police.Just a few days ago, Vedanta did a beautiful thing: he escaped with the ashram jeep. Of course the police had to be informed. Everybody was expecting that he would go toward Chanda because he had been saying that he wanted to reopen an old ashram which used to be there – Kailash. Had he gone toward there the police might not have followed him, but the police were thinking logically and they said, “If he had been saying that he was going toward Chanda he will not go to Chanda now because he will be afraid he will be caught on that road. He is not going there.” So they were not worried about that road and, of course, Vedanta was caught in Lonavala. He was going toward Mumbai, but the police also followed the same logic.If you go through logic, then anybody who follows the logical method can catch you anywhere. A burglar has to be unpredictable, logic is not possible. He has to be illogical, so much so that nobody can predict him. But illogic is possible only if your whole energy moves through the right hemisphere.Locked inside the chest the boy was angry, terrified, and puzzled as to how he was going to get out.“How?” is a logical question, hence he was terrified because there was no way, the “how” was simply impotent. Then an idea flashed to him. Now this is a shift: only in dangerous situations where the left hemisphere cannot function does it allow the right hemisphere to have its say as a last resort. When it cannot function, when it feels that now there is no go, now it is defeated, then: “Why not give a chance to the oppressed, to the imprisoned part of the mind? Give that too a chance. Maybe… And there can be no harm!”Suddenly…Then an idea flashed to him – he made a noise like a cat.Now this is not logical. Making a noise like a cat is simply an absurd idea. But it worked.The family told a maid to take a candle and examine the chest.When the lid was unlocked the boy jumped out, blew out the candle, pushed his way past the astonished maid, and ran out. The people ran after him.Noticing a well by the side of the road the boy threw in a large stone, then hid in the darkness. The pursuers gathered around the well trying to see the burglar drowning himself.This too is not of the logical mind because the logical mind needs time. The logical mind needs time to proceed, to think, to argue this way and that, all the alternatives – and there are a thousand and one alternatives. When you are in a situation where there is no time to think, if people are pursuing you, how can you think? Thinking is good when you are sitting in an armchair. With your closed eyes you can philosophize and think and argue, for this and against that, pros and cons, but when people are pursuing you and your life is in danger you have no time to think – one lives in the moment, one simply becomes spontaneous.It is not that he decided to throw the stone, it simply happened. It was not a conclusion, he was not thinking about doing it, he simply found himself doing it. He threw a stone in the well and hid himself in the darkness. The pursuers stopped, thinking the burglar had drowned himself in the well.When the boy got home he was very angry at his father and he tried to tell him the story. But the father said, ‘Don’t bother to tell me the details. You are here – you have learned the art.’What is the point of telling the details? They are useless. Details are useless as far as intuition is concerned because intuition is never a repetition. Details are meaningful as far as logic is concerned. So logical people go on into minute details so that if again the same situation happens they will be in control and they will know what to do.But in the life of a burglar the same situation never happens again. And also in real life the same situation never happens again. If you have conclusions in your mind you will become almost dead, you will not be responding. In life, response, not reaction is needed: you have to act out of nowhere, with no conclusions inside. With no center you have to act; you have to act into the unknown from the unknown.And this is what Goso Hoyen used to say when people asked him what Zen is like. He would tell this story.Zen is exactly like burglary. It is an art; it is not a science. It is feminine; it is not male, it is not aggressive. It is receptive; it is not a well-planned methodology, but a spontaneity. It has nothing to do with theories, hypotheses, doctrines, scriptures – it has to do with only one thing, and that is awareness.What happened in that moment when the boy was inside the chest? In such a danger you cannot be sleepy. In such a danger your consciousness becomes very sharp. It has to: life is at stake, you are totally awake. That’s how one should be totally awake each moment. And when you are totally awake, this shift happens: from the left hemisphere the energy moves to the right hemisphere. Whenever you are alert you become intuitive; flashes come to you, flashes from the unknown, out of the blue. You may not follow them, but then you will miss much.In fact all the great discoveries in science also come from the right hemisphere, not from the left. You must have heard about Madame Curie, the only woman who got a Nobel Prize…She had been working hard for three years on a certain mathematical problem but could not solve it. She worked hard, argued from this way and that, but there was no way.One night, tired, exhausted, she fell asleep; while she was falling asleep then too she was trying to solve the problem. In the night she awoke, walked, wrote the answer on some paper, came back and went to sleep.In the morning she found the answer there on the table. She could not believe who had done it! Nobody could do it! The servant? – you could not expect him to do it, he did not know anything about mathematics. She remembered well that the night before she had tried her best and could not do it. What had happened? Then she tried to remember – because the handwriting was hers. She tried to remember…and then a faint remembrance came, as if in a dream she had walked to the table and written.From where had this answer come? It could not be from the left hemisphere; the left had been working hard for three years. And there was no process on the paper, just the conclusion. If it had come from the left there would have been a process, it goes step by step. But this was like a flash – the same kind of flash that had happened to the boy in the chest. The left hemisphere, tired, exhausted, helpless, sought the help of the right hemisphere.Whenever you are in such a corner where your logic fails, don’t be desperate, don’t become hopeless. Those moments may prove the greatest blessings in your life because those are the moments that the left allows the right to have its way. Then the feminine part, the receptive part, gives you an idea. If you follow it many doors will be opened. But it is possible you may miss it; you may say, “What nonsense!”This boy could have missed because the idea was not very normal, regular, logical. Make a noise like a cat? For what? He could have asked, “Why?” and then he would have missed. But he could not ask because the situation was such that there was no other way. So he thought, “Let us try. What is wrong in it?” He used the clue.The father was right. He said, “Don’t go into details. They are not important. You are back home; you have learned the art.”The whole art is how to function from the feminine part of your mind; the feminine is joined with the whole and the male is not joined with the whole. The male is aggressive, the male is constantly in struggle; the feminine is constantly in surrender, in deep trust. Hence the feminine body is so beautiful, so round. There is a deep trust and a deep harmony with nature. A woman lives in deep surrender; a man is constantly fighting, angry, doing this and that, trying to prove something, trying to reach somewhere. A woman is happy, not trying to reach anywhere.Ask women if they would like to go to the moon: they will simply be amazed. “For what? What is the point? Why take such trouble? The home is perfectly good.” The woman is not interested in what is happening in Vietnam and what is happening in Korea and what is happening in Israel. She is at the most interested in what is happening in the neighborhood, at the most interested in who has fallen in love with whom, who has escaped with whom – in gossips, not in politics. She is more interested in the immediate, the herenow. That gives her a harmony, a grace. Man is constantly trying to prove something, and if you want to prove of course you have to fight and compete and accumulate.Once a woman tried to get Dr. Johnson to talk with her but he seemed to take very little notice of her.“Why, doctor,” she said archly, “I believe you prefer the company of men to that of women.”“Madam,” replied Johnson, “I am very fond of the company of ladies. I like their beauty, I like their delicacy, I like their vivacity, and I like their silence.”Man has been forcing woman to be silent, not only outside, also inside – forcing the feminine part to keep quiet. Just watch within you. If the feminine part says something you immediately jump upon it and you say, “Logical? Absurd!”People come to me and they say, “The heart says we would like to become sannyasins but the head says no” – Dr. Johnson, trying to keep the woman silent! The heart is feminine.You miss much in your life because the head goes on talking; it does not allow. And the only quality in the head is that it is more articulate, cunning, dangerous, violent. Because of its violence it has become the leader inside, and that inside leadership has become an outside leadership for man. Man has dominated women in the outside world also – the grace is dominated by violence.I was invited to a school for a certain function. There was a rally of schoolchildren and in the rally the procession had been arranged according to height, the shortest first up to the tallest. But the pattern was broken, I noticed, by the first boy heading the procession. He was a gangling youth who looked a head taller than the rest.“Why is he at the front?” I asked a young girl, “Is he the leader of the school, the captain, or something like that?”“No,” she whispered, “he pinches.”The male mind goes on pinching, creating trouble. Troublemakers become leaders. In schools, all wise teachers choose the greatest troublemakers as captains of the class and the school – the troublemakers, the criminals. Once they are in a powerful post, their whole energy for making trouble becomes helpful for the teacher. The same ones start creating discipline.Just watch the politicians in the world: when one party is in power the opposite party goes on creating trouble in the country. They are the lawbreakers, the revolutionaries. And the party which is in power goes on creating discipline. Once they are thrown out of power, they will create trouble. And once the opposite party comes into power, they become the guardians of discipline. They are all troublemakers.The male mind is a troublemaking phenomenon, hence it overpowers, it dominates. But deep down, although you may attain power you miss life – and deep down, the feminine mind continues. And unless you fall back to the feminine and you surrender, unless your resistance and struggle become surrender you will not know what real life and the celebration of it is.I have heard one anecdote:An American scientist once visited the offices of the great Nobel Prize-winning physicist, Niels Bohr, in Copenhagen, and was amazed to find that over his desk was a horseshoe, securely nailed to the wall with the open end up in the approved manner so it would catch the good luck and not let it spill out.The American said with a nervous laugh, “Surely you don’t believe the horseshoe will bring you good luck, do you, Professor Bohr? After all, as a level-headed scientist…”Bohr chuckled, “I believe in no such thing, my good friend, not at all. I am scarcely likely to believe in such foolish nonsense. However, I am told that a horseshoe will bring you good luck whether you believe in it or not.”Look a little deeper, and just underneath your logic you will find fresh waters of intuition, fresh waters of trust flowing.Yoga is a way to use reason to reach truth – of course very difficult, and the longest path. If you follow Patanjali you are trying to do that which can happen without doing; you are trying hard to do something which can happen right now without any effort. You are trying to pull yourself by shoelaces– to pull yourself up.Zen is the way of the spontaneous, effortless effort, the way of intuition.A Zen master, Ikkyu, a great poet, has said:I can see clouds a thousand miles away,hear ancient music in the pines.This is what Zen is all about. You cannot see clouds a thousand miles away with the logical mind. The logical mind is like a glass, too dirty, much too covered with the dust of ideas, theories, doctrines. But you can see clouds a thousand miles away with the pure glass of intuition, with no thoughts, just pure awareness. The mirror is clean and the clarity supreme.You cannot hear ancient music in the pines with the ordinary logical mind. How can you hear the ancient music? Music, once gone, is gone forever. But I tell you, Ikkyu is right. You can hear ancient music in the pines – I have heard it – but a shift, a total change, a change of gestalt, is needed. Then you can see Buddha preaching again and you can hear Buddha speaking again. You can hear the ancient music in the pines because it is eternal music, it is never lost.You have lost the capacity to hear it. The music is eternal. Once you regain your capacity, suddenly it is again there. It has always been there, only you were not there. Be herenow, and you can also see clouds a thousand miles away and hear ancient music in the pines.Change more and more toward the right hemisphere. Become more and more feminine, more and more loving, surrendering, trusting; more and more close to the whole. Don’t try to be an island, become part of the continent.Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,You told me that my mind is immature. What does it mean to have a mind that is mature?To think that you know is to be immature. To function from knowledge, from conclusion, is immaturity. To function from no-knowledge, from no conclusion, from no past, is maturity.Maturity is deep trust in your own consciousness; immaturity is a distrust in your own consciousness. And when you distrust your consciousness you trust your knowledge, but that is a substitute, and a very poor substitute at that.Try to understand this, it is important. You have been living, you have experienced so many things; you have read, you have listened, you have thought. Now all those conclusions are there. When a certain situation arises you can function in two ways. Either you can function through all the accumulated past, according to it – that’s what I mean by functioning through a center, through conclusions, through experience, stale, dead – then whatsoever you do, your response is not going to be a response, it will be a reaction. And to be reactionary is to be immature.If you can function right now, here in this moment, through your consciousness, through your being aware, putting aside all that you have known, this is what I call functioning through no-knowledge. This is functioning through innocence – and this is maturity.I was reading one anecdote:It seemed to Mr. Smith that now that his son had turned thirteen, it was important to discuss those matters which an adolescent ought to know about life. So he called the boy into the study one evening. shut the door carefully, and said with impressive dignity, “Son, I would like to discuss the facts of life with you.”“Sure thing, Dad,” said the boy. “What do you want to know?”The mind is immature when it is not ready to learn. The ego feels very fulfilled if you need not learn anything from anybody; the ego feels very enhanced if it feels that it already knows. Now the problem is that life goes on changing, it is never the same – it goes on flowing, it is a flux – and your knowledge is always the same. Your knowledge is not evolving with life, it is stuck somewhere in the past. Whenever you react through it you will miss the point because it will not be exactly the right thing to do. Life has changed but your knowledge remains the same and you act out of this knowledge. That means you face today with your yesterday’s knowledge. You will never be able to be alive. The more you function through knowledge the more immature you become.Now let me tell you a paradox: every child who is innocent is mature. Maturity has nothing to do with age because it has nothing to do with experience. Maturity has something to do with responsiveness, freshness, virginity, innocence. So when I use the word mature I don’t mean that when you become more experienced you will be more mature. That’s what people usually mean when they use the word. I don’t mean that. The more you gather knowledge, the more your mind will become immature. And by the time you are seventy or eighty you will be completely immature because you will have a stale past to function through.Watch a small child: knowing nothing, having no experience, he functions here and now. That’s why children can learn more than aged people. Psychologists say that if a child is not forced to learn, not forced to discipline himself, he can learn any foreign language in three months. Just left to himself with people who know the language, he will catch it in three months. But if you force him to learn it will take almost three years – because the more you force the more he starts functioning through whatsoever he learns, through yesterday’s knowledge. If he is left to himself he moves freely, spontaneously; learning comes easily, by itself, of its own accord.By the time the child reaches the age of eight he has learned almost seventy percent of whatsoever he is going to learn in his whole life. He may live eighty years, but by the time he is eight he has learned seventy percent – he will learn only thirty percent more, and every day his capacity to learn will be less and less and less. The more he knows, the less he learns. When people use the word maturity they mean more knowledge; when I use the word maturity I mean the capacity to learn – not to know but to learn. And they are different, totally different, diametrically opposite things.Knowledge is a dead thing. The capacity to learn is an alive process: you simply remain capable of learning, you simply remain available, you simply remain open, ready to receive. Learning is receptivity. Knowledge makes you less receptive because you go on thinking that you already know: what is there to learn? When you already know you miss much, when you don’t know anything you cannot miss anything.In his old age Socrates said, “Now I know nothing!” That was maturity. At the very end he said, “I know nothing.”Life is so vast. How can this tiny mind know? At the most, glimpses are enough; even they are too much. Existence is so tremendously vast and infinite, beginningless, endless – how can this tiny drop of consciousness know it? This is enough, that even a few glimpses come, a few doors open, a few moments happen when you come in contact with existence. But those moments cannot be turned into knowledge. And your mind tends to do it. Then it becomes more and more immature.So the first thing is that you should be capable of learning and your learning capacity should never be burdened by knowledge, should never be covered by dust. The mirror of learning should remain clean and fresh so it can go on reflecting.The mind can function in two ways. It can either function like a film in a camera: once exposed, finished, the film immediately becomes knowledgeable and it loses its learning capacity. Exposed once, and it already knows: now it is useless, now it is not capable of learning more. If you expose it again and again it will become more and more confused. That’s why people who know too much are always afraid of learning; they will become confused. They are films that are already exposed.Then there is another type of learning: learning like a mirror. Expose the mirror for a thousand and one times, it makes no difference: if you come in front of the mirror you are reflected, if you go the reflection goes. The mirror never accumulates. The film in the camera immediately accumulates; it is a miser, it catches hold, clings. But the mirror simply mirrors: you come in front, you are in it, you go, you are gone.This is the way to remain mature. Every child is born mature and almost all people die immature. This will look very paradoxical, but this is so. Remain innocent and you will remain mature.The second thing is that the immature mind is always interested in trivia. The immature mind is always interested in things: money, houses, cars, power, prestige – all trivia, all rot. The mature mind is interested only in existence, in being, in life itself. So when I say to you that you have an immature mind I mean you are still interested in things, not in persons, still interested in the outside, not in the inside, still interested in objects, not in subjectivity; still interested in the finite, not interested in the infinite.Just watch your mind, where it moves, what its fantasies are. If you find a valuable diamond on the road and just there by its side a rose has flowered, in what will you be interested, in the rose or in the diamond? You will not be able to see the rose if you are interested in the diamond. You will simply miss the rose: “It is valueless.” Your eyes will be too clouded by the diamond. Your whole mind will become focused on the diamond and you will miss another diamond which was more alive – the rose.In the Hindu paradise they say roses are not ordinary roses, they are made of diamonds. I don’t know, but I have seen roses. If you can see roses here, exactly on this earth – not in paradise but here, now – they are made of diamonds, so why go far away? Once you know how to see a rose there is nothing comparable to it. And once you can see the rose you may forget completely about the diamond.It happened that Mulla Nasruddin came to me one day. He was very much worried and he said, “Ah, poor Mr. Jones. Did you hear what happened to him? He tripped at the top of the stairs, fell down the whole flight, banged his head and died.”Shocked, I said, “Died?”“Died,” he repeated with emphasis, “and broke his glasses too!”The immature mind is more interested in glasses than in life and death and love, more interested in things, houses, cars. When I tell you that you have an immature mind, I mean you are still interested in that which is worthless, nonessential. At the most it can be used, at the most it can become a decoration in life, but it cannot replace life, it cannot be a substitute for life, it cannot become life itself. And there are many people who have made it a life.I know a few rich people who live such beggarly lives, one cannot imagine it…I used to know a man in Delhi who had six bungalows, all out on rent, and he lived in a small dark cell with no children and no wife.I asked him once, “You have enough. Why do you go on living in this small dark cell? Why have you imposed this imprisonment upon yourself? What penance are you doing?”He said, “None. I have always lived this way and it is perfectly beautiful. And people are living in those six bungalows.”He goes to those bungalows only to collect rent.I asked him, “Why have you never married?”“I am a poor man and women are very costly. I could not afford it,” he said.If you meet that man you will not be able to recognize that he owns six big houses and earns a lot of money. What has happened to this man? He is more interested in money than he is in himself; he is more interested in money than he is in love; he is more interested in the power that money brings – but he has never shared anything with anybody.These people are not rare, they are very common. And everybody has such a tendency inside. And people go on rationalizing. That man is very clever. He says, “This is not miserliness. Please don’t misunderstand me. I am a simple man, I live a simple life. I am a religious man, and a simple life is beautiful.”If you are too interested in things, you are immature. Shift your attention. Become more and more interested in people rather than in yourself.I have a sannyasin here. She always falls in love with beggarly people and she is tremendously rich.Just a few days ago, she came and asked, “Why, Osho, do I go on falling in love with beggarly people, people who are almost on the street?”I know the reason why: with a beggarly man she need not be worried about her money – and she thinks that she is helping these people with food, with small things. In fact she has never fallen in love. She is so much in love with money that she cannot fall in love with people. In fact she purchases these people for money; they are without any cost, without any risk. And they feel obliged because she gives food and clothing and a shelter; they feel obliged so they pretend that they love her, and she goes on pretending that she has fallen in love. This is a way to protect the money and this is a way to remain closed, miserly.And she is suffering, in pain, but she cannot see the point. She has to learn how to share. If you know how to share, you are mature. If you don’t know how to share, you are immature.And this sharing goes on, on all levels, in all directions, in all dimensions. Whatsoever you have, you share. And this is one of the most basic things to understand: that the more you share something, the more it grows in you. Share whatsoever you have and it will grow; cling to it, become afraid of sharing, of friendship, of love, and it will shrink. Life knows only one law, and that law is of expansion, of sharing.Look at nature. Nature is such a spendthrift. When one flower is needed, a thousand and one flowers will bloom. When you make love to a woman or to a man, in each orgasm millions of cells are released. One would have been enough because at the most one child can be conceived, but millions of cells are released. One man can populate the whole earth – just one man! One ordinary man has intercourse at least four thousand times in his life – an ordinary man – and each time millions of cells are released. The whole world, the whole population that exists right now, can be produced by one man. And if in the West, that man will become the father of only two or three, if in the East, twelve, fourteen, fifteen – that’s all. For fifteen persons to be conceived, millions of cells are released.Nature is a spendthrift. Where one flower is needed it produces millions. One tree will produce… Look at this gulmohr – millions of seeds are ready. They will all fall down and a few – one, two, four, five, ten, twenty, a hundred – may become trees. Why so many seeds? Existence is not a miser. If you ask for one it gives millions. Just ask! Jesus has said: “Knock and the doors shall be opened unto you, ask and it shall be given.” Remember, if you ask for one, millions will be given.The moment you become miserly you are closed to the basic phenomenon of life: expansion, sharing. The moment you start clinging to things you have missed the target; you have missed because things are not the target; you, your innermost being, is the target – not a beautiful house but a beautiful you, not a lot of money but a rich you, not many things but an open being available to millions of things.When I say you are immature I mean you are too concerned with things and you have not yet learned that life consists of consciousness, of beings, not of things. Things are to be used. They are needed, but don’t start living by them. Man cannot live by bread alone: once living by bread alone, by things alone, you are already dead.And the third thing: maturity is always spontaneous; it does not plan, it makes no rehearsals. People come to me…Just the other night somebody was here. He said, “I prepare so many questions when I come to see you, but when I come here I forget. What do you do to me?”I am not doing anything at all! It is you. The moment you prepare something you are already saying that it is false. The real thing need not be prepared. Rehearsals are not needed in life, they are needed in a drama. A drama is a false thing. If you prepare your questions, it means those questions are not yours.If you are thirsty and you come to me, will you forget that you are thirsty and you would like your thirst to be quenched? How can you forget? In fact, when you come by the side of a river your thirst will burn more intensely because the moment you see the water flowing and hear the sound of gurgling, immediately all that you have been suppressing will bubble up, it will respond. Your whole being will say, “I am thirsty!” If you are thirsty you will not forget.But you prepare questions. You prepare yourself to go to the river and say, “I am very thirsty.” What is the point of preparing? If you are thirsty, you are. If you are not thirsty, by the time you reach to the river you will forget about it.When I say you are immature I mean that you prepare your questions, your inquiries. They are mind things, they don’t come from your heart. They are not related to you, they have no roots in you.It is related in George Bernard Shaw’s life that once, at the opening of one of his plays, he stepped forward with obvious complaisance at its conclusion to accept the rousing plaudits of the crowd.There was one dissenter, however, who seized the occasion of a lull in the applause to call out in stentorian tones, “Shaw, your play stinks!”There was a momentary horrified silence, but Shaw, unperturbed, exclaimed from the stage, “My friend, I agree with you completely, but what are we two…” here he waved his hand over the audience “…against the great majority?”And the applause returned more loudly than ever.You cannot prepare something like that. It is impossible. It is a spontaneous response, hence the beauty of it. You cannot prepare for such things. And life is such a continuous thing: either you act immediately or you miss. Later on you will find a thousand and one answers – you could have said this, you could have said that – but they are of no use.Mark Twain was coming back home with his wife from a lecture hall where he had just delivered a beautiful talk. His wife had not been present, she had just come to pick him up.On the way she asked, “How was the lecture?”Mark Twain said, “Which one? The one that I prepared, the one that I delivered, or the one that I am thinking now that I should have delivered? Which one?”If you prepare, this is going to be so. Remain conscious, alert, aware, and act out of your spontaneity. And not only will others see the alive response of it, you also will be thrilled by your own response. Not only will others be surprised, you will also be surprised yourself.I call a mind mature which retains the capacity to be surprised. A mind is mature if it goes on continuously being surprised by others, by himself, by everything. Life is a constant wonder: he has no readymade plans for it, no readymade responses for it. He never knows what is going to happen, he moves into the unknown each moment. He never jumps ahead of himself, he never lags behind himself. He remains simply himself, wherever he is.And, the last and most basic thing: when I say that you have an immature mind, basically I mean that you have a mind. Mind as such is immature. Only no-mind is mature.Maturity has nothing to do with mind because mind means all that you know. Mind means your experiences, mind means your past, your rehearsals, your preparations. All these things are implied in the word mind. Mind is not something in particular, it is the whole accumulation, all the junk, the whole heap of your dead past.When I say, “Be mature,” I mean become a no-mind. If you act spontaneously you will act out of no-mind. If you remain capable of learning you will remain capable of being a no-mind again and again and again; the mind will never be accumulated. If you are capable of remaining alert and spontaneous, able to be surprised by life and by yourself, by and by you will become more and more interested in the interiormost life, in the very core of life. When you see a person you will not see just the body; your gaze will become penetrating, your gaze will become like an X-ray. It will catch hold of the person, of the consciousness there, of the inner light there in the other person. The body is just an abode: you will meet the person, you will shake hands, but not only hands – you will shake the person, you will meet the person.And in your own life, by and by, you will become aware that the body is just the outermost garment: you have to take care of it, it is not to be neglected, it is valuable, but it is not the end. And you are the master, not the servant. By and by, the more you penetrate withinward, you will see the mind also is an innermost garment, more valuable than the body but not more valuable than you. You remain the supreme value.And once you know your supreme value, you have become mature. And once you know your supreme value, you know the supreme value of all. All beings are buddhas. Nobody is less than that; and the whole of life is divine. You are always walking on holy ground.It is said that when Moses went to the hill to meet his God, the bush was afire and from behind the bush he heard, “Stop! Take your shoes off. This is holy ground.” I have always liked it, loved it. But all ground is holy ground and all bushes are afire with godliness. If you have not seen this yet you have missed much. Look again: all bushes are afire with godliness and from every bush comes the commandment, “Stop and take your shoes off. This is holy ground you are walking on.”All ground, the whole earth, the whole existence is sacred. Once you have that feeling entering you, I will call you mature, not before that. A mature mind is a religious mind.The second question:Osho,Why do I make mountains out of molehills?Because the ego does not feel good, at ease, with molehills, it wants mountains. Even if it is a misery it should not be a molehill, it should be an Everest. Even if it is misery the ego doesn’t want to be ordinarily miserable, it wants to be extraordinarily miserable!Bernard Shaw is reported to have said, “If I am not going to be the first in heaven, I would like to go to hell – but I would like to be the first.”In Christianity there is only one hell and Bernard Shaw never knew that in India we have a concept of seven hells. If he had heard about Hindu hells he would have chosen the seventh because in the fifth he would have felt humiliated: others are still far ahead of him, in the seventh. The real sinners, the great sinners, are in the seventh! Either this way or that, but one wants to be the first. Hence one goes on making mountains out of molehills.A woman hypochondriac died. The whole town felt relieved, the whole medical profession felt relieved because she was a constant trouble to many people’s heads, everywhere, all around. The family, the doctors, the physicians – she had troubled everybody and nobody was of any help. And she relished the idea that nobody knew anything about the sort of disease she was suffering from – it was an extraordinary disease. In fact there was no disease.Then she died, and it was almost a celebration in the town. But when they opened her will, she had written in her will that her request had positively to be fulfilled. Her request was that a carved tombstone had to be put on her tomb with these words inscribed on it: “Now will you believe I was sick?”In this way she would haunt the whole town again.People go on and on, creating big problems out of nothing. I have talked to thousands of people about their problems and I have not come across a real problem yet. All problems are bogus. You create them because without problems you feel empty. Then there is nothing to do, nothing to fight with, nowhere to go.People go from one guru to another, from one master to another, from one psychoanalyst to another, from one encounter group to another, because if they don’t go they feel empty and they suddenly feel life to be meaningless. You create problems so that you can feel that life is a great work, a growth, and you have to struggle hard.The ego can exist only when it struggles, remember, when it fights. And if I tell you, “Kill three flies and you will become enlightened,” you will not believe me. You will say, “Three flies? There doesn’t seem to be much to that. And I will become enlightened? That doesn’t seem to be likely.” If I say you will have to kill seven hundred lions, of course that looks more like it!The greater the problem the greater the challenge – and with challenge your ego arises, soars high. You create problems, problems don’t exist.And now if you allow me, there are not even molehills. That too is your trick. You say, “Yes, there may not be mountains, but molehills…?” No, not even molehills are there, those are your creations. First you create molehills out of nothing, then you create mountains out of molehills. And the priests and the psychoanalysts and the gurus are happy because their whole trade exists because of you. If you don’t create molehills out of nothing and you don’t make your molehills into mountains, what will be the point of gurus helping you? First you have to be in a shape to be helped.The real masters have been saying something else. They have been saying: “Please look at what you are doing, what nonsense you are doing. First you create a problem and then you go in search of a solution. Just watch why you are creating the problem. Just exactly in the beginning, when you are creating the problem, is the solution: don’t create it!” But that won’t appeal to you because then you are suddenly thrown flat upon yourself. Nothing to do? No enlightenment? No satori? No samadhi? And you are deeply restless, empty, trying to stuff yourself with anything whatsoever.You don’t have any problems. Only this much has to be understood. This very moment you can drop all problems because they are your creations. Have another look at your problems, and the deeper you look, the smaller they will appear. Go on looking at them and by and by they will start disappearing. Go on gazing and suddenly you will find there is emptiness – a beautiful emptiness surrounds you. Nothing to do, nothing to be because you are already that.Enlightenment is not something to be achieved, it is just to be lived. When I say that I achieved enlightenment, I simply mean one day I decided to live it: enough is enough! And since then I have lived it. It is a decision that now you are not interested in creating problems, that’s all. It is a decision that now you are finished with all this nonsense of creating problems and finding solutions.It is a game you are playing with yourself: you yourself are hiding and you yourself are seeking. You are both parties – and you know it! That’s why when I say it you smile, you laugh. I am not talking about anything ridiculous; you understand it. You are laughing at yourself. Just watch yourself laughing, just look at your own smile. You understand it. It has to be so because it is your own game: you are hiding and waiting for yourself to be able to seek and find yourself. You can find yourself right now because it is you that is hiding.That’s why Zen masters go on hitting. Whenever somebody comes and says, “l would like to be a buddha,” the master gets very angry because he is asking nonsense – he is a buddha. If Buddha comes to me and asks how to be a buddha, what am I supposed to do? I will hit his head: “Who do you think you are befooling? You are a buddha.”Don’t make unnecessary trouble for yourself. And understanding will dawn on you if you watch how you make a problem bigger and bigger and bigger, how you spin it, and how you help the wheel to move faster and faster and faster. Then suddenly you are at the top of your misery and you are in need of the whole world’s sympathy.One sannyasin, Marga, wrote me a letter. She said, “Osho, I feel very sad because when you talk, you look at everyone except me.” Now, I am not looking at anybody, but I have got eyes so they have to be somewhere. It is not that I am looking at somebody; I am not looking at anybody. And you can see in my eyes that they are empty, they are vacant. But if you are trying to find your reflection in them and you don’t, great sadness comes to you.Now there is a new problem, now the ego feels hurt. Looking at everybody else except you! Just watch how you have made yourself an exception; you have become extraordinary: I look at everybody, the ordinary mass, except you. You have become unique. If I look at Marga – which I am not going to do… Since I received her letter I am never going to look at her. If I look at her, then the ego can have another trip: I look only at her. Then that will create a problem!You are a great problem creator. Just understand this, and suddenly problems disappear. You are perfectly in shape. You are born perfect – that is the whole message. You are born perfect, perfection is your innermost nature. You have just to live it. Decide, and live it.If you are not yet fed up with the game, you can continue, but don’t ask why – you know. The “why” is simple: the ego cannot exist in emptiness, it needs something to fight with. Even a ghost of your imagination will do, but you need to fight with someone. The ego exists only in conflict. The ego is not an entity, it is a tension. Whenever there is a conflict the tension arises and the ego exists; when there is no conflict the tension disappears and the ego disappears. Ego is not a thing, it is just a tension.And of course nobody wants small tensions, everybody wants big tensions. If your own problems are not enough you start thinking about humanity and the world and the future; socialism, communism, and all that rubbish. You start thinking about it as if the whole world depends on your advice. Then you think, “What is going to happen in Israel? What is going to happen in Africa?” And you go on advising, and you create problems.People become very excited, they cannot sleep because there is some war going on. They become very excited. Their own life is so ordinary that they will have to reach extraordinariness from some other source. The nation is in difficulty so they become identified with the nation. The culture is in difficulty, the society is in difficulty – now there are big problems and you become identified. You are a Hindu and the Hindu culture is in difficulty; you are a Christian and the church is in difficulty. The whole world is at stake – now you become big through your problem.The ego needs some problems. If you understand this, in the very understanding, the mountains become molehills again and then the molehills also disappear. Suddenly there is emptiness, pure emptiness all around. This is what enlightenment is all about: a deep understanding that there is no problem.Then, with no problem to solve, what will you do? Immediately you will start living. You will eat, you will sleep, you will love, you will have a chit-chat, you will sing, you will dance – what else is there to do? You have become a god, you have started living.If there is any God, one thing is certain: he must not be having any problems. That much is certain. Then what is he doing with all his time? No problems, no psychiatrist to consult, no gurus to go and surrender to. What is God doing? He must be getting crazy, whirling. What will he do? No, he is living; his life is totally full with life. He must be eating, sleeping, dancing, having a love affair – but without any problems.Start living this moment and you will see that the more you live, the fewer problems there are because now that your emptiness is flowering in living, there is no need. When you don’t live, the same energy goes sour. The same energy which would have become a flower, is stuck. Not being allowed to bloom it becomes a thorn in the heart; it is the same energy.Force a small child to sit in the corner and tell him to become completely immobile, unmoving. Watch what happens. Just a few minutes earlier he was perfectly at ease, flowing; now his face will become red because he will have to strain, hold himself. His whole body will become rigid; he will try to fidget here and there and he will want to jump out of himself. You have forced the energy: now it has no purpose, no meaning, no space to move, nowhere to bloom and flower; it is stuck, frozen, rigid. The child is suffering a short death, a temporary death. Now if you don’t allow the child to run again and move around the garden and play, he will start creating problems. He will fantasize: in his mind he will create problems and start fighting with those problems. He will see a big dog and he will get afraid, or he will see a ghost and he will have to fight and escape from him. Now he is creating problems. The same energy that just a few minutes before was flowing all around, in all directions, is stuck and becoming sour.If people can dance a little more, sing a little more, be a little more crazy, their energy will be more flowing and their problems will, by and by, disappear. Hence I insist so much on dance. Dance to orgasm! Let the whole energy become dance, and suddenly you will see that you don’t have any head: the stuck energy in the head is moving all around, creating beautiful patterns, gestures, movement. And when you dance there comes a moment when your body is no longer a rigid thing; it becomes flexible, flowing. When you dance there comes a moment when your boundary is no longer so clear; you melt and merge with the cosmos, the boundaries are mixing.Watch a dancer: you will see that he has become an energy phenomenon, no longer in a fixed form, no longer in a frame. He is flowing out of his frame, out of his form and becoming more alive, more and more alive. But only if you dance yourself will you know what really happens: the head inside disappears, again you are a child. Then you don’t create any problems.Live, dance, eat, sleep – do things as totally as possible. And remember again and again: whenever you catch yourself creating any problem, slip out of it, immediately. Once you get into the problem then a solution will be needed. And even if you find a solution, out of that solution a thousand and one problems will arise again. Once you miss the first step you are in the trap. Whenever you see that now you are slipping into a problem, catch hold of yourself, run, jump, dance, but don’t get into the problem. Do something immediately so that the energy that was creating the problem becomes fluid, unfrozen, melts, goes back to the cosmos.Primitive people don’t have many problems. I have come across primitive groups in India who say they don’t dream at all. Freud would not be able to believe that it is possible. They don’t dream, and if sometimes somebody dreams – it is a rare phenomenon – the whole village fasts, prays to God. Something has gone wrong, something wrong has happened – a man has dreamed.It never happens in their tribe because they live so totally that nothing is left in the head to be completed in sleep. Whatsoever you leave incomplete has to be completed in your dreams; whatsoever you have not lived remains as a hangover and completes itself in the mind. That’s what a dream is.The whole day you go on thinking. The thinking simply shows that you have more energy than you use for living, you have more energy than your so-called life needs. You are missing real life. Use more energy, then fresh energies will be flowing. Just don’t be a miser. Use them today, let today be complete unto itself; tomorrow will take care of itself, don’t be worried about tomorrow. The worry, the problem, the anxiety, all simply show one thing: that you are not living rightly, that your life is not yet a celebration, a dance, a festivity – hence all the problems.If you live, ego disappears. Life knows no ego, it knows only living and living and living. Life knows no self, no center; life knows no separation. You breathe, life enters into you; you exhale, you enter into life. There is no separation. You eat and trees enter into you through the fruit. Then one day you die, you are buried in the earth, and the trees suck you up and you become fruits. Your children will eat you again. You have been eating your ancestors; the trees have converted them into fruits. You think you are a vegetarian? Don’t be deceived by appearances – we are all cannibals!Life is one. It goes on moving, it comes into you, it passes through you. In fact to say that it comes into you is not right because it seems as if life comes into you and then passes out of you. You don’t exist, only this life’s coming and going. You don’t exist, only life exists in its tremendous forms, in its energy, in its millions of delights. Once you understand this, let that understanding be the only law.Start living as buddhas from this moment. If you decide otherwise, it is for you to decide. But as I see it, it is a decision: “I am not going to befool myself anymore. Now I start living as a buddha, in emptiness. I will not try to find unnecessary occupation. I dissolve.”The third question:Osho,I notice that deep down I want to be loved, accepted, like the greatest man on earth, that I want to be the most famous person. And I feel hurt when someone rejects me. What to do with these dreams?If you understand that they are dreams then wash your face and have a cup of tea. What is there to be done about it? Dreams are dreams, why be bothered? But you don’t understand that they are dreams.This is borrowed. You know that they are not dreams, that’s why you are worried. Otherwise why be worried? If in a dream you see that you have fallen ill, when you wake up in the morning do you go to the doctor? “In my dream I was very ill and now some medication is needed”? You never go. By the morning you realize it was a dream, finished! What is the point of going to a doctor?But you have not yet understood that these are dreams. These are realities for you, hence the problem.“I notice that deep down I want to be loved.” If you want to be loved, love! – because whatsoever you give is returned. If you want to be loved forget about wanting to be loved. Love, and in a thousand ways love will come to you. Life reflects, life resounds, life echoes whatsoever you throw at life. So if you want to be loved forget about wanting and being loved, that is not the point at all then. Then the rule is simple: love.And if you want to be accepted like the greatest man on earth, then start accepting everybody as the greatest man on earth otherwise how are they going to accept you as the greatest? They are also on the same trip. They are not going to accept you as the greatest because then what will happen to them? If you are the greatest, then who are they? Nobody wants to be anything else.Once it happened, a friend of Mulla Nasruddin was talking to Mulla. They met after many years. Both were bitter rivals, both were poets. Both started to boast about the progress they had made in their careers.“You have no idea, Nasruddin, how many people read my poetry now,” bragged his friend. “My readers have doubled.”“My God, my God!” cried Nasruddin. “I had no idea you had got married!”Everybody is on the same trip. If you want people to accept you as the greatest man on earth, let this be the rule: whatsoever you want others to do for you, do for them. But that is the trouble. The ego wants you to be the greatest man on earth and nobody else. Then you will feel hurt because all are on the same trip. Can’t you understand the simple point? They are also waiting for you to accept them as the greatest man.I heard Mulla Nasruddin once. He was delivering a political speech.He said, “It is with some trepidation that I address an audience of people all of whom are smarter than I am – all of them put together, that is.”Everybody is trying to be at the top of the world; then you are in competition with the whole world. Remember, you are going to be defeated. One man fighting against the whole world – that is the situation.If you see the point, there are two ways. Either forget about this trip, be ordinary, simple, whatsoever you are. There is no need to be great, the only need is to be real. Greatness is the wrong goal. To be real…I have come across a hip slogan: “Be realistic, plan for a miracle.” Yes, that is how it is. If you are really realistic, you start living the miracle. And the miracle is, if you are real you don’t want to be bothered with competition, comparison. Who bothers? You enjoy your food, you enjoy your breathing, you enjoy the sunlight, you enjoy the stars, you enjoy life, you enjoy being alive – you are perfectly in tune, in harmony with the whole. What is the point of being a great man? The great men, the so-called great men, are almost always phony. They have to be, they cannot be real persons. They are plastic because they have chosen a wrong goal. To be great is an ego goal, to be real is existential.If you want to be great you will be in continuous conflict. And of course you will be hurt by everybody. Not that everybody is trying to hurt you, but they are doing their trip and you are unnecessarily coming in their way.Get out of this rat race. Sit under the tree by the side of the road. It is tremendously beautiful and silent. Otherwise, be ready to be hurt.A politician used to come to me. Once he was the president of the Indian National Congress, a great man in India.He told me, “I am such a simple man. Why do people go on spreading nasty things about me? Why do people want to hurt me?”I told him, “Nobody wants to hurt you. You are unnecessarily coming in their way. They also want to be presidents of great parties – you are standing in their way. They have to push you away.” I told him, “Just remember what you did to the president before you. They are trying to do the same thing with you – leg-pulling.”Once you are in a power post, you are continuously being pulled and pushed. It has to be so.Ramakrishna used to tell a beautiful story:A bird was flying with a dead mouse and twenty or thirty birds were chasing him. The bird was very worried.“Why? I am not doing anything to them, I am just carrying my dead mouse. Why are they all after me?”And they hit him hard and in the conflict, in the struggle, the bird opened his mouth and dropped the mouse. Immediately they all flew toward the mouse, they all forgot about him.Then he sat upon a tree and brooded.They were not against him. They were also on the same trip – they wanted the mouse.If people are hurting you, open your mouth. You must be carrying a dead mouse! Drop it! And then sit, if you can, sit on the tree or under the tree and brood. And suddenly you will see that they have forgotten about you. They are not concerned. They never were concerned. The ego is a dead mouse.Jones’ oldest daughter had just given birth to a beautiful baby and Jones was being congratulated.He looked downcast, however, and a friend said, “What’s the matter, Jones? Don’t you like the idea of being a grandfather?”Jones heaved an enormous sigh. “No,” he said, “I don’t, but that doesn’t bother me so much. It is just that it is so humiliating to have to go to bed with a grandmother.”Just watch your mind, how it creates problems. The woman remains the same but now she has become a grandmother, and one feels humiliated.It is your idea that is giving you humiliation. If you are really concerned with your own wellbeing then nobody is hurting you – just your own ideas. Drop them.Or, if you feel good with them, don’t be worried about the hurts. Then carry them. But have a decision inside: if you want the ego trip, if you want to be the greatest man in the world, then everybody is going to prove that you are the worst man in the world. Then have courage and heart to suffer all that. It is futile, but if you choose that way, it is your choice. If you really want your wellbeing and your inner calm and silence and bliss, then these hurts are indicative: you are carrying some wrong ideas within you. Drop those ideas.The last question:Osho,I don't have a question – just a feeling of hopelessness. I can't believe my questions, I have a feeling they come from something brittle and unreal.“I don’t have a question – just a feeling of hopelessness.” How does hopelessness arise? You must be hoping too much. It comes out of too much hope.If you don’t hope, all hopelessness disappears. If you expect too much, frustration is bound to come. If you are trying to succeed, you will fail. Whatsoever you want to try too hard, just the opposite will happen.You must have been trying too hard to fulfill some hope – then hopelessness comes. If you really want to get rid of hopelessness – and everybody wants that – then get rid of hope. Drop all hope, and suddenly you will see that with the hope, hopelessness has disappeared. Then one comes to an inner tranquility where no hope exists, and no hopelessness. One is simply calm and quiet and collected – a deep reservoir of energy, a pool of energy, cool.But for that you have to sacrifice hope. The very question shows that you are still hoping. Go a little deeper and further: if you are really hopeless, hopelessness will disappear.Let me tell it to you another way. Whenever a person says that he is hopeless he simply says he is still clinging to the same hope which has proved to be futile, of which there is no indication of being fulfilled at all. But still one goes on holding it, hoping against all hope. Then hopelessness continues.Don’t hope for anything. There is no need because all that you can hope for is already given. What more can you hope for?You are here, everything is here, just being is all. But you don’t appreciate, you are asking for some dead mouse, some power trip, some ego trip, some success in the eyes of the world. Those are not going to be fulfilled. Even Alexanders have failed. Even Alexander dies a poor man, a beggar, because everything that you accumulate is snatched back from you, you go empty-handed. Empty-handed you come, empty-handed you go.So why bother about success, riches, power – material or spiritual? Just be. And being is the greatest miracle. Just turn within yourself, what Buddha calls paravritti. Turn yourself – a complete turn, a total turn – and suddenly you are so full of joy you don’t need anything. In fact you have so much that you would like to shower it on others.But things go on moving from one extreme to another. If you hope, by and by the pendulum moves toward hopelessness. If you are too much in love with life, by and by you move toward suicide. If you are too religious, by and by you move and become anti-religious. The pendulum goes on moving toward the opposite. Somewhere in the middle, one has to stop.And if you stop in the middle, time stops with you. And when time stops, all hope, all desires have stopped. You start living right now. Now is the only time and here is the only space.Let me tell you one story. It is a very beautiful Jewish anecdote.Young Sammy Moskowitz had just bought himself a motor scooter, but he had been brought up in very orthodox fashion and wasn’t the least bit sure whether it was fitting for an orthodox Jew to ride one. He thought that the best way out would be to go to his reverend rabbi to teach him a barucha, a traditional prayer of blessing, to intone over the motor scooter before he drove it. Surely that would make it proper for him to use it?He therefore approached his rabbi and said, “Rabbi, I have bought a motor scooter and I wish to know if you could teach me a barucha to say over it each morning.”The rabbi said, “What is a motor scooter?”Sammy explained, and the rabbi shook his head. “As far as I know, there is no appropriate barucha for the occasion and I strongly suspect that riding a motor scooter is a sin. I forbid you to use it.”Sammy was very downhearted, for from his very soul he longed to drive his motor scooter, which had set him back a considerable sum. A thought occurred to him: why not seek a second and perhaps more liberal opinion from a rabbi who was not orthodox, but merely conservative?He found a conservative rabbi who unlike the orthodox rabbi earlier consulted, was not in the traditional long coat at all but wore a dark business suit. The conservative rabbi said, “What is a motor scooter?”Sammy explained. The rabbi thought for a while, then said, “I suppose there’s nothing wrong about riding a motor scooter. But still I don’t know of any appropriate barucha, and if your conscience hurts you without one, then don’t drive it.”He journeyed out to the suburbs and met Rabbi Richmond Ellis, in his knickerbockers, about to leave for the golf links on his motor scooter.Sammy grew terribly excited, “It’s all right for a Jew to ride a motor scooter?” he said. “I’ve got one but I didn’t know.”“Sure, kid,” said the rabbi. “Nothing wrong with the motor scooter at all. Ride it in good health.”“Then give me a barucha for it.”The reformed rabbi thought, then said, “What is a barucha?”Things move from one extreme to another! The orthodox rabbi doesn’t know what a motor scooter is, and the progressive one is not aware of what a barucha is. From religion, too much dogmatic religion, people become too irreligious. When they leave the church they move to the prostitute.Somewhere a deep balance is needed. Just between the two, exactly between the two, is transcendence.So you have lived with hope. Now the hope has failed and you are living in hopelessness. Now let hopelessness also fail: drop hope and hopelessness together. Just transcend that attitude which lives in the future. Live herenow! Living in hope is living in the future, which is really postponing life. It is not a way of living but a way of suicide. There is no need for any hope and there is no need to feel hopeless. Live herenow. Life is tremendously blissful, it is showering here and you are looking somewhere else. It is just in front of your eyes but your eyes have moved far away, they look at the horizon. It is within you but you are not there.I am not for hope, I am not for hopelessness. I am against all extremism. All excess is futile.Buddha used to say, “My path is the middle path – majjhim nikaya.” That is the path of transcendence.Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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One winter day, a masterless samurai came to Eisai’s temple and made an appeal: I’m poor and sick,” he said, “and my family is dying of hunger. Please help us, master.”Dependent as he was on widows’ mites, Eisai’s life was very austere, and he had nothing to give. He was about to send the samurai off when he remembered the image of Yakushi-Buddha in the hall. Going up to it he tore off its halo and gave it to the samurai. “Sell this,” said Eisai, “it should tide you over.”The bewildered but desperate samurai took the halo and left.“Master!” cried one of Eisai’s disciples, “that’s sacrilege! How could you do such a thing?”“Sacrilege? Bah! I have merely put the Buddha’s mind, which is full of love and mercy, to use, so to speak. Indeed, if he himself had heard that poor samurai, he would have cut off a limb for him.”Meditation is a flower, and compassion is its fragrance. Exactly like that it happens: the flower blooms and the fragrance spreads on the winds in all directions, to be carried to the very ends of the earth. But the basic thing is the blooming of the flower.Man is also carrying a potential for flowering within him. Until and unless the inner being of man flowers, the fragrance of compassion is not possible. Compassion cannot be practiced, it is not a discipline. You cannot manage it, it is beyond you. If you meditate, one day you suddenly become aware of a new phenomenon, absolutely strange: compassion is flowing from your being toward the whole of existence. Undirected, unaddressed, it is moving to the very ends of existence.Without meditation, the same energy remains passion; with meditation, the same energy becomes compassion. Passion and compassion are not two energies, they are one and the same energy. Once it passes through meditation it is transformed, transfigured; it becomes qualitatively different. Passion moves downward, compassion moves upward. Passion moves through desire, compassion moves through desirelessness. Passion is an occupation to forget the miseries in which you live, compassion is a celebration. Compassion is a dance of attainment, of fulfillment: you are so fulfilled that you can share. Now there is nothing left; you have attained the destiny that you were carrying for millennia within you like an unflowered potentiality, just a bud. Now it has flowered and it is dancing. You have attained, you are fulfilled. There is no more to attain, nowhere to go, nothing to do.Now what will happen to the energy? You start sharing. The same energy that was moving through the dark layers of passion now moves with light rays upward, uncontaminated by any desire, uncontaminated by any conditioning, pure, uncorrupted by any motivation; hence I call it fragrance. The flower is limited, but not the fragrance. The flower has limitations, it is rooted somewhere, in bondage. But fragrance has no bondage – it simply moves, rides on the winds with no moorings in the earth.Meditation is a flower, it has roots. It exists in you. Once compassion happens, it is not rooted, it simply moves and goes on moving. Buddha has disappeared, but not his compassion. The flower will die sooner or later; it is part of earth and the dust will return unto dust, but the fragrance that has been released will remain forever and forever. Buddha is gone, Jesus is gone, but not their fragrance. Their compassion still continues, and whoever is open to their compassion will immediately feel its impact, will be moved by it, will be taken on a new journey, on a new pilgrimage.Compassion is not limited to the flower; it comes from the flower but it is not of the flower. It comes through the flower, the flower is just a passage, but it comes really from the beyond. It cannot come without the flower, the flower is a necessary stage, but it does not belong to the flower. Once the flower has bloomed compassion is released.This insistence, this emphasis, has to be deeply understood because if you miss the point, you can start practicing compassion, but then it is not a real fragrance. Practiced compassion is just the same passion with a new name. It is the same desire-contaminated, motivation-corrupted energy, and it can become very dangerous to other people – because in the name of compassion you can destroy, in the name of compassion you can make prisoners of other people, in the name of compassion you can create bondage. It is not compassion, and if you practice it you are being artificial, formal, in fact, a hypocrite.The first thing to be remembered continuously is that compassion cannot be practiced. It is this point where all the followers of all the great religious teachers have missed. Buddha attained compassion through meditation; now Buddhists go on practicing compassion. Jesus attained compassion through meditation but Christians, the Christian missionaries, go on practicing love, compassion, service to humanity. But their compassion has proved to be a very destructive force in the world; their compassion has created only wars, their compassion has destroyed millions of people. They end up in deep imprisonments.Compassion frees you, gives you freedom; but that compassion has to come only through meditation, there is no other way to it. Buddha has said that compassion is a byproduct, a consequence. You cannot catch hold of the consequence directly, you have to move; you have to produce the cause and the effect follows. So if you really want to understand what compassion is you have to understand what meditation is. Forget all about compassion, it comes of its own accord.Try to understand what meditation is. Compassion can become a criterion as to whether the meditation was right or not. If the meditation has been right, compassion is bound to come – it is natural, it follows like a shadow. If the meditation has been wrong then compassion will not follow. So compassion can work as a criterion as to whether the meditation has been really right or not.Even a meditation can be wrong. People have a wrong notion that all meditations are right. It is not so. Meditations can be wrong. For example, any meditation that leads you deep into concentration is wrong, it will not result in compassion. You will become more and more closed rather than becoming open. If you narrow down your consciousness, if you concentrate on something and you exclude the whole of existence and become one-pointed, it will create more and more tension in you. Hence the word attention: it means a tension. Concentration, the very sound of the word, gives you a feeling of tenseness.Concentration has its uses, but it is not meditation. In scientific work, in scientific research, in the science lab, you need concentration. You have to concentrate on one problem and exclude everything else – so much so that you almost become unmindful of the remaining world. The only problem that you are concentrating upon is your world. That’s why scientists become absentminded. People who concentrate too much always become absentminded because they don’t know how to remain open to the whole world.I was reading an anecdote:“I have brought a frog,” said a scientist, a professor of zoology, beaming at his class, “fresh from the pond, in order that we might study its outer appearance and later dissect it.”He carefully unwrapped the package he carried and inside was a neatly prepared ham sandwich. The good professor looked at it with astonishment.“Odd!” he said, “I distinctly remember having eaten my lunch.”That goes on happening to scientists: they become one-pointed and their whole mind becomes narrow. Of course, a narrow mind has its use: it becomes more penetrating, it becomes like a sharp needle, it hits exactly the right point – but it misses the great life that surrounds you.A buddha is not a man of concentration, he is a man of awareness. He has not been trying to narrow down his consciousness, on the contrary, he has been trying to drop all barriers so that he becomes totally available to existence. Watch: existence is simultaneous. I am speaking here and the traffic noise is simultaneous, the train, the birds the wind blowing through the trees; in this moment, the whole of existence converges. You listening to me, I speaking to you, and millions of things going on – it is tremendously rich.Concentration makes you one-pointed at a very great cost: ninety-nine percent of life is discarded. If you are solving a mathematical problem, you cannot listen to the birds, they will be a distraction. Children playing around, dogs barking in the street, they will be a distraction. The wife working in the kitchen washing the plates will be a distraction. Because of concentration people have tried to escape from life, to go to the Himalayas, to go to a cave, to remain isolated, so that you can concentrate on God. But God is not an object. God is this wholeness of existence, this moment; God is the totality. That’s why science will never be able to know God.The very method of science is concentration and because of that method, science can never know God. It can know more and more minute details. First the molecule was thought to be the last particle, then it was divided. Then an even tinier part, the atom, was known, then concentration divided that also. Now there are electrons, protons, neutrons; sooner or later they are also going to be divided.Science goes on from the smaller to the smaller, and the bigger, the vast, is completely forgotten. The whole is completely forgotten for the part. Because of concentration, science can never know God. So when people come to me and they say, “Osho, teach us concentration, we want to know God,” I am simply puzzled. They have not understood the basics of the search.Science is one-pointed, the search is objective. Religion is simultaneity, the object is the whole, the total. To know the total, that is, to know God, you will have to have a consciousness which is open from everywhere, not confined, not standing in a window. Otherwise the frame of the window will become the frame of existence. Just standing under the sun in the open sky – that is what meditation is. Meditation has no frame: it is not a window, it is not a door. Meditation is not concentration, it is not attention. Meditation is awareness.So what to do? Repeating a mantra, doing Transcendental Meditation, is not going to help. Transcendental Meditation has become very, very important in America because of the objective approach, because of the scientific mind. Now that is the only meditation on which scientific research work is being done because that is the only meditation on which scientific work can be done. It is exactly concentration and not meditation. It is comprehensible for the scientific mind.In the universities, in the science laboratories, in psychological research work, much is being done about TM because it is not meditation. It is a concentration, a method of concentration; it falls under the same category as scientific concentration. There is a link between the two but it has nothing to do with meditation. Meditation is so vast, so tremendously infinite; no scientific research is possible. Only compassion will show whether the man has achieved or not. Alpha waves won’t be of much help because they are still of the mind and meditation is not of the mind, it is something beyond.So let me tell you a few basic things. One, meditation is not concentration but relaxation. One simply relaxes. One simply relaxes into oneself. The more you relax, the more you feel yourself open, vulnerable. The more you relax, the less rigid you are; you become more flexible and suddenly existence starts penetrating you. You are no longer like a rock, you have openings. Relaxation means allowing yourself to fall into a state where you are not doing anything; if you are doing something, tension will continue. It is a state of non-doing: you simply relax and you enjoy the feeling of relaxation.Relax into yourself. Just close your eyes and listen to all that is happening all around – no need to feel anything as a distraction. The moment you feel it is a distraction, you are denying existence. This moment existence has come to you as a bird – don’t deny. It has knocked at your door as a bird. The next moment it has come as a dog, barking, or as a child crying and weeping, or as a madman laughing. Don’t deny, don’t reject, accept – because if you deny you will become tense. All denials create tension. Accept. If you want to relax, acceptance is the way. Accept whatsoever is happening all around, let it become an organic whole. It is! You may know it, you may not know it, but everything is interrelated. These birds, these trees, this sky, this sun, this earth, you, me, all are related. It is an organic unity. If the sun disappears the trees will disappear, if the trees disappear the birds will disappear, if the birds and trees disappear you cannot be here, you will disappear. It is an ecology; everything is deeply related with everything else.So don’t deny anything because the moment you deny, you are denying something in you. If you deny these singing birds then something in you is denied.Once it happened that it was spring. The weather was delightful and I was sitting on a park bench. I was enjoying the spring, the birds, the air and the sun. I was listening to the melodious chirping of numerous birds.A stranger was also sitting on the same bench. I turned to him and said to him, “Is not the music of the birds delightful?”But he must have been a religious man: he was doing some mantra. He felt disturbed. He felt as if I had interfered.He scowled and said, “How the devil can I hear what you are saying over the damned noise of those stupid birds?”But if you deny, reject; if you feel distracted, if you feel angry, you are rejecting something within you. Just listen again to the birds without any feeling of distraction, anger, and suddenly you will see that the bird within you responds. Then those birds are not there as strangers, intruders. Suddenly, the whole existence becomes a family. It is. And I call a man religious who has come to understand that the whole existence is a family. He may not go to any church and he may not worship in any temple and he may not pray at any mosque or gurdwara – that doesn’t matter, that is almost irrelevant. If you do, good, it is okay; if you don’t that is even better. But one who has understood the organic unity of existence is constantly in the temple, is constantly facing the sacred and the divine.But if you are doing some stupid mantra you will think these birds are stupid. If you are repeating some nonsense within you or thinking some trivia – you may call it philosophy, religion – then these birds become distractions. Their sounds are simply divine. They don’t say anything, they are simply bubbling with delight. Their song has no meaning except an overflowing of energy. They want to share with existence – with the trees, with the flowers, with you. They have nothing to say, they are just being there, themselves.If you relax, you accept. Acceptance of existence is the only way to relax. If small things disturb you then it is your attitude that is disturbing you. Sit silently, listen to all that is happening all around, and relax. Accept, relax – then suddenly you will feel immense energy arising in you. That energy will be felt first as the deepening of your breath. Ordinarily your breath is very shallow, and sometimes if you try to have deep breaths, you start doing pranayam, you start forcing something, you make an effort. That effort is not needed. Simply accept life, relax, and suddenly you will see that your breath is going deeper than ever. Relax more and the breath goes deeper in you. It becomes slow, rhythmic, and you can almost enjoy it; it gives a certain delight. And then you will become aware that breath is the bridge between you and the whole. Just watch. Don’t do anything.But the more you watch… And when I say watch, don’t try to watch; otherwise you will become tense again and you will start concentrating on the breath. Simply relax, remain relaxed, loose. And look – because what else can you do? You are there, nothing to be done, everything accepted, nothing to be denied, rejected, no struggle, no fight, no conflict, breathing going deep – what can you do? You simply watch. Remember, simply watch; don’t make an effort to watch. This is what Buddha has called vipassana, the watching of the breath, awareness of the breath, or satipatthana, remembering, being alert of the life energy that moves in breath. Don’t try to take deep breaths, don’t try to inhale or exhale – don’t do anything. Simply relax and let the breathing be natural – going on its own, coming on its own – and many things will become available to you.The first thing will be that breathing can be taken in two ways because it is a bridge: one part of it is joined with you, another part is joined with existence. So it can be understood in two ways. You can take it as a voluntary thing. If you want to inhale deeply you can inhale deeply, if you want to exhale deeply you can exhale deeply. You can do something about it, one part is joined with you. But if you don’t do anything then too it continues: no need for you to do anything and it continues; it is also involuntary. The other part is joined with existence itself.You can think of it as you are taking it in, you are breathing it, or you can think in just the opposite way: that it is breathing you. And the other way has to be understood because that will lead you into deep relaxation. It is not that you are breathing, but existence is breathing you. It is a change of gestalt and it happens on its own. If you go on relaxing, accepting everything, relaxing into yourself, suddenly, by and by, you become aware that you are not taking these breaths, they are coming and going on their own, and so gracefully, with such dignity, with such rhythm, with such harmonious rhythm. Who is doing it? – existence is breathing you. It comes into you, goes out of you. Each moment it rejuvenates you, each moment it makes you alive again and again and again. Suddenly you see breathing as a happening.And this is how meditation should grow. And you can do this anywhere, in the marketplace too because that noise is also divine. And if you listen silently, even in the marketplace you will see a certain harmony in the noise. It is no longer a distraction. You can see many things in it if you are silent; tremendous waves of energy moving all around. Once you accept, wherever you go you will feel godliness. The word is not important, but you will feel something tremendously great, you will feel something holy, something luminous, something mysterious. A miracle is constantly happening all around you but you go on missing it.Once meditation settles in you and you fall into rhythm with existence, compassion is a consequence. Suddenly you feel you are in love with the whole and the other is no longer the other. In the other also, you live. And the tree is no longer just “that tree there”; somehow it is related with you. Everything becomes interrelated. You touch a blade of grass and you have touched all the stars because everything is related, it cannot be otherwise. Existence is organic. It is one, it is a unity.Because we are not aware, we don’t see what we go on doing to ourselves. Touch one thing, and something which you would never have thought was related to it starts happening.Just the other night I was reading something about smell. The sensation, the capacity of smell, has almost disappeared from humanity. Animals are very sharp: a horse can smell for miles, a dog can smell more than a man. Just by the smell the dog knows that his master is coming, and after years the dog will again recognize the smell that is his master’s smell.Man has completely forgotten. What has happened to smell? What calamity has happened to smell? Why? There seems to be no reason why smell has been so suppressed. No culture anywhere has consciously suppressed it, but it has become suppressed. It has become suppressed because of sex. Now the whole of humanity lives with sex deeply suppressed, and smell is connected with sex. Before making love a dog will smell the partner because unless he smells a harmony deep down between the two bodies, he will not make love. Once the smell is fitting then he knows that now the bodies are in tune and they can fit and can become a song; even for a moment a unity is possible.Because sex has been suppressed all over the world, smell has become suppressed. The very word has become a little condemnatory. If I say to you, “Do you hear…?” or if I say to you, “Do you see…?” you don’t feel offended. But if I say, “Do you smell…?” One should not feel offended, it is the same language. Smell is a capacity; just like seeing and hearing, smelling is a capacity. When I ask, “Do you smell…?” we feel offended because we have completely forgotten that it is a capacity.There is a famous anecdote about an English thinker, Dr. Johnson. He was sitting in a stagecoach and a lady entered. She said to Dr. Johnson, “Sir, you smell!”But he was a man of language, letters, a grammarian. He said, “No, madam. You smell. I stink!”Smelling is a capacity. “You smell. I stink.” Linguistically he is right. That’s how it should be if you follow grammar. But the very word has become very condemnatory. What has happened to smell? Once you suppress sex, smell is suppressed.You can read in the scriptures that people say, “I saw God.” Nobody says, “I smelled God.” What is wrong in it? If the eyes are right then why is the nose wrong? In the Old Testament it is said that your face is beautiful and your taste is beautiful, but not your smell. Smell is not talked about. We talk about God’s beatific vision; we never talk about his beatific smell.One sense is completely crippled, but if you cripple one sense then one part of the mind is crippled. If you have five senses then your mind has five parts. One fifth of the mind is crippled and one never knows – that means one fifth of life is crippled! The implications are tremendous.If you touch a small thing somewhere, it reverberates all over. Accept everything. I was talking to you a few minutes ago about repressing sex: because of repressing sex, smell has been repressed, and because of repressing sex your breathing has become shallow – because if you breathe deeply your breathing massages the sex center inside. People come to me and say, “If we really breathe, we feel more sexual.” If you make love to a woman your breathing will become very deep. If you keep your breathing shallow you will not be able to achieve orgasm. The breathing hits hard, deep down in the sex center; from the within it massages the sex center.Because sex has been repressed, breathing is repressed, and because breathing is repressed people have become incapable of meditation. Now look at the whole thing: what nonsense we have done! Repressing sex, we have repressed breathing – and breathing is the only bridge between you and the whole.Gurdjieff is right when he says that almost all religions have behaved in such a way that they seem to be against God. They talk about God but they seem to be basically against him. The way they have behaved is against him. Now that breathing is repressed, the bridge is broken. You can only breathe shallowly, you never go deep. And if you cannot go deep in yourself you cannot go deep in existence.Buddha makes breathing his very foundation. A deep, relaxed breathing, an awareness of it, gives you such tremendous silence, relaxation, that by and by you simply merge, melt, disappear. You are no longer a separate island, you start vibrating with the whole. Then you are not a separate note but part of this whole symphony. Then compassion arises.Compassion arises only when you can see that everybody is related to you. Compassion arises only when you can see that you are a member of everybody and everybody is a member of you. Nobody is separate. When the illusion of separation drops, compassion arises. Compassion is not a discipline.In the human experience, the relationship between a mother and her child is the closest to compassion. People call it love but it should not be called love. It is more like compassion than love because it has no passion in it. A mother’s love for the child is closest to compassion. Why? – because the mother has known the child in herself, he was a member of her being. She has known the child as part of herself and even if the child is born and is growing the mother goes on feeling a subtle rhythm with the child. If the child feels ill a thousand miles away, the mother will immediately feel it. She may not be aware of what has happened but she will become depressed. She may not be aware that her child is suffering but she will start suffering. She will find some rationalization about why she is suffering: her stomach is not okay, she has a headache, or something or other.Now in-depth psychology says that the mother and the child always remain joined together with subtle energy waves because they go on vibrating on the same wavelength. The telepathy is easier between a mother and the child than between anybody else – or between twins. Between twins telepathy is very easy.Many experiments on telepathy have been done in Russia – of course, not for religion. They are trying to find out if telepathy can be used as a war technique. They will use it because they are finding clues: twins are very telepathic. If one twin has a cold, a thousand miles away the other starts having a cold. They vibrate on the same wavelength. They are affected by the same things within seconds because they have both lived in the same womb as part of each other; they have existed in the mother’s womb together.A mother’s feeling for the child is more of compassion because she feels he is her own.I was reading an anecdote:During the preliminary inspection of a Boy Scout camp, the director found a large umbrella hidden in the bedroll of a tiny scout, obviously not one of the items of equipment listed. The director asked the lad to explain.The tenderfoot did so neatly by asking, “Sir, did you ever have a mother?”Mother means compassion, mother means feeling for the other as one feels for oneself. When a person moves deeply in meditation and attains to samadhi, he becomes a mother. Buddha is more like a mother than like a father. The Christian association with the word father is not very meaningful or beautiful. To call God father looks a little male-orientated. If there is any God he can only be a mother, not a father.Father is so institutional. A father is an institution. In nature the father doesn’t exist. If you ask a linguist he will say that the word uncle is older than the word father. Uncles came first into existence because nobody knew who his father was. Once private property was fixed, once marriage became a private ownership, the institution of fatherhood entered into human life. It is very fragile, it can disappear any day. If society changes, the institution can disappear, as many other institutions have disappeared. But the mother is going to remain – the mother is natural.In the East many people, many traditions, have called God “the mother.” Their approach seems to be more relevant. Watch Buddha: his face seems more like a woman than like a man, in fact, because of that we have not depicted him as having a beard or mustache. No, Mahavira, Buddha, Krishna, Ram – you never see any mustache or beard on their faces. Not that they were lacking in some hormones; they must have had beards, but we have not depicted them because that would give their faces a more male-like appearance. And in the East we don’t bother much about facts, but we bother much about relevance, significance. Of course the statues of Buddha that you have seen are all false, but in the East we don’t worry about that. The significance is that Buddha has become more womanly, more feminine. That is what I was telling you about the first day: the shift from the left hemisphere of the brain to the right hemisphere of the brain, from the male to the female; the shift from the aggressive to the passive, the shift from the positive to the negative, the shift from effort to effortlessness.A buddha is more feminine, more motherly. If you really become a meditator, by and by, you will see many changes in your being and you will feel more like a woman than like a man – more graceful, more receptive, nonviolent, loving. And a compassion will arise continuously from your being; it will be just a natural fragrance.Ordinarily whatsoever you call compassion goes on hiding your passion in it. Even if you sometimes feel sympathetic toward people, watch, dissect, go deeper into your feeling and somewhere you will find some motivation. In acts which look very compassionate, deep down you will always find some motivation.Once it happened that a man called Louie came back home. He was very shocked to find his wife in the arms of another man. He rushed out of the room crying, “I am getting my shotgun.”His wife dashed after him despite her unclothed state, seized him and shouted, “You fool, what are you getting excited about? It was my lover who paid for the new furniture we recently got, my new clothes, the extra money you thought I earned sewing, all the little luxuries we have been able to buy – they all came from him!”But Louie wrenched himself away and continued upstairs.“No shotgun, Louie!” yelled his wife.“What shotgun?” called back Louie. “I am getting a blanket. That poor fellow will catch cold, lying there like that.”Even if you feel – or you think you feel or you pretend that you feel – compassion, just go deeply and analyze it and you will always find some other motivation in it. It cannot be pure compassion, and if it is not pure, it is not compassion because purity is a basic ingredient in compassion. Otherwise it is something else; it is more or less a formality. We have learned how to be formal: how to behave with your wife, how to behave with your husband, how to behave with your children, with friends, with your family. We have learned everything. Compassion is not something which can be learned. When you have unlearned all formalities, all etiquette and manners, it arises in you. It is very wild. It doesn’t taste of etiquette, of formality – they are all dead things compared to it. It is very alive, it is a flame of love.At the twelfth hole of a hotly-contested match, the grounds overlooked the highway and as Smith and Jones approached the green, they saw a funeral procession making its way along the road.At this, Smith stopped, took off his hat, placed it over his heart and bent his head till the procession disappeared around the bend.Jones was astonished, and after Smith had replaced his hat and returned to his game, he said, “That was delicate and respectful of you, Smith.”“Ah, well,” said Smith, “I could not do less. I had been married to the woman for twenty years, after all.”Life has become plastic, artificial, formal, because you have to do certain things that you do. Reluctantly of course you follow duties. But if you miss much of life, it is natural because life is possible only if you are alive, intensely alive. If your own flame has become covered by formalities, duties, rules, which you have to fulfill reluctantly, you can only drag. You may drag comfortably, your life may be a life of convenience, but it cannot be really alive.A really alive life is, in a way, chaotic. In a way, I say, because that chaos has its own discipline. It has no rules because it need not have any rules. It has the most basic rule in-built in it: it need not have any external rules.Now the Zen story:One winter day, a masterless samurai came to Eisai’s temple and made an appeal: I’m poor and sick,” he said, “and my family is dying of hunger. Please help us, master.”Dependent as he was on widows’ mites, Eisai’s life was very austere, and he had nothing to give. He was about to send the samurai off when he remembered the image of Yakushi-Buddha in the hall. Going up to it he tore off its halo and gave it to the samurai. “Sell this,” said Eisai, “it should tide you over.”The bewildered but desperate samurai took the halo and left.“Master!” cried one of Eisai’s disciples, “that’s sacrilege! How could you do such a thing?”“Sacrilege? Bah! I have merely put the Buddha’s mind, which is full of love and mercy, to use, so to speak. Indeed, if he himself had heard that poor samurai, he would have cut off a limb for him.”A very simple story, but very significant.First, even when you have nothing to give, look again: you will always find something to give. Even when you have nothing to give you can always find something to give. It is a question of attitude: if you cannot give anything at least you can smile, if you cannot give anything at least you can sit with the person and hold his hand. It is not a question of giving something, it is a question of giving.This Eisai was a poor monk, as Buddhist monks are. His life was very austere and he had nothing to give. Ordinarily, it is an absolute sacrilege to take the halo off Buddha’s statue and give it away. No so-called religious person could think of it, unless it is somebody who is really religious. That’s why I say compassion knows no rules, compassion is beyond rules. It is wild, it follows no formalities.Then suddenly the master remembered the image of Buddha in the hall. In Japan, in China, they put a gold halo around the head of the Buddha, just to show the aura around his head. Suddenly the master remembered it – every day he must have worshipped the same statue.Going up to it he tore off its halo and gave it to the samurai. “Sell this,” said Eisai, “it should tide you over.”The bewildered but desperate samurai took the halo and left.Even the samurai was bewildered. He had not expected this. Even he must have thought that this was sacrilege: “What type of man is this? He is a follower of Buddha and he has destroyed the statue. Even to touch the statue is sacrilege and he has taken away the halo.”This is the difference between a real religious person and a so-called religious person. The so-called religious person always looks to the rule, he always thinks of what is proper and what is not proper. But a really religious person lives it; there is nothing proper and improper for him. Compassion is so infinitely proper that whatsoever you do through compassion automatically becomes proper.“Master!” cried one of Eisai’s disciples, “that’s sacrilege! How could you do such a thing?”Even a disciple understands that this is not right. Something improper has been done.“Sacrilege? Bah! I have merely put the Buddha’s mind, which is full of love and mercy, to good use, so to speak. Indeed, if he himself had heard that poor samurai, he would have cut off a limb for him.”To understand is something other than just to follow. When you follow you become almost blind. Then there are rules which have to be kept. But if you understand then too you follow, but you are no longer blind. And each moment decides; each moment your consciousness responds and whatsoever you do is right.One of the most beautiful stories in Zen is about a Zen master who asked, one winter night, to be allowed to stay in a temple. He was shivering because the night was cold and snow was falling outside. Of course, the temple priest sympathized and told him, “You can stay, but only for the night because this temple is not a sarai. In the morning you will have to go.”In the middle of the night the priest suddenly heard a noise. He came running and could not believe his eyes. The monk was sitting around a fire which he had made inside the temple – and one Buddha statue was missing.In Japan they make wooden Buddha statues.The priest asked, “Where is the statue?”The master showed him the fire and he said, “I was shivering and it is very cold.”The priest said, “You seem to be mad! Don’t you see what you have done? It was a Buddha statue. You have burned Buddha!”The master looked in the fire, which was disappearing, and poked the fire with a stick.The priest asked, “What are you doing?”He said, “I am trying to find the bones of the Buddha.”The priest said, “You are certainly mad. It is a wooden Buddha, there are no bones in it.”Then the monk said, “The night is still long and it is getting even colder. Why not bring these two other Buddhas too?”Of course, he had to be thrown out of the temple immediately – this man was dangerous!When he was being thrown out he said, “What are you doing? – throwing a live buddha out for a wooden Buddha? The alive buddha was suffering so much, I had to show compassion. And if Buddha were alive he would have done the same. He would himself have given all those three statues to me. I know it. I know it from my very heart that he would have done the same!”But who was there to listen to him? He was thrown out into the snow and the doors were closed.In the morning, when the priest went out, he saw the master sitting near a milestone with a few flowers on top of it, worshipping it. The priest came again and said, “What are you doing now? Worshipping a milestone?”The master said, “Whenever the time to pray comes, I create my Buddhas anywhere because they are always all around. This milestone is as good as your wooden Buddhas inside the temple!”It is a question of attitude. When you look with worshipful eyes, then anything becomes divine.And remember, the story about Eisai is easy to understand because the compassion is shown toward somebody else. The other story is even more complex and difficult to understand because the compassion is shown toward oneself. A real man of understanding is neither hard toward others nor hard toward himself because it is one and the same energy. A real man of understanding is not a masochist. He is not a sadist, he is not a masochist. A real man of understanding simply understands that there is no separation: all, including himself, is divine – and he lives out this understanding.To live out of understanding is compassion. Never try to practice it, simply relax deep into meditation. Be in a state of let-go in meditation and suddenly you will be able to smell the fragrance that is coming from your own innermost depth. Then the flower blossoms and compassion spreads. Meditation is the flower and compassion is its fragrance.Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Is Zen the path of surrender? Then how come the basic teaching of Buddha is, “Be a light unto yourself”?The essential surrender happens within you. It has nothing to do with anybody outside you. The basic surrender is a relaxation, a trust – so don’t be misguided by the word. Linguistically, surrender means to surrender to somebody, but religiously, surrender simply means trust, relaxing. It is an attitude rather than an act: you live through trust.Let me explain. You swim in water, you go to the river and swim. What do you do? – you trust water. A good swimmer trusts so much that he almost becomes one with the river. He is not fighting, he does not grab the water, he is not stiff and tense. If you are stiff and tense you will be drowned, if you are relaxed the river takes care.That’s why whenever somebody dies, the dead body floats on the water. This is a miracle. Amazing! Alive, the person died and was drowned by the river, but dead, the person simply floats on the surface. What has happened? The dead person knows some secret about the river which the alive person did not know. The alive person was fighting. The river was the enemy. He was afraid, he could not trust. But the dead person, not being there, how could he fight? The dead person is totally relaxed, with no tension: suddenly the body surfaces, the river takes care. No river can drown a dead person.Trust means you are not fighting. Surrender means you don’t think of life as the enemy but as the friend. Once you trust the river, suddenly you start enjoying. Tremendous delight arises: splashing, swimming, or just floating or diving deep. But you are not separate from the river, you merge, you become one.Surrender means to live the same way in life as a good swimmer swims in the river. Life is a river: either you can fight or you can float, either you can push the river and try to go against the current or you can float with the river and go wherever the river leads you.Surrender is not toward somebody, it is simply a way of life. A God is not needed to surrender to. There are religions which believe in God, there are religions which don’t believe in any God – but all religions believe in surrender, so surrender is the real God.Even the concept of God can be discarded. Buddhism does not believe in any God, Jainism does not believe in any God, but they are religions. Christianity believes in God, Islam believes in God, Sikhism believes in God; they are also religions. The Christian teaches surrender to God: God is just an excuse to surrender. It is a help because it will be difficult for you to surrender without any object. The object is just an excuse so that in the name of God you can surrender. Buddhism says simply, “Surrender: there is no God. Relax. It is not a question of some object, it is a question of your own subjectivity. Relax, don’t fight, accept.”The belief in God is not needed. In fact, the word belief is ugly; it does not show trust, it does not show faith. Belief is almost the very opposite of faith. The word belief comes from a root lief. Lief means to desire, to wish. Now let me explain it to you. You say, “I believe in God, the compassionate” – what exactly are you saying? You are saying, “I wish there was a God who is compassionate.” Whenever you say, “I believe,” you say, “I intensely desire” but you don’t know.If you know there is no question of belief. Do you believe in the trees here? Do you believe in the sun which rises every morning? Do you believe in the stars? There is no question of belief. You know that the sun is there, that the trees are there. Nobody believes in the sun; if he did you would say he is mad. If somebody came and said, “I believe in the sun,” and tried to convert you, you would say, “You have gone mad!”I have heard an anecdote:A certain lady, Lady Lewis, was appointed ambassador to Italy by the United States of America. She was a recently converted Catholic, and of course, when people become converted they are very enthusiastic. And she was boring everybody. Whosoever she came into contact with, she would try to make him a Catholic.The story goes that when she went to Italy as the ambassador, she went to see the pope. A long discussion followed, it went on and on. A press reporter slipped closer and closer just to hear what was going on. The pope had never given so much time to anybody, and the discussion seemed to be very heated and hot. Something was going on. When the pope talks so long to the ambassador of the richest and the strongest nation in the world, there is going to be some news.Just to overhear he came closer and closer. He could hear only one sentence. The pope was saying in a faltering English, “Lady, you don’t understand me. I am already a Catholic!”She was trying to convert the pope!If somebody comes and says to you, “Believe in the sun,” you will say, “I am already a Catholic. I already believe. Don’t be worried about it” – because you know.Somebody asked Sri Aurobindo, “Do you believe in God?”He said, “No.”Of course the questioner was very shocked. He had come from far away, from Germany, and he was a great seeker of God and he was hoping for much, and this man simply says a flat no. He said, “But I was thinking that you have known him.”Aurobindo said, “Yes, I have known him, but I don’t believe in him.”Once you know, what is the point of belief? Belief is in ignorance. If you know, you know. And it is good if you don’t know, to know that you don’t know. The belief can deceive you. The belief can create an atmosphere in your mind where without knowing you start thinking that you know. Belief is not trust, and the more strongly you say that you believe totally the more you are afraid of the doubt within you.Trust knows no doubt. Belief is just repressing doubt; it is a desire. When you say, “I believe in God,” you are saying, “I cannot live without God. It will be too difficult to exist in this darkness, surrounded by death, without a concept of God.” That concept helps. One doesn’t feel alone, one doesn’t feel unprotected, insecure – hence belief.Martin Luther has written, “My God is a great fortress.” These words cannot come from a man who trusts. “My God is a great fortress”? Martin Luther seems to be on the defensive. Even God is just a fortress to protect you, to make you feel secure? – then it is out of fear. The thinking: “God is my greatest fortress” is born out of fear, not out of love. It is not of trust. Deep down there is doubt and fear.Trust is simple. It is just like a child trusting in his mother. It is not that he believes, belief has not yet entered. You were a small child once. Did you believe in your mother or did you trust her? The doubt has not arisen, so what is the question of belief? Belief comes only when the doubt has entered; doubt comes first. Later on, to suppress the doubt, you catch hold of a belief. Trust is when doubt disappears, trust is when doubt is not there.For instance, you breathe. You take a breath in, then you exhale, you breathe out. Are you afraid of breathing out because who knows, it may come back, it may not come back? You trust. You trust that it will come. Of course there is no reason to trust. What is the reason? Why should it come back? You can, at the most, say that in the past it has been happening so, but that is not a guarantee. It may not happen in the future. If you become afraid of breathing out because it may not come back, then you will hold your breath in. That’s what belief is: clinging, holding. But if you hold your breath in, your face will go purple and you will feel suffocated. And if you go on doing that you will die.All beliefs suffocate and all beliefs help you not to be really alive. They deaden your being.You exhale, you trust in life. The Buddhist word nirvana simply means exhaling, breathing out, trusting. Trust is a very, very innocent phenomenon. Belief is of the head, trust is of the heart. One simply trusts life because you are out of life, you live in life and you will go back again to the source. There is no fear. You are born, you live, you will die; there is no fear. You will be born again, you will live again, you will die; it is a wheel. The same life that has given you life can always give you more life, so why be afraid?Why cling to beliefs? Beliefs are manmade, trust is God-made. Beliefs are philosophical, trust has nothing to do with philosophy. Trust simply shows that you know what love is. It is not a concept of God who is sitting somewhere in heaven and manipulating and managing. Trust needs no God: this infinite life, this totality, is more than enough. Once you trust you relax. That relaxation is surrender.Now, “Is Zen the path of surrender?” Yes. Religion, as such, is surrendering, relaxing. Don’t cling to anything. Clinging shows that you don’t trust life.Every evening, Mohammed used to distribute whatsoever he had collected in the day. All! Not even a single pai would he save for the next day because he said, “The same source that has given today will give me tomorrow. If it has happened today, why be untrusting about tomorrow? Why save?”But when he was dying and he was very ill, his wife became worried. Even at midnight a physician might be needed, so that evening she saved five rupees, five dinars. She was afraid. “Nobody knows. He may become too ill in the night and some medicine may be needed. And where will I go in the middle of the night? Or a doctor may be needed and the fee will have to be given.” Not saying anything to Mohammed, she saved five dinars.Nearabout midnight, Mohammed opened his eyes and he said, “I feel a certain distrust around me. It seems something has been saved.”The wife became very much afraid and she said, “Excuse me, but thinking that something may be needed in the night, I have saved just five dinars.”Mohammed said, “Go out and give it to somebody.”She said, “Who is going to be there in the middle of the night?”Mohammed said, “Just listen and let me die peacefully, otherwise I will feel guilty, guilty against my God. And if he asks me, I will feel ashamed that at the last moment I died in deep distrust. Go out!”The wife went out, unbelieving of course, but a beggar was standing there.When she came back Mohammed said, “Look, he manages well, and if we need something then a donor will be standing outside the door. Don’t be worried.”Then he pulled up his blanket and died immediately. He relaxed totally.Clinging to anything, anything whatsoever, shows distrust. If you love a woman or a man and you cling, that simply shows that you don’t trust. If you love a woman and you ask, “Will you also love me tomorrow or not?” you don’t trust. If you go to the court to get married you don’t trust. Then you trust more in the court, in the police, in the law, than in love. You are preparing for tomorrow. If this woman or this man tries to deceive you tomorrow or leaves you in the ditch, you can get support from the court and the police, and the law will be with you and the whole society will support you. You are making arrangements, afraid.But if you really love, love is enough, more than enough. Who bothers about tomorrow? But deep down there is doubt. Even while you think you are in love, doubt continues.It is reported that when Jesus resurrected after his crucifixion, the first person to see him back alive was Mary Magdalene. She had loved him tremendously. She ran toward him. In the New Testament it is said that Jesus said, “Don’t touch me.”I became a little suspicious because Jesus saying, “Don’t touch me,” does not look right. Something somewhere has gone wrong. Of course, it is okay if a pope says, “Don’t touch me,” but a Jesus saying, “Don’t touch me”? Almost impossible!So I tried to find the original. In the original there is a word, a Greek word, that can mean both touch or cling. Then I found the key. Jesus says, “Don’t cling to me,” not “Don’t touch me,” but the translators have interpreted it as, “Don’t touch me.” The interpreter has entered his own mind in it. Jesus must have said, “Don’t cling to me,” because if there is trust there is no clinging. If there is love there is no clinging. You simply share without any clinging, you share in deep relaxation.Surrendering means surrendering to life, surrendering to the source from where you come and to where one day you will go back again. You are just like a wave in the ocean: you come out of the ocean, you go back to the ocean. Surrendering means trusting in the ocean. And of course, what can a wave do except that? The wave has to trust the ocean – and whether you trust or not you remain part of the ocean. Non-trusting, you will create anxiety, that’s all. Nothing will change, only you will become anxious, tense, desperate. If you trust, you flower, you bloom, you celebrate, knowing well that deep down is your mother, the ocean. When tired you will go back and rest in her being again. When rested you will come back again to have a taste of the sky and the sunlight and the stars. Surrendering is trusting and it has nothing to do with any concept of God, any ideology of God. It is an attitude.Then you can understand the meaning of Buddha’s last utterance: “Be a light unto yourself.” When he says be a light unto yourself he means: If you have surrendered to life you have become a light unto yourself. Then life leads you. Then you always live in enlightenment. When he says “Be a light unto yourself” he is saying don’t follow anybody, don’t cling to anybody. Learn from everybody but don’t cling to anybody. Be open, vulnerable, but remain on your own because finally the religious experience cannot be a borrowed experience. It has to be existential, it has to be your own. Only then is it authentic.If I say something and you believe in it, it is not going to help. If I say something and you search and you surrender and you trust, then you also experience the same – then it has become a light unto yourself. Otherwise my words will remain words; at the most they can become beliefs. Unless you experience the truth of them they cannot become trust, they cannot become your own truth. My truth cannot be yours, otherwise it would have been very cheap. If my truth could be yours then there would be no problem.That is the difference between a scientific truth and a religious truth. A scientific truth can be borrowed. A scientific truth, once known, becomes everybody else’s property. Albert Einstein discovered the theory of relativity. Now there is no need for everybody to discover it again and again and again. That would be foolish. Once discovered, it has become public. Now it is everybody’s theory. Once discovered, once proved, now even a schoolchild can learn it. Now no genius is needed: you need not be an Albert Einstein, just a mediocre mind will do, just an ordinary mind will do. You can understand it and it is yours. Of course, Einstein had to work for years, then he was able to discover it. You need not work. If you are ready to understand and put your mind to it, in just a few hours you will understand.But the same is not true about religious truth. Buddha discovered, Christ discovered, Nanak and Kabir discovered, but their discovery cannot become your discovery. You will have to rediscover it again. You will have to move again from ABC, you cannot just believe in them. That won’t help. But that is what humanity has been doing: mistaking religious truth for scientific truth. It is not scientific truth, it can never become public property. Each individual has to come to it alone, each individual has to come to it again and again. It can never become available in the market. You will have to pass through the hardship; you will have to seek and search, you will have to follow the same path. A shortcut cannot even be made. You will have to pass through the same austerities as Buddha, the same difficulties as Buddha, and you will have to suffer the same calamities on the path as Buddha and you will have to be in the same hazards as Buddha. And one day, when the clouds disappear, you will dance and be as ecstatic as Buddha.Of course, when an Archimedes discovers, he runs naked in the streets: “Eureka! I have found it!” You can understand Archimedes within minutes, within seconds, but you will not be ecstatic; otherwise every schoolchild would run naked in the streets, crying, “Eureka!” Nobody has done that since Archimedes did it; it happened only once. For Archimedes it was a discovery, since then it has become public property.But it is good that the religious truth cannot be transferred to you, otherwise you would never achieve the same ecstasy as Buddha or Jesus or Krishna, never, because you would learn it in a school textbook. Any fool could transfer it to you. Then the whole orgasmic experience will be lost.It is good that religious experience has to be experienced individually. Nobody can lead you there. People can indicate the way and those indications are very subtle. Don’t take them literally. Buddha said, “Be a light unto yourself.” He is saying, “Remember, my truth cannot be your truth, my light cannot be your light. Imbibe the spirit from me, become more thirsty from me. Let your search be intense and be totally devoted to it. Learn the devotion of a truth-seeker from me but the truth, the light, will burn within you. You will have to kindle it within you.”You cannot borrow truth. It cannot be transferred, it is not a property. It is such a subtle experience that it cannot even be expressed. It is inexpressible. One, at the most, tries to give a few hints.The second question:Osho,Please explain the nature of the experiences we call “boredom” and “restlessness.”Boredom and restlessness are deeply related. Whenever you feel boredom, then you feel restlessness. Restlessness is a byproduct of boredom.Try to understand the mechanism. Whenever you feel bored you want to move away from that situation. If somebody is saying something and you are getting bored, you start becoming fidgety. This is a subtle indication that you want to move from this place, from this man, from this nonsense talk. Your body starts moving. Of course, because of politeness you suppress it, but the body is already on the move – because the body is more authentic than the mind, the body is more honest and sincere than the mind. The mind is trying to be polite, smiling. You say, “How beautiful,” but inside you are saying, “How horrible! I have listened to this story so many times and he is telling it again!”I have heard about Albert Einstein’s wife, Frau Einstein. A friend of Albert Einstein used to come many times and Einstein would tell some anecdotes, some jokes, and they would laugh. The friend became curious about one thing: whenever he came, and whenever Einstein would start telling jokes…Einstein was a Jew, and Jews have the best jokes in the world. Because they have suffered so long they have lived by jokes. Their life has been so miserable that they had to tickle themselves; hence they have the most beautiful jokes. No other country, no other race, can compete with them. In India we don’t have good jokes at all because the country has lived very peacefully – no need to tickle. Humor is needed when one is in constant danger: one needs to laugh at anything, any excuse will do to laugh.Einstein would tell some joke, some anecdote, some story, and they both would laugh. But the friend became curious because whenever Einstein would start saying something, the wife would immediately start knitting or doing something.So he asked, “The moment Einstein starts telling some joke, why do you start knitting?”The wife said, “If I don’t do anything, it will be tremendously difficult for me to tolerate because I have heard that joke a thousand and one times. You come sometimes, I am always here. Whenever anybody comes he tells the same joke. If I didn’t do something with my hands I would become so fidgety that it would be almost impolite. So I have to do something so that I can move my restlessness into work and I can hide behind the work.”Whenever you feel bored you will feel restless. Restlessness is an indication of the body. The body is saying, “Move away from here. Go anywhere, but don’t be here.” But the mind goes on smiling and the eyes go on sparkling, and you go on saying that you are listening and you have never heard such a beautiful thing. The mind is civilized, the body is still wild. The mind is human, the body is still animal. The mind is false, the body is true. The mind knows the rules and regulations – how to behave and how to behave rightly – so even if you meet a bore you say, “I am so happy, so glad to see you!” And deep down, if you were allowed you would kill this man. He tempts you to murder. Then you become fidgety, then you feel restlessness.If you listen to the body and run away, the restlessness will disappear. Try it. Try it! If somebody is boring simply start jumping and running around. See: restlessness will disappear because restlessness simply shows that the energy does not want to be here. The energy is already on the move, the energy has already left this place. Now you follow energy.So the real thing is to understand boredom, not restlessness. Boredom is a very, very significant phenomenon. Only man feels bored, no other animal. You cannot make a buffalo bored – impossible! Only man gets bored because only man is conscious. Consciousness is the cause. The more sensitive you are, the more alert you are, the more conscious you are, the more you will feel bored. You will feel bored in more situations. A mediocre mind does not feel so bored. He goes on, he accepts: whatsoever is, is okay; he is not so alert. The more alert you become, the more fresh, the more you will feel it if some situation is just a repetition, if some situation is just getting hard on you, if some situation is just stale. The more sensitive you are the more bored you will become.Boredom is an indication of sensitivity. Trees are not bored, animals are not bored, rocks are not bored, because they are not sensitive enough. This has to be one of the basic understandings about your boredom: that you are sensitive.But buddhas are also not bored. You cannot bore a buddha. Animals are not bored and buddhas are not bored, so boredom exists as a middle phenomenon between the animal and the buddha. For boredom, a little more sensitivity is needed than is given to the animal. And if you want to get beyond it then you have to become totally sensitive – then again the boredom disappears. But in the middle the boredom is there. Either you become animal-like, then boredom disappears…So you will find that people who live a very animalistic life are less bored. Eating, drinking, making merry, they are not very bored – but they are not sensitive. They live at the minimum. They live only with that much consciousness as is needed for a day-to-day routine life. You will find that intellectuals, people who think too much, are more bored because they think. And because of their thinking they can see that something is just stale repetition.Your life is repetition. Every morning you get up almost the same way as you have been getting up all your life. You take your breakfast almost the same way. Then you go to the office – the same office, the same people, the same work. Then you come home – the same wife. If you get bored it is natural. It is very difficult for you to see any newness here. Everything seems to be old, dust covered.I have heard an anecdote:Mary Jane, the very good friend of a wealthy broker, opened the door cheerfully one day, and then quickly attempted to close it when she discovered the person on the threshold to be her lover’s wife.The wife leaned against the door and said, “Oh, let me in, dear. I don’t intend to make a scene, just to have a small, friendly discussion.”With considerable nervousness Mary Jane let her enter, then said cautiously, “What do you want?”“Nothing much,” said the wife, looking about. “I just want the answer to one question. Tell me dear, just between us, what do you see in that dumb jerk?”The same husband every day becomes a dumb jerk. The same wife every day – you almost forget how she looks. If you are told to close your eyes and to remember your wife’s face, you will find it impossible to remember. Many other women will come into your mind, the whole neighborhood, but not your wife. The relationship has become a continuous repetition. You make love, you hug your wife, you kiss your wife, but these are all empty gestures now. The glory and the glamour have disappeared long ago.A marriage is almost finished by the time the honeymoon is over. Then you go on pretending, but behind those pretensions a deep boredom accumulates. Watch people walking on the street and you will see them completely bored. Everybody is bored, bored to death. Look at their faces – no aura of delight; look at their eyes – dust-covered, no glimmer of inner happiness. They move from the office to the home, from the home to the office, and by and by their whole life becomes a mechanical routine, a constant repetition. And one day they die. Almost always people die without ever having been alive.Bertrand Russell is reported to have said, “When I remember, I cannot find more than a few moments in my life when I was really alive, aflame.” Can you remember how many moments in your life you were really aflame? It rarely happens. One dreams about those moments, one imagines those moments, hopes for those moments, but they never happen. Even if they happen, sooner or later they also become repetitive. When you fall in love with a woman or a man you feel a miracle, but by and by the miracle disappears and everything settles into a routine.Boredom is the consciousness of repetition. Because animals cannot remember the past, they cannot feel bored. They cannot remember the past so they cannot feel the repetition. The buffalo goes on eating the same grass every day with the same delight. You cannot; how can you eat the same grass with the same delight? You get fed up.Hence people try to change. They move into a new house, they bring a new car home, they divorce the old husband, they find a new love affair, but again that thing is going to become repetitive sooner or later. Changing places, changing persons, changing partners, changing houses, is not going to do anything. And whenever a society becomes very bored, people start moving from one town to another, from one job to another, from one wife to another. But sooner or later they realize that this is all nonsense because the same thing is going to happen again and again with every woman, with every man, with every house, with every car.What to do then? Become more conscious. It is not a question of changing situations; transform your being, become more conscious. If you become more conscious you will be able to see that each moment is new. But for that, very much energy, tremendous energy of consciousness is needed.The wife is not the same, remember. You are in an illusion. Go back home and look again at your wife. She is not the same. Nobody can be the same, just appearances deceive. These trees are not the same as they were yesterday. How can they be? They have grown, many leaves have fallen, new leaves have come. Look at the almond tree, how many new leaves have come! Every day the old is falling and the new is coming, but you are not that conscious.Either have no consciousness – then you cannot feel repetition – or have so much consciousness that in each repetition you can see something new. These are the two ways to get out of boredom.Changing outside things is not going to help. It is just like arranging the furniture in your room again and again. Whatsoever you do – you can put it this way or that way – it is the same furniture. There are many housewives who continuously think about how to manage things, how to put things, where to put them, where not to put – and they go on changing. But it is the same room, it is the same furniture. How long will you deceive yourself in this way?A brief television skit I once saw was of a caveman and a cavewoman who were kissing wildly and hysterically. They broke apart only to say, “Gee, this is great!” Then they turned to kissing again.Finally the cavewoman pulled away to say, “Listen, do you suppose this wonderful thing we have discovered means that we are married?”The caveman bent his small mind to the matter and finally said, “Yes, I guess we are married. Now let us kiss some more.”Whereupon the cavewoman put her hand to her head and said in sudden anguish, “Oh, I have such a headache!”Two persons meet, strangers, everything is wonderful, beautiful, but sooner or later they become acquainted with each other. That’s what marriage means. It means that now they are settling, now they would like to make it a repetition. Then the same kissing and the same hugging is no longer beautiful, it becomes almost a duty.A man came home and found his friend kissing his wife. He took the friend into another room. The friend was trembling with fear: “Now there is going to be something! The friendship will be broken.”The husband seemed to be very angry, but he was not. He closed the door and asked the friend, “Just tell me one thing: I have to, but why were you kissing her?”“I have to, but why were you kissing her?” By and by everything settles. Newness disappears, and you don’t have that much consciousness or that quality of consciousness which can go on finding the new again and again. For a dull mind everything is old, for a totally alive mind there is nothing old under the sun – there cannot be. Everything is in flux. Every person is in flux, is river-like. Persons are not dead things – how can they be the same? Are you the same? Between when you came this morning to listen to me and when you will go back home, a lot has happened. Some thoughts have disappeared from your mind, some other thoughts have entered your mind. You may have attained to a new insight. You cannot go the same as you had come. The river is continuously flowing; it looks the same but it is not the same. Old Heraclitus has said that you cannot step twice into the same river because the river is never the same.One thing is that you are also not the same, and another thing is that everything is changing. But then one has to live at the peak of consciousness. Either live like a buddha or live like a buffalo, then you will not be bored. Now the choice is yours.I have never seen anybody the same. You come to me – how many times you have come to me – but I never see the old. I’m always surprised by the newness that you bring every day. You may not be aware of it.Remain capable of being surprised.Let me tell you one anecdote:A man entered a bar, deep in private thoughts of his own. He turned to a woman just passing and said, “Pardon me, miss, do you happen to have the time?”In a strident voice she responded, “How dare you make such a proposition to me!”The man snapped to attention in surprise and was uncomfortably aware that every pair of eyes in the place had turned in their direction. He mumbled, “I just asked the time, miss.”In a voice even louder the woman shrieked. “I will call the police if you say another word!”Grabbing his drink and embarrassed very nearly to death, the man hastened to the far end of the room and huddled at a table, holding his breath and wondering how soon he could sneak out the door.No more than half a minute had passed when the woman joined him. In a quiet voice she said, “I’m terribly sorry, sir, to have embarrassed you, but I am a psychology student at the university and I am writing a thesis on the reaction of human beings to sudden, shocking statements.”The man stared at her for three seconds, then he leaned back and bellowed, “You will do all that for me, all night, for just two dollars?”And it is said that the woman fell down, unconscious.Maybe we don’t allow our consciousness to rise higher because then life will be a constant surprise and you may not be able to manage it. That’s why you have settled for a dull mind – there is some investment in it. You are not dull for no reason. You are dull for a certain purpose; if you are really alive then everything will be surprising and shocking. If you remain dull then nothing surprises you, nothing is shocking. The more dull you are, the more life seems to be dull to you. If you become more aware, life will also become more alive, livelier, and there is going to be difficulty.You always live with dead expectations. Every day you come home and you expect a certain behavior from your wife. Now look how you create your own misery: you expect a certain fixed behavior from your wife and then you expect your wife to be new. You are asking the impossible. If you really want your wife to remain continuously new to you, don’t expect. Come home always ready to be surprised and shocked, then the wife will be new. But she has to fulfill certain expectations.We never allow our total flux-like freshness to be known to the other. We go on hiding, we don’t expose, because the other may not be able to understand it at all. And the wife also expects the husband to behave in a certain way, and of course, they manage the roles. We are not living life, we are living roles. The husband comes home; he forces himself into a certain role. By the time he enters the house he is no more an alive person, he is just a husband.A husband means a certain type of expected behavior. The woman there is a wife, and the man there is a husband. Now when these two persons meet there are really four persons: the husband and wife – which are not real persons, just personas, masks, false patterns, expected behavior, duties, and all that – and the real persons hiding behind the masks. Those real persons feel bored.But you have invested too much in your persona, in your mask. If you really want a life which has no boredom in it, drop all masks, be true. Sometimes it will be difficult, I know, but it is worth it. Be true. If you feel like loving your wife, love her; otherwise say you don’t feel like it. What is happening right now is that the husband goes on making love to the wife and goes on thinking of some actress. In imagination he is not making love to this woman, in imagination he is making love to some other woman. And the same is true about the wife. Then things become boring because they are no more alive. The intensity, the sharpness, is lost.It happened on a railway platform. Mr. Johnson had weighed himself on one of those old-fashioned penny machines that delivered a card with a fortune printed on it.The formidable Mrs. Johnson plucked it from her husband’s fingers and said, “Let me see that. Ah, it says you are firm and resolute, have a decisive personality, are a leader of men, and are attractive to women.”Then she turned over the card, studied it for a moment and said, “And they have got the weight wrong as well.”No woman can believe that her husband is attracted to other women. Now there is the whole point, the whole crux. If he is not attracted to other women, how can she expect that he will be attracted to her? If he is attracted to other women only then can he be attracted to her, because she is also a woman. The wife wants him to be attracted to her and not attracted to anybody else. The husband wants his wife to be attracted to him and not attracted to anybody else. Now this is asking something absurd. It is as if you are saying, “You are allowed to breathe only in my presence and when you go near somebody else, you are not allowed to breathe. How dare you breathe anywhere else?” Just breathe when the wife is there, just breathe when the husband is there, and don’t breathe anywhere else. Of course, if you do that you will be dead and you will also not be able to breathe in front of your wife.Love has to be a way of life. You are to be loving, only then can you love your wife and your husband. But the wife says, “No, you should not look at anybody else with a loving eye.” Of course you manage, because if you don’t manage it creates such nuisance. But you manage, and by and by the glimmer in your eyes disappears. If you cannot look anywhere else with love, by and by you cannot look at your own wife with love; it disappears. The same has happened to her. The same has happened to the whole of humanity. Then life is a boredom. Then everybody is waiting for death. Then there are people continuously thinking of committing suicide.Marcel has said somewhere that the only metaphysical problem facing humanity is suicide. And it is so because people are so bored. It is simply amazing why they don’t commit suicide, how they go on living. Life doesn’t seem to give anything. All meaning seems to be lost, but still people go on dragging somehow, hoping that someday some miracle will happen and everything will be put right. It never happens. You have to put it right, nobody else is going to put it right. No messiah is to come, don’t wait for any messiah. You have to be a light unto yourself.Live more authentically. Drop the masks; they are a weight on your heart. Drop all falsities. Be exposed. Of course it is going to be troublesome, but that trouble is worth it because only after that trouble will you grow and become mature. And then nothing is holding life. Each moment life reveals its newness. It is a constant miracle happening all around you; only you are hiding behind dead habits.Become a buddha if you don’t want to be bored. Live each moment as fully alert as possible because only in full alertness will you be able to drop the mask. Otherwise you have completely forgotten what your original face is – even when you stand before the mirror in your bathroom and you are alone, when there is nobody there. Even standing before the mirror you don’t see your original face in the mirror; there too you go on deceiving.Existence is available for those who are available to existence. And then I tell you, there is no boredom. Life is infinite delight.The third question:Osho,I feel so much resistance against meditation and I don't have this desire for God that you speak about. Is this the right place for me?If you feel much resistance against meditation it simply shows that deep down you are alert that something is going to happen which will change your total life. You are afraid of being reborn. You have invested too much in your old habits, in the old personality, in the old identity.Meditation is nothing but trying to clean your being, trying to become fresh and young, trying to become more alive and more alert. If you are afraid of meditation it means you are afraid of life. You are afraid of awareness. And the resistance comes because you know that if you move into meditation, something is bound to happen. If you are not resisting at all it may be because you don’t take meditation very seriously, you don’t take meditation very sincerely. Then you can play around – what is there to be afraid of?It is exactly because you are resisting that this is the right place for you. This is precisely the right place for you. The resistance shows that something is going to happen. One never resists without a deep cause.You must be living a very dead life. Now you are afraid that something is becoming alive, something is changing. You resist. Resistance is an indication, resistance is a very clear indication that you have suppressed much. Now in meditation that suppression will surface, it will be released. You would also like to be released of the burden, but in that burden there are investments.For example, you may be carrying pebbles in your hands but you think they are diamonds. And then I tell you, “Clean yourself. Drop these pebbles.” Now the problem arises that they are pebbles to me and they are diamonds to you. They have become a burden and you cannot move because of them. You would like to be unburdened, so you listen to me. You would like to be unburdened, but then you are afraid that your diamonds will be lost. And they are not diamonds. Look again at your diamonds: if they were really diamonds you should be happy. If they were really diamonds you would not have come to me at all; there is no need. If you have come, it shows that you are seeking.You may say that you are not interested in God – I am also not interested in God – but you are interested in yourself. Are you interested in yourself? Forget all about God. If you are interested in yourself, then this is precisely the place for you. If you are interested in your own wellbeing, in your own wholeness and health, if you are interested in becoming a blossomed flower, then forget all about God – because in that blossoming you will know what godliness is. When your fragrance is released then you will know what godliness is.Godliness is your ultimate flowering, your final flowering; your destiny fulfilled is what godliness is all about.A woman seeing Turner’s pictures said once, “Making a lot of fuss over him, aren’t they? I never saw anything in him myself.”And another woman said to Turner himself, “But you know, Mr. Turner, I never see sunsets like yours.”She received the mild yet devastating reply, “No. Don’t you wish you could?”When a Turner paints a sunset, of course he sees a sunset in a totally different way than you. He brings all his sensitivity, his whole being, to see it. In fact you may not have ever seen a sunset the way a painter looks at it. Turner says rightly, “Don’t you wish you could?”I am here. I know you can’t see what I am talking about, but don’t you wish you could? I know that many things I am saying are almost nonsense to you because to see them you will have to attain different eyes; to see them you will have to clarify your being; to see them you will have to pacify your turmoil within. I know you cannot see the green that I am seeing in the trees. Your green is bound to be very dusty because your eyes are full of dust.It happened once that a man was staying with a friend at somebody’s house. The host and the guest were standing near the window. The window was closed, and in the neighbor’s house clothes were hanging out to be dried.The host said, “These people are very dirty. Look at their clothes.”The man looked, he came closer to the window and he said, “Those clothes are not dirty. Your window is covered with dust.”They opened the windows and it was so: those clothes were not dirty.Life is tremendously beautiful. It is divine. When we say life is godly we are simply saying that life is so tremendously beautiful that one feels a reverence for it, that’s all. Life is so tremendously beautiful that one feels like worshipping it. That’s all we mean when we say life is godly. When we say life is godly we only mean, “Don’t see life as ordinary; it is extraordinary. There is tremendous potentiality, just open your eyes.” I have never seen a person who is not interested in godliness – although he may not know it – because I have never seen a person who is not interested in happiness. If you are interested in happiness you are interested in godliness, if you are interested in being blissful you are interested in godliness.Forget all about God. Just try to be blissful, and one day, when you are dancing in your inner bliss, when the inner juices are flowing, suddenly this life is no longer ordinary. Everywhere some unknown force is hiding and you will see godliness in the flowers and in the stones and in the stars. I talk to you just to plant a seed, a song, a star.If you can become happy, you become religious. A happy person is a religious person; let that be the definition. A religious person is not one who goes to the church or the temple. If he is unhappy, he cannot be religious.A religious person is happy. Wherever he is, he is in the temple. A happy person carries his temple around with him. I know it because I have been carrying it. I need not go to any temple. Where I am is my temple. It is a climate, it is my own inner juice overflowing. Godliness is nothing but you realized, reached, fulfilled.Yes, I say to you, I have never seen a man who is not interested in God. There cannot be. That man is not possible. Even people who say they don’t believe in God, who are atheists, are not uninterested in God. They are interested. Their denying, their saying that they don’t believe may be just a trick of the mind to protect themselves, because once you allow yourself to be possessed by godliness you disappear, only godliness remains. So people who are afraid of being, of disappearing, of moving into nonbeing, people who are too egoistic and cannot allow their drop to drop into the ocean, say there is no ocean. That is the trick of their mind so that they can protect themselves. They are fearful people, afraid, scared of life.If you are interested in being happy, this is the place for you. And you are already here. Nobody has brought you, nobody has forced you. You have come on your own. Some inner search that you may not be aware of has brought you here. Maybe something is in the heart and your head does not know anything about it. There are desires of which the head is completely unaware; the head is concerned only with rubbish. The heart may have brought you here. Break that resistance. And when you are here, be really here. Don’t miss this opportunity.In the New Testament the Greek word for sin is antinomic or anomia. It means to miss the point, or, as in archery, to miss the mark. The word sin comes from a root which means to miss the point, to miss the mark. If you are here and you miss me, that will be a sin. If you are here then why waste time? Be totally here. Drop the resistance. Or if you cannot be totally here, then go away from here – but go totally away. Then never again remember me, otherwise that will be a sin.The word sin is beautiful. It has been badly corrupted by Christianity. It has nothing to do with guilt, nothing to do with something bad, evil. It has nothing to do with morality, but it has something to do with consciousness. It has nothing to do with conscience but with consciousness. If you are here, be consciously and totally here. Your unconscious heart has brought you here. Groping in the dark you have come to me, now don’t miss this opportunity. Either be totally here or go away. Turn your back against me and never remember me again because going away, if you remember me then you will not be totally there – wherever you are going. Wherever you are, be totally there. That’s the only way to open the secrets and mysteries of life.And don’t be worried about whether you are interested in the concept of God or not. In fact, people who are too interested in the concept of God will not be able to know godliness.I have come across a very beautiful book, written somewhere in the Middle Ages by a certain man known as Dionysius Exegius. His book is Theologica Mystica. He says in that book that the highest knowledge of God is through what he calls in Greek agnostos, which means unknowing. You must have heard the word agnostic; it comes from the same root, agnostos. Agnostos means unknowing. And this Dionysius says that God is known only by unknowing. No need to be worried about the concept; no need to accumulate knowledge, theories, doctrines about God. Forget all about the word and the theory. Simply be interested in your happiness, in your bliss, and one day you will find godliness has entered in you. It is another name for ultimate bliss.The last question:Osho,I have this idea that you don't really exist. When we think that there is someone who lives in your house and who makes things happen to us, it is not really you at all. Could you tell us what this is and by the way, who is giving the discourse every morning?I don’t know.Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Yagyu Tajima no Kami Munenori was a teacher of swordsmanship to the shogun.One of the personal guards of the shogun came to Tajima no Kami one day asking to be trained in swordplay. “As I observe, you seem to be a master of the art yourself,” said the teacher. “Please tell me to what school you belong before we enter into the relationship of teacher and pupil.”The guardsman said, “I do not belong to any school, I have never studied the art.”“It is no use trying to fool me,” said the master. “My judging eye never fails.”“I am sorry to defy, your honor,” said the guard, “but I really know nothing.”“If you say so then it must be true, but I am sure that you are the master of something, so tell me about yourself.”“There is one thing,” said the guard. “When I was a child I thought that a samurai should never be afraid of death. So I grappled with the problem, and now the thought of death has ceased to worry me.”“That’s it!” exclaimed the teacher.“The ultimate secrets of swordsmanship lie in being released from the thought of death. You need no technical training, you are already a master.”The ocean is not only hidden behind the waves, it is also manifesting itself in the waves. It is there on the surface as much as it is in the depth. The depth and the surface are not two separate things; they are two polarities of the same phenomenon. The center comes to the circumference; it is as much on the circumference as it is at the center.The divine is not only unmanifest, it is also manifest. The divine is not only the creator, it is also the creation. It is as much in this world as it is in the other world.Just the other night a new sannyasin asked me, “Osho, can you show me the divine form?”I told him, “All forms are divine. I have not seen a single form which is not divine. The whole existence is divine – don’t divide it into profane and sacred.”All the time, what else am I doing? – showing the divine form. What else are you doing? – showing the divine form. What else is happening all over existence? The divine is spread everywhere. It is as much in the small as it is in the great; it is as much in a grass leaf as in a faraway great star.But the mind thinks in dualities. It thinks godliness is hidden, then it tries to deny the manifest and seek the unmanifest. Now you are creating an unnecessary conflict for yourself. Godliness is here now as much as anywhere else. Godliness is as much in the seeker as in the sought. It is manifesting itself. That’s why I say that the ocean is in the waves. Dig deep into the waves, dig deep into the form, and you will find the formless.If you cannot see this it doesn’t mean that godliness is not manifested, it only means that you are still blind. You have still not got the eyes that can see the obvious. Godliness is the obvious.And this is so on every level of being: whatsoever you are, you go on broadcasting it around you. You cannot hide it. Nothing, absolutely nothing, can be hidden. There is a Zen saying: “Nothing whatsoever is hidden from of old, all is as clear as daylight.” But all is not as clear as daylight for you. That doesn’t mean the daylight is not there; it simply means you are standing with closed eyes. Open your eyes just a little and the darkness starts disappearing. Open your eyes and wherever you are, immediately you will be able to see as deep as existence is. Once your eyes are open, everything becomes transparent.When you see me, you just see the surface, the waves. When you hear me, you only hear the words, not the silence hidden behind them. You see exactly that which is of no worth and you miss all that is of any worth and significance. When I see you, it is not the form, it is not the image that you see in the mirror. When I see you, I see you. And you are broadcasting yourself in your every gesture, in your every movement. The way you walk, the way you talk, the way you stay silent and don’t talk, the way you eat, the way you sit – everything is manifesting you. Anybody who is perceptive will be able to see whether you are dark inside or whether you have kindled the flame.It is as easy as if you pass by a house in the night, a dark night, and the house is lighted inside. Is it in any way difficult to know it is lighted? No, because from the windows and from the doors you can see the light coming out. Or if the house is in darkness and there is no light burning inside, then of course you see it, it is obvious.The same is happening in you: whatsoever you are is being broadcasted every moment. Your neurosis is broadcasted, your enlightenment also. Your meditation is broadcasted, your madness also. You cannot hide it. All efforts to hide yourself are futile. They are stupid, ridiculous.I was reading a book by Edmund Carpenter. He was working on a sociological project, a research project, in Borneo.He writes: “In a small town in Borneo, professional clerks sit before open windows, reading and writing. Because people are illiterate and they cannot read and write, so for their letters, documents, or any other thing, they need the help of professional writers and readers. And I was very surprised because I noticed one who was plugging his ears with his fingers while he read aloud. I inquired and was told that this was done at the request of the listener who did not want to share his letter with the reader!”So the reader was plugging his ears with his fingers and reading the letter loudly!But this is what is happening in everybody’s life. You go on hiding, but everything is being declared, continuously, loudly. Everything is being broadcasted; you are a continuous broadcasting station. Even while you are asleep you are broadcasting. If a buddha comes to you while you are asleep he will be able to see who you are. Even in your sleep you will be making gestures, faces, movements, uttering something. And all those things will indicate something about you because the sleep is yours and it is bound to carry your signature.If one becomes a little alert, one stops hiding. It is futile, it is ridiculous. Then one simply relaxes. Because of your hiding you remain tense, continuously afraid that somebody may know about you. You never expose yourself, you never live in the nude – spiritually I mean. You never live in the nude, you are always afraid. That fear cripples you and paralyzes you.Once you understand that everything is bound to be declared – it is already being declared; the center is coming to the circumference every moment and the ocean is waving in the waves and godliness is everywhere, spread all over existence, and you are spread all over your activities – there is no point in hiding. Nothing whatsoever is hidden from of old, everything is as clear as daylight.Then why bother? Then one relaxes. The anxiety, the tension, the anguish disappears. Suddenly you become vulnerable, no more closed. Suddenly you are open, suddenly you become inviting. And this is the point to be understood: once you are exposed to others, only then will you be exposed to yourself. If you are hiding from others, whatsoever you are hiding from others will by and by be thrown into the basement of your unconscious mind. Others may not know about it but by and by you will also forget about it.But whenever you come within the vision of a perceptive man, everything will be revealed. That is one of the basic reasons why, in the East, the relationship of a disciple to a master is so valued: because the master is just like a ray of light, an X-ray, and the disciple exposes himself. And the more the master penetrates and knows about the disciple the more the disciple becomes aware of his own hidden treasures by and by. Trying to hide himself from others, he has become such an expert in hiding that he hides from himself also.You don’t know much about yourself. You know just a fragment about yourself, just the tip of the iceberg. Your knowledge about yourself is very limited – not only limited, it is almost irrelevant! It is so partial, it is so fragmentary, that unless you put it in the context of your whole being it carries no meaning. It is almost meaningless.That’s why you go on living without knowing yourself. And how can one live without knowing oneself? And you go on projecting things on others which have nothing to do with others; they may be just hidden forces inside you. But you don’t know that they are hidden inside you, you project them onto others. Somebody looks like an egoist to you: you may be the egoist and you project. Somebody looks very angry: the anger may be inside you and the other is just like a screen – it is you projecting.Unless you know yourself exactly, you will not be able to know what is real and what is projection. You will also not be able to know about others. Self-knowledge becomes the door of all knowledge; it is the very base. Without that foundation, all knowledge is just knowledge in appearance; deep down it is ignorance.I have heard an anecdote:Mistress Jones, deeply troubled, was consulting a psychiatrist.“My husband,” she said, “is convinced he is a chicken. He goes around scratching constantly, and sleeps on a large bar of wood he has fixed up as a perch.”“I see,” said the psychiatrist thoughtfully. “And how long has your husband been suffering from this fixation?”“For nearly two years now.”The psychiatrist frowned slightly and said, “But why have you waited till now to seek help?”Mistress Jones blushed and said, “Ah well, it was so nice having a steady supply of eggs!”Now this woman is neurotic! She thinks her husband is neurotic: whenever you think something about somebody else, watch. Don’t be in a hurry, first look within. The cause may be inside you. But you don’t know yourself so you go on confusing your own projections with outer realities. It is impossible to know anything real unless you have known yourself. And the only way to know oneself is to live a life of vulnerability, openness. Don’t live in a closed cell. Don’t hide yourself behind your mind. Come out.Once you come out, by and by you will become aware of millions of things in you. You are not a one room apartment, you have many rooms. You are a palace, but you have become accustomed to living on the porch and you have forgotten the palace completely. Many treasures are hidden in you, and those treasures constantly go on knocking, inviting, but you are almost deaf.This blindness, this deafness, this insensitivity, has to be broken – and nobody else can do it. If somebody else tries you will feel offended, you will feel a trespassing. It happens every day: if I try to help you, you feel you have been trespassed upon. If I try to say something true about you, you feel offended, you feel humiliated, you feel hurt, your pride is hurt. You want to listen to lies about yourself from me; you want to listen to something which helps your already fixed image. You have a very golden image about yourself which is false. It has to be shattered to pieces because once it is shattered the reality will arise. If it is not shattered, you will go on clinging to it.You think you are religious, you think you are a great seeker. You may not be religious at all, you may be simply afraid of life. In your temples and churches cowards are hiding, afraid of life. But to accept that one is afraid of life is very humiliating, so they say they are not afraid of life, they have renounced: “Life is not worth anything. Life is only for mediocre minds.” They have renounced everything for God, they are searching for God. But watch: they are trembling. They are praying on their knees, but their prayer is not of love, their prayer is not of celebration, their prayer is not a festivity. Their prayer is out of fear, and fear corrupts everything. Nobody can approach truth through fear.You have to approach truth through fearlessness. But if you are hiding your fear behind religiousness then it will be very difficult to shatter it. You are greedy, miserly, but you go on saying that you live a very simple life. If you are hiding behind the rationalization of simplicity then it is very difficult to see that you are a miser. And a miser misses tremendously because life is for those who share, life is for those who love, life is for those who are not too clinging to things – because then they become available to persons.To cling to a thing is to cling to something which is below you. And if you go on clinging to things which are below you, how can you soar high? It is as if you are clinging to rocks and trying to fly in the sky, or you are carrying rocks on the head and trying to climb Everest. You have to throw them away. You have to throw away those rocks, you will have to unburden yourself.Edmund Hillary, the first man to reach to the top of Everest, says in his autobiography, “As we started reaching closer and closer, I had to leave more and more things behind. At the last moment I had to leave almost everything because everything became such a burden.”The higher you reach, the more unburdened you need to be. So a miser cannot soar high. A miser cannot soar in love, or in prayer, or in godliness. He remains clinging to the earth; he almost remains rooted in the earth. Trees cannot fly. If you want to fly you need to be uprooted. You need to be like a white cloud with no roots anywhere, a wanderer.But you can hide your miserable self. And you can hide your diseases behind good, beautiful terms and words. You can be very articulate and you can be very rationalizing. All these have to be broken.And if you go on hiding, then not only do you hide your diseases, you hide your treasures also. This hiding becomes a fixation; it becomes a habit, an obsession. But I tell you, before a perceptive man, before a master who has known himself, you will be completely x-rayed. You cannot hide from somebody who has eyes. You can hide from yourself, you can hide from the world, but you cannot hide from somebody who has come to know what clarity is, what perception is. For such a man, you are absolutely on the surface.I have heard about an American couple who were strolling along the banks of the Seine under the shadows of Notre Dame.He was lost in silence. She said finally, “What are you thinking about, darling?”“I was thinking, dear, that if anything happened to either of us, I would like to spend the rest of my life in Paris.”He may not be aware of what he is saying, he may have uttered this in absolute unawareness. Let me repeat it. He says, “I was thinking, dear, that if anything happened to either of us, I would like to spend the rest of my life in Paris.” He wants the wife to die although he is not saying it clearly – but he has said it.We continuously broadcast, in many ways.Just a few days ago President Ford gave a party in honor of the Egyptian ambassador to the States. But then when he was giving the toast he forgot completely and something from the unconscious bubbled up – a slip of the tongue, we say, but it is not just a slip of the tongue. He raised the glass and said, “In honor of the great nation of Israel.” To Egyptians!Then of course he tried to mend it, to patch it, but it was too late. Deep down he wants Israel to win over the Egyptians. It bubbled up, surfaced from the unconscious.It happened at a party. A man was leaving, but he was very diffident. He murmured to the hostess, “The meal was delicious, what there was of it.”Noting the hurt expression on his hostess’ face, the guest blushed and hastened to say, “Ah, ah. And there was plenty of food, such as it was.”These are unconscious assertions; they come out of you when you are not on guard. Ordinarily you are on guard. That’s why people are so tense, continuously on guard, guarding themselves. But there are moments when the tension is too much and one relaxes. One has to relax, one cannot be on guard for twenty-four hours. In those moments, things surface.You are truer when you have drunk a little too much and things start surfacing from your unconscious. Under the influence of alcohol you are truer than you ordinarily are because the alcohol relaxes your guard. Then you start saying things you always wanted to say, and you are not worried about anything, and you are not trying to leave any impression – you are simply being true. Drunkards are beautiful people: truer, more authentic. It is ironic that only drunkards are authentic.The more you are clever and cunning, the more inauthentic you become. Don’t hide behind screens. Come out in the sunshine. And don’t be afraid that your image will be shattered. The image that you are afraid of being shattered is not worth keeping. It is better to shatter it on your own. Take a hammer and shatter it.That’s what being a sannyasin means: that you take a hammer in your hands and you shatter the old image. And you start a new life from ABC, from the very beginning again, as if you are born again. It is a rebirth.Then, by and by, if you relax and you are not too worried about your image in the eyes of others, your own authentic face, original face, comes into being – the face that you had before you were born and the face that you will again have when you are dead; the original face, not the cultivated mask. With that original face you will see godliness everywhere because with the original face you can meet with the original, with reality.With a mask you will meet only other masks. With a mask there can never be any dialogue with reality. With a mask you remain in the relationship of “I” and “it”; reality remains behind it. When the mask is removed and you have come back home, a tremendous transformation happens. The relationship with reality is no more one of “I-it,” it is of “I-thou.” That “thou” is godliness.Reality takes on a personality: you become alive here, reality becomes alive there. It has always been alive, just you were dead. It is as if you have taken chloroform: when you come back and the influence of the chloroform by and by disappears, how do you feel? It is a beautiful experience! If you have never been to the surgeon’s table, go, just for the experience. For a few moments you are completely in oblivion, and then consciousness arises. Suddenly, everything becomes alive, fresh. You are coming out of the womb. Exactly the same happens when you decide to live an authentic life. Then, for the first time you understand that now you are born. Just before you were thinking and dreaming that you were alive, but you were not.A great mathematician, Herr Gauss, was keeping vigil while his wife lay ill upstairs. And as time passed, he found himself beginning to ponder a deep problem in mathematics.People have grooves in their mind and they move in the same grooves again and again. A mathematician has a certain track. The wife is going to die, the doctors have said that this is going to be the last night, he is keeping vigil – but the mind started moving in its old pattern, of course. He started thinking about a mathematical problem. Just see: the wife will no longer be there, it is the last night, but the mind is creating a screen of mathematics. He has completely forgotten about the wife; he has moved, he has gone far away on a journey.As time passed he found himself beginning to ponder a deep problem in mathematics. He drew pen and paper to himself and began to draw diagrams. A servant approached and said deferentially, “Herr Gauss, your wife is dying.”And Gauss, never looking up said, “Yes, yes. But tell her to wait till I’m through.”Even the great minds are as unconscious as you are. As far as consciousness is concerned, great, small and mediocre, all sail in the same boat. Even the greatest mind lives under chloroform.Come out of it, make yourself more alert, bring yourself together. Let one thing become a centering – a constant centering in you – and that is alertness, awareness. Do whatsoever you do, but do it consciously. And by and by consciousness accumulates and it becomes a reservoir of energy.Now, the Zen story:Yagyu Tajima no Kami Munenori was a teacher of swordsmanship to the shogun.In Zen, and only in Zen, something of great importance has happened: that is, they don’t make any distinction between ordinary life and religious life, rather, they have bridged them both. And they have used very ordinary skills as upaya, as methods for meditation. That is something of tremendous importance. Because if you don’t use ordinary life as a method for meditation, your meditation is bound to become something of an escape.In India it has happened… And India has suffered badly. The misery that you see all around, the poverty, the horrible ugliness of it, is because India has always thought religious life to be separate from ordinary life. So people who became interested in God renounced the world. People who became interested in God closed their eyes, sat in the caves in the Himalayas, and tried to forget that the world existed. They tried to create the idea that the world is simply an illusion, illusory: a maya, a dream. Of course life suffered much because of it. All the greatest minds of this country became escapist and the country was left to the mediocrities. No science could evolve, no technology could evolve.But in Japan, Zen has done something very beautiful. That’s why Japan is the only country where East and West are meeting: Eastern meditation and Western reason are in a deep synthesis in Japan. Zen has created the whole situation there. In India you cannot conceive that swordsmanship can become an upaya, a method for meditation, but in Japan they have done it. And I see that they have brought something very new to religious consciousness.Anything can be converted into a meditation because the whole thing is awareness. And of course, in swordsmanship more awareness is needed than anywhere else because life will be at stake every moment. When fighting with a sword you have to be constantly alert: a single moment’s unconsciousness and you will be gone. In fact, a real swordsman does not function out of his mind. He cannot function out of his mind because mind takes time – it thinks, calculates – and when you are fighting with a sword, where is time? There is no time. If you miss a single fragment of a second in thinking, the other will not miss the opportunity: the other’s sword will penetrate into your heart or cut off your head.So thinking is not possible, one has to function out of no-mind. One has to simply function because the danger is so much that you cannot afford the luxury of thinking. Thinking needs an easy chair. You just relax in an easy chair and you go off on mind-trips.But when you are fighting, and life is at stake, and the swords are shining in the sun, and at any moment some slight unawareness and the other will not lose the opportunity – you will be gone forever – there is no space for thought to appear. One has to function out of no-thought. That’s what meditation is all about.If you can function out of no-thought, if you can function out of no-mind, if you can function as a total, organic unity – not out of the head – if you can function out of your guts, it can happen to you also.You are walking one night and suddenly a snake crosses the path. What do you do? Do you sit there and think about it? No, suddenly you jump out of the way. In fact you don’t decide to jump, you don’t think in a logical syllogism, “Here is a snake and wherever there is a snake there is danger, therefore, ergo, I should jump.” That is not the way. You simply jump! The action is total. The action is not corrupted by thinking; it comes out of your very core of being, not out of the head. Of course when you have jumped out of the danger you can sit under a tree and think about the whole thing – that’s another matter. Then you can afford the luxury.The house catches fire: what do you do? Do you think whether to go out or not to go out, to be or not to be? Do you consult a scripture about whether it is right to do it? Do you sit silently and meditate upon it? You simply get out of the house. And you will not be worried about manners and etiquette; you will jump out of the window.Just two nights ago a girl entered here at three o’clock in the night and started screaming in the garden. Asheesh jumped out of his bed, ran, and only then did he realize that he was naked – then he came back.That was an act out of no-mind, without any thought. He simply jumped out of the bed, thought came later on. Thought followed, lagged behind. He was ahead of thought. Of course, it caught hold of him so he missed an opportunity. It would have become a satori, but he came back and put on his gown, missed!Swordsmanship became one of the upayas, one of the basic methodologies because it is so dangerous that it doesn’t allow thinking. It can lead you toward a different type of functioning, a different type of reality, a separate reality. You know of only one way to function: to think first and then to function. In swordsmanship a different type of existence becomes open to you: you function first and then you think. Thinking is no longer primary and this is the beauty. When thinking is not primary you cannot err.You have heard the proverb “It is human to err.” Yes, it is true, it is human to err because the human mind is prone to err. But when you function out of no-mind you are no longer human, you are divine, and then there is no possibility of erring – because the total never errs, only the part, only the partial goes astray. Godliness never errs, it cannot err, it is the whole.When you start functioning out of nothingness, with no syllogism, with no thinking, with no conclusions… Of course your conclusions are limited, they depend on your experience, you can err, but when you put aside all your conclusions you are putting aside all limitations also. Then you function out of your unlimited being, and it never errs.It is said that sometimes it has happened in Japan that two Zen people who have both attained to satori through swordsmanship fight. They cannot be defeated. Nobody can be victorious because they both never err. Before the other attacks, the first has already made preparations to receive it. Before the other’s sword moves to cut off his head he is already prepared to defend the attack. And the same happens with his attack. Two Zen people who have attained to satori can go on fighting for years, but it is impossible, they cannot err. Nobody can be defeated and nobody can be victorious.Yagyu Tajima no Kami Munenori was a teacher of swordsmanship to the shogun.One of the personal guards of the shogun came to Tajima no Kami one day asking to be trained in swordplay. “As I observe, you seem to be a master of the art yourself,” said the teacher.“As I observe…” said the master. In India, when Buddha was alive, one of his contemporaries was Mahavira. Between the disciples of the two there has been a great discussion ever since. The discussion is about an enlightened person’s awareness. Mahavira’s followers, the Jainas, say that whenever a person has become enlightened, he always knows everything of the past, of the present, of the future. He has become omniscient, he knows everything. He has become a mirror to the whole of the reality.Buddha’s followers say that that is not so. They say that he becomes capable of knowing anything if he observes. If he tries to focus on anything, he will be able to know everything about it. But it does not happen as the followers of Mahavira say, that whether he focuses or not he knows.To me also, the Buddhist standpoint seems to be better and more scientific. Otherwise a man like Buddha would go almost mad. Just think of it: knowing everything of the past and the present and the future. No, that doesn’t seem to be right. The Buddhist attitude seems to be more right: he has become capable of knowing. Now, whenever he wants to use the capacity, he focuses, he throws his ray of light. He puts something in the flow of his meditation and that thing becomes revealed to him. Otherwise it would be impossible for him to rest. Even in the night he would be continuously knowing, knowing the past and the present and the future – and not only his own, but of the whole world. Just think of the sheer impossibility of it. No, that’s not possible.“As I observe…” said the master. The disciple has come and he has asked to be trained in swordplay. The master said, “As I observe…” He focuses his ray of light, his torch, toward this disciple. Now this disciple is under his meditation. He goes through and through, the disciple becomes transparent. That is what happens when you come to a master: simply his light penetrates you to your very core.“…you seem to be a master of the art yourself,” said the master.He could not find anything wrong in this man. Everything was as it should be, in tune, humming. This man was a beautiful song, he had already achieved.“Please tell me to what school you belong before we enter into the relationship of teacher and pupil.”That is the highest relationship in the world, greater than a love-relationship, greater than any relationship – because the surrender has to be total. Even in a love relationship it is not total: surrender is partial, a divorce is possible. But in fact, if you have once become a disciple of a master – if you have really become a disciple, if you have been accepted, if you have surrendered – there is no possibility of divorce, there is no going back. It is a point of no return. Then the two persons are no longer there. They exist like one, two aspects of one, but they are not two.So the master says, “Before we enter into the relationship of teacher and pupil, I would like to know where you learned this art. How have you become so tuned? You are already a master.”The guardsman said, “I do not belong to any school, I have never studied the art.”“It is no use trying to fool me,” said the master. “My judging eye never fails.”Now listen to this paradox: the judging eye arises only when you have left all judgment. In meditation you have to leave all judging: what is good, what is bad – you have to drop all that division. You simply look. You look without any judgment, without any condemnation, without any appreciation. You don’t evaluate, you simply look. The look becomes pure.When this look has happened to you and has become an integrated thing in your being, you attain to a capacity which never fails. Once you have become one inside and gone beyond morality, dualism – good and bad, sin and virtue, life and death, beautiful and ugly – once you have gone beyond the dualisms of mind you attain to the judging eye.This is the paradox: all judgment has to be left, then you attain to the judging eye. Then it never fails. You simply know it is so and there is no alternative to it. It is not a choice on your part, it is not a decision. It is a simple revelation that it is so.“It is no use trying to fool me,” said the master. “My judging eye never fails.”“I am sorry to defy, your honor,” said the guard, “but I really know nothing.”“If you say so, then it must be true, but I am sure you are the master of something…”Now this point has to be understood: it makes no difference what you are a master of, the taste of mastery is the same, the flavor is the same. You can become a master of archery, or you can become a master of swordsmanship, or you can become a master just of the ordinary tea ceremony – it makes no difference. The real thing is that you have become a master. The art has gone so deep that you are not carrying it anymore. The art has gone so deep that now there is no need to think about it, it has become simply your nature. “…but I am sure that you must be a master of something…” Maybe you are not a master of swordsmanship, but you are a master…“…so tell me about yourself.”“There is one thing,” said the guard. “When I was a child I thought that a samurai, a warrior, should never be afraid of death. So I grappled with the problem, and now the thought of death has ceased to worry me.”But that is what the whole of religion is all about! If death no longer bothers you, you have become a master. You have tasted something of the deathless, that is, of your innermost nature. You have known something of the eternal. To know the deathless is the whole business of life. Life is an opportunity to know the deathless “…and now the thought of death has ceased to worry me.”“That’s it!” exclaimed the master. “The ultimate secrets of swordsmanship lie in being released from the thought of death. You need no technical training, you are already a master.”…because when you are fighting with a sword, if you are afraid of death, thinking will continue.Now let me tell you one basic truth: thinking is out of fear. All thinking is out of fear. The more you become afraid, the more you think. Whenever there is no fear, thinking stops. If you have fallen in love with someone, there are moments with your beloved or your lover when thinking stops. Just sitting by the lake, doing nothing, holding hands, looking at the moon or the stars, or just gazing into the darkness of the night, sometimes thoughts stop because there is no fear. Love dispels fear just as light dispels darkness.If even for a moment you have been in love with someone, fear disappears and thinking stops. With fear, thinking continues. The more you are afraid, the more you have to think – because by thinking you will create security, by thinking you will create a citadel around you, by thinking you will manage, or try to manage, how to fight.A swordsman, if he is afraid of death, cannot be a real swordsman because the fear will make him tremble. A slight trembling inside, a slight thinking inside, and he will not be able to act out of no-mind.There is a story:A man in China became the greatest archer. He asked the king, “Declare me as the greatest archer of the country.”The king was just going to decide and declare him when an old servant of the king said, “Wait, sir. I know a man who lives in the forest, who never comes to the town. He is a greater archer. So let this young man go to him and learn from him for at least three years. He does not know what he is demanding. He is like a camel who has not yet come across a mountain. Archers don’t live in the capitals, the real archers are in the mountains. I know one, and I know for certain that this other man is nothing.”Of course, this man was sent. He went. He could not believe that there could be a greater archer than he was, but he found the old man – and he was!For three years he learned from him. Then one day, when he had learned everything, the thought arose in him that, “If I kill this old man, then I will be the greatest archer.”The old man had gone to cut wood and he was coming back carrying wood on his head. The young man hid behind a tree, waiting to kill him. He shot an arrow. The old man took a small piece of wood and threw it. It struck the arrow and the arrow turned back and wounded the young man very deeply.The old man came, took out the arrow and said, “I knew this. I knew that some day or other you were going to do this. That’s why I have not taught you this secret. Only one secret I have kept for myself. There is no need to kill me, I am not a competitor. But one thing I must tell you: my master is still alive, and I am nothing before him. You will have to go deeper into the mountains. He is a man of one hundred and twenty years, very old, but while he is alive nobody can pretend and nobody should even think of declaring themselves the greatest archer. You must be with him for at least thirty years – and he is very old, so go fast! Find the old man!”The young man traveled, now very desperate. It seemed to be impossible to become the greatest archer in the country. He found the old man. He was so ancient – one hundred and twenty years old, completely bent – that he could not stand upright. But the young man was surprised because there was no bow, no arrows with him.He asked, “Are you the old man who is the greatest archer?”The old man said, “Yes.”“But where are your bow and arrows?”The old man said, “Those are playthings. Real archers don’t need them once they have learned the art. They are just devices to learn; once you have learned, you throw them away. A great musician will throw away his instrument because he has learned what music is. Then, carrying the instrument is foolish, childish. But if you are really interested in becoming an archer,” said the old man, “then come with me.”He took him to a precipice. There was a rock overlooking a very deep valley. The old man went ahead of the young man and stood just at the very edge. With the slightest trembling he would topple down into the valley. He called the young man to come close to him.The young man started perspiring, started trembling. It was so dangerous to be there. At just two feet away he said, “I cannot come that close.”The old man started laughing and he said, “If you tremble so much with fear, how can you become an archer? Fear must disappear totally, with no trace left behind.”The young man said, “But how can it be? I am afraid of death.”The old man said, “Drop the idea of death. Find someone who can teach you what a deathless life is and you will become the greatest archer, never before.”Fear creates trembling. Fear creates thinking. Thinking is a sort of inner trembling. When one becomes unwavering, the flame of consciousness remains there, undistracted, untrembling.‘“That’s it!’ exclaimed the master. ‘The ultimate secrets of swordsmanship lie in being released from the thought of death. You need no technical training, you are already a master.”’ But he was not aware of his own mastery. He may have been hiding many other things, and because of that he was also hiding his treasures. Once exposed to a master, he became alert. And the master said, “There is no need for any techniques; you are already a master.”As I see in you, everybody is carrying deathlessness within him. You may know it, you may not know it – that is not the point – but you are carrying it within you. It is already there, it is already the case. Just a slight understanding of it and your life can be transformed. Then there is no need for any techniques.Religion is not technology.Everybody is born with a secret treasure but goes on living as if he were born a beggar. Everybody is born an emperor but goes on living like a beggar. Realize it! And the realization will come to you only if, by and by, you drop your fear.So whenever fear comes to you don’t suppress it, don’t repress it, don’t avoid it, don’t get occupied in something so that you can forget about it. No! When fear comes, watch it. Be face to face with it. Encounter it. Look deeply into it. Gaze into the valley of fear. Of course you will perspire and you will tremble and it will be like a death – and you will have to live it many times. But by and by, the more your eyes become clear, the more your awareness becomes alert, the more your focus is there on the fear, the fear will disappear like a mist.And once fear disappears, sometimes, even for only a moment, suddenly you are deathless.There is no death. Death is the greatest illusion there is, the greatest myth, a lie. For even a single moment, if you can see that you are deathless, then no meditation is needed. Then live that experience. Then act out of that experience and the doors of eternal life are open for you.Much is being missed because of fear. We are too attached to the body and we go on creating more and more fear because of that attachment. The body is going to die. The body is part of death, the body is death. But you are beyond the body. You are not the body, you are the bodiless. Remember it, realize it. Awaken yourself to this truth that you are beyond the body. You are the witness, the seer. Then death disappears, fear disappears, and there arises the tremendously glorious life, what Jesus calls ‘life abundant, the kingdom of God’.The kingdom of God is within you.Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,What's the difference between a madman and a devotee?Not much, and yet, much. Both are mad, but their madness has a totally different quality to it. The center of madness is different. The madman is mad from the head, the devotee is mad from the heart.The madman is mad because of a failure. His logic failed; he could not go on with the head anymore, any longer. There comes a point for the logical mind where breakdown is a must because logic goes well up to a certain limit, then suddenly it is no longer real. Then it is no longer true to reality.Life is illogical. It is wild. In life, contradictions are not contradictions but complementaries. Life does not believe in the division of either–or, life believes in both. The day becomes night, the night becomes day. They meet and merge, boundaries are not clear. Everything is overlapping everything else: you are overlapping into your beloved, your beloved is overlapping into you. Your child is still a part of you and yet he is independent – boundaries are blurred.Logic makes clear-cut boundaries. For clarity, it dissects life into two, into a duality. Clarity is achieved, but aliveness is lost. At the cost of aliveness logic achieves clarity.So if you are a mediocre mind, you may never go mad. That means you are just lukewarm, logical, and much that is illogical goes on existing in you side by side. But if you are really logical, then the ultimate result can only be madness. The more logical you are the more you will be intolerant of anything illogical. And life is illogical, so by and by you will become intolerant of life itself. You will become more and more closed. You will deny life, you will not deny logic. Then finally you break down. This is the failure of logic.Almost all the great philosophers who are logical go mad. If they don’t go mad they are not great philosophers. Nietzsche went mad, Bertrand Russell never went mad. He is not such a great philosopher; he is, in a way, mediocre. He goes on living with his common sense – he is a commonsensical philosopher. He does not move to the very extreme. Nietzsche moved to the very extreme and of course, then there is the abyss.Madness is the failure of the head, and in life there are millions of situations where suddenly, the head is irrelevant.I was reading an anecdote:A woman telephoned the builder of her new house to complain about the vibrations that shook the structure when a train passed by three streets away.“Ridiculous!” he told her. “I will be along to check it.”“Just wait until a train comes along,” said the woman when the builder arrived for his inspection. “Why, it nearly shakes me out of bed. Just lie down there. You will see.”The builder had just stretched himself out on the bed when the woman’s husband came home.“What are you doing on my wife’s bed?” the husband demanded.The terrified builder shook like a leaf. “Would you believe I am waiting for a train?” he said.There are a thousand and one situations where life comes in its total illogicalness. Suddenly your logical mind stops, it cannot function. If you watch life you will find you act illogically every day. And if you insist too much on logic then by and by you will get paralyzed; by and by you will be thrown away from life; by and by you will feel a certain deadness settling in you. One day or other this situation has to explode – the division of either–or breaks down.Division, as such, is false. Nothing is divided in life. Only in your head is there division; only in your head are there clear-cut boundaries. It is as if you have made a small clearing in a forest – clean, with a boundary wall, with a lawn, with a few rosebushes, and everything perfectly in order. But beyond the boundary the forest is there, waiting. If you don’t care about your garden for a few days, the forest will enter in. If you leave your garden untended, after a while the garden will disappear and the forest will be there. Logic is manmade, like an English garden – not even like a Zen Japanese garden, clean-cut.Every day there is a difficulty. Mukta looks after my garden. She is my gardener, and she goes on cutting. I go on telling her, “Don’t cut! Let it be like a forest!” But what can she do? She hides from me that she is cutting and planning and managing because she cannot allow the garden to become a forest. It should be in boundaries.The logical mind is like a small garden, manmade, and life is wild forest. Sooner or later you will come against life and then your mind will boggle, will fall down flat. Stretch your mind to the very extreme of logic and you will go mad.It happened at an airport: Moskowitz met his business rival, Levinson, at the airport, and asked him with an elaborate pretense of casualness, “And where do you happen to be going, Levinson?”Levinson just as casually responded, “Chicago.”“Ah!” said Moskowitz, shaking his finger triumphantly. “Now I have caught you in a flatfooted lie. You tell me Chicago because you want me to think you are going to St. Louis, but I talked to your partner only this morning, and I happen to know you are going to Chicago, you liar!”The logical mind goes on weaving and spinning its own theories, its own ideas, and tries to make the reality fit accordingly. The reality should follow your idea; that is what a logical mind is. The effort is that the reality should be a shadow to your ideology. But it is not possible, you are trying the impossible. It is implausible, it cannot happen. Ideology has to follow reality, and when the situation comes where you have to follow reality, the whole structure of your mind staggers, the whole structure of your mind simply drops down. It proves to be a house of playing cards: a small wind of reality and the palace disappears. That is madness.What is the madness of a devotee? The center of the devotee’s madness is his heart, the center of ordinary madness is the head. Ordinary madness happens from the failure of the head and the devotee’s madness happens from the success of his heart, when love succeeds. When logic fails, ordinary madness; extraordinary madness, the madness of a devotee.Love is illogical. Love is irrational. Love is life. Love comprehends all contradictions in it. Love is even capable of comprehending its own opposite: hate. Have you not observed it? You go on hating the same person you love. But love is bigger. It is so big that even hate can be allowed to have its play. In fact, if you really love, hate is not a distraction; on the contrary, it gives color, spice. It makes the whole affair more colorful, like a rainbow. Even hate is not the opposite for a loving heart: he can hate and continue loving. Love is so great that even hate can be allowed to have its own say. Lovers become intimate enemies, they go on fighting.In fact, if you ask psychoanalysts, psychiatrists and psychologists, they will say that when a couple stops fighting, love has also stopped. When a couple no longer bothers even to fight, when they have become indifferent to each other, then love has stopped. If you are still fighting with your wife or your husband, your boyfriend or girlfriend, that simply shows that life is still running in it. It is still a live wire – still hot. When love is no longer there and everything is dead, then there is no fight. Of course! What to fight for? It is meaningless. One settles into a sort of coldness; one settles into a sort of indifference.Love is like wild life, hence Jesus’ saying that God is love. What does he mean? He means that if you love you will know many things which are qualities of God: that he comprehends opposites, that even the Devil is allowed to have his say, that there is no problem with the opposite, that the enemy is also a friend and deep down related and connected, that death is not against life, but that death is part of life and life is part of death.The whole is bigger than all opposites. And it is not just a total of all the opposites, it is more than the total. This is the higher mathematics of the heart. Of course a man of love will look mad. He will look mad to you because you function from the head and he functions from the heart; the languages are totally different.For example, Jesus was crucified. The enemies were waiting for him to curse them, and they were a little afraid. The friends were waiting for him to do some miracle, that all the enemies would fall dead. And what did he do? He did an almost mad thing: he prayed to God to forgive these people because they didn’t know what they were doing.This is the madness of love. It is unexpected that when you are being killed you pray that these people should be forgiven because they don’t know what they are doing. They are completely unconscious, sleepwalkers; whatsoever they are doing is not their responsibility because how can you throw responsibility on somebody who is asleep? “They are unconscious, forgive them.” This is the miracle that happened that day, but nobody could see that miracle – it was sheer madness.Love’s language is so foreign to the head. Head and heart are the farthest poles of reality. There is no greater distance between any other two points than there is between the head and the heart, reason and love, logic and life.If a person is mad because of his love, his madness is not a disease. In fact, he is the only healthy person. He is the only whole person; he is the only holy person because through his heart he has again become bridged with life. Now he is no longer fighting, there is no more conflict. He is surrendered, he is in a let-go. He trusts life. He has faith and he knows that nothing wrong is going to happen. He’s not afraid. Even into death he will go laughing and singing, ecstatic, because even in death God is waiting for him, death also becomes a door.Of course, to the logical mind, this man looks mad. And he is mad, in a sense, because whatsoever he is doing is beyond the comprehension of reason. But to me he is not mad. Ask Jesus: to him he is not mad. Ask Buddha: to him he is not mad, in fact he’s the only sane person, because now he no longer thinks, he lives; now he is no longer divided, but total; now there is no duality in him, he is a unity.That is the meaning of the word yoga: that which unites. That is the meaning of the word religion also: that which makes you one, that which puts you together again, religere; you are no longer split.Otherwise, ordinarily you are not one person, you are many persons. You are a crowd. You don’t know what your left hand is doing and what your right hand is planning to do. In the morning you don’t know what you are going to do in the evening. You say one thing, but you wanted to say something else, and you will go on saying something else still. You are not a unity, you are a crowd. There are many persons inside you revolving in a wheel and each becomes, for the time being, the king. And in that moment the king asserts things which he cannot fulfill because by the time the moment to fulfill them comes, he will no longer be a king.You fall in love with a woman and you say, “I will love you forever and forever.” Wait! What are you saying? Now, at this moment, a certain part of your personality is on the throne and that part says, “I will love you forever and forever,” but just half an hour later you may repent. And just a few days later you will completely forget what you had said.The woman is not going to forget it, she will remember. She will remind you again and again about what you have said, that you will love her forever and forever. What has happened to your love? You will feel guilty and you will feel impotent and helpless because you cannot do anything. Now you know you should not have talked about the future, but at that moment you could not resist yourself; at that moment it looked as if you would be loving her forever and forever. In that moment it was a truth, but the part of the mind that asserted it is no longer the emperor. Now there are other minds: another part is sitting on the throne and he loves another woman, he chooses another woman. Whatsoever you promise, you are not going to fulfill.A man of understanding never promises because he knows his helplessness. He will say, “l would like to love you forever and forever, but who knows? I may not be the same the next day.” He will feel humble, he will not feel confident. Only fools feel confident. People of understanding hesitate because they know there is a crowd inside them, they are not one.That’s why in all the old scriptures it is said that if a good thought comes to you do it immediately, because the next moment you may not like to do it at all. And if a bad thought comes to you postpone it a little. If anything good arises in you don’t miss the moment, do it! If you feel it is good you can do it again tomorrow, but do it right now, don’t postpone.But the ordinary mind goes on doing just the opposite: whatsoever good arises in you, you postpone it for tomorrow – then it never happens – and whatsoever bad arises in you, you do it immediately. If you are angry you will be angry right now, you cannot postpone it. But if you are feeling compassion you will say, “What is the hurry? Tomorrow!” That tomorrow never comes. Tomorrow is nonexistential.Ordinarily, a man is a crowd. In fact, we should not use the word mind in the singular. We should not say that you have a mind. That is wrong. Only rare persons have a mind. You have minds. You are poly-psychic.The heart – this is the beautiful thing – the heart is always one. It does not know the duality. It is not a crowd, it is a unity. The closer you come to the heart, “the one” arises and “the many” disappears far away. The heart needs no promise – even without promising it is going to fulfill.The mind goes on making promises but it never fulfills them. In fact, it promises just to create an illusion because it knows it is not going to fulfill anything. So at least create an illusion by promising, “I will love you for ever and ever.” The heart will never say that, but it will do it. And when you can do it what is the point of saying it? There is no need.The man of love is mad, mad to the logical mind, but he is not ill. In the Western madhouses there are many people who are not mad. If they had been in Eastern countries they may even have been worshipped. In the West this clarity does not yet exist that a man can be head-oriented mad or heart-oriented mad. A heart-oriented madman is not a madman, he is a godly man; or he is mad in such a different way that he needs to be worshipped, revered, respected. There is no need to treat him, there is no need to put him in an asylum, there is no need to give him shocks. But things go to the extreme, always.In the East it has happened that many mad people have been worshipped – those who were mad from the head. They were simply crazy but they were worshipped because we have worshipped the madman of the heart, and it is very difficult for the ordinary, common masses to make the distinction – they look almost alike.Now in the West the opposite is happening: people who would have been saints in the past. Just think, if Jesus came, was born in America today, where would he be? Or Saint Francis of Assisi – where would he be? In some madhouse. Jews treated Jesus very well: they killed him but they never put him in a madhouse. That was more respectful.But now, in the modern world, if he came back to somewhere in the West, he would be in a madhouse, or lying down on some Freudian couch or being given some electric shocks, drugged – because psychoanalysts say that he was neurotic, his personality was neurotic, he was mad. Of course the things that he said looked mad. He said, “I am the son of God.” What nonsense! Son of God? – megalomania! What is he talking about? He is not in his senses, he lives in a dream. He talks about the kingdom of God – all nonsense, fairy tales, good for children’s books but immature. He chose a better time to come.Saint Francis of Assisi would certainly be in a madhouse: talking to trees, saying to the almond tree, “Sister, how are you?” If he were here he would have been caught: “What are you doing? Talking to an almond tree?” “Sister, sing to me of God,” he says to the almond tree. And not only that, he hears the song that the sister almond tree sings! Crazy! Needs treatment! He talks to the river and to the fish, and he claims that the fish respond to him. He talks to stones and rocks: is there any need for any more proof that he is mad?He is mad, but wouldn’t you like to be mad like Saint Francis of Assisi? Just think: the capacity to hear the almond tree singing and the heart that can feel brothers and sisters in trees, the heart that can talk to the rock, the heart that sees God everywhere, all around, in every form – it must be a heart of utmost love. Utter love reveals that mystery to you.But for the logical mind, of course, these things are nonsense. To me, or to anybody who has known how to look at life through the heart, these are the only meaningful things. Become mad, if you can, become mad from the heart.Now the last thing about this question: if your head comes to a breakdown, don’t be worried. Use this opportunity of a destructured state. In that moment, don’t be worried that you are going mad; in that moment, slip into the heart.Someday in the future, when psychology really comes of age, whenever somebody goes mad from the head we will help him to move toward the heart, because an opportunity opens in that moment. The breakdown can become a breakthrough. The old structure is gone, now he is no longer in the clutches of reason, he is free for a moment. Modern psychology tries to go on adjusting him back to the old structure. All modern efforts are about adjusting: how to make him normal again. Real psychology will do something else. Real psychology will use this opportunity – because the old mind has disappeared, there is a gap – use this interval and lead him toward another mind, that is, the heart. It will lead him toward another center of his being.When you drive a car you change gears. Whenever you change the gear, there comes a moment when the gear moves through neutral; it has to move through the neutral gear. Neutral gear means no gear. From one gear to another, a moment comes when there is no gear. When one mind has failed, you are in a neutral state. Just now you are again as if you are born. Use this opportunity and lead the energy away from the old rotten structure which is falling. Leave the ruin, move into the heart. Forget reason and let love be your center, your target. Each breakdown can become a breakthrough. And each possibility for the failure of the head can become a success for the heart.The failure of the head can become a success for the heart.The second question:Osho,Once at darshan I heard you say of a visitor that he would be a good sannyasin. What is a good sannyasin?First, what is a sannyasin?A sannyasin is one who has come to understand the futility of so-called worldly life. A sannyasin is one who has understood one thing: that something needs to be done immediately about his own being. If he goes on drifting in the old way, he will lose the whole opportunity of this life. A sannyasin is one who has become alert that up to now he has lived wrongly, has moved in wrong directions, has been too concerned with things and not concerned with himself, has been too concerned with worldly prestige and power and has not been concerned about who he is. A sannyasin is one who is turning toward himself, paravritti. A sannyasin is a miracle – the energy is moving back toward oneself.Ordinarily the energy is moving away from you, toward things, targets, in the world. The energy is moving away from you, hence you feel empty. The energy goes away, never comes back; you go on throwing energy away. By and by you feel dissipated, frustrated; nothing comes back. By and by you start to feel empty; the energy is just oozing out every day. And then comes death. Death is nothing else but that you are exhausted and spent. The greatest miracle in life is to understand this and to turn the energy toward home. It is a turning in. This turning in, paravritti, is sannyas.It is not that you leave the world. Live in the world, there is no need to leave anything or go anywhere else. Live in the world but in a totally different way: now you live in the world but you remain centered in yourself, your energy goes on returning to yourself.You are no longer outgoing, you have become ingoing. Of course you become a pool of energy, a reservoir, and energy is delight, sheer delight. Just energy there, overflowing, and you are in delight and you can share and you can give in love. This is the difference. If you put your energy into greed it never comes back; if you put your energy into love it comes back a thousandfold. If you put your energy into anger it never comes back. It leaves you empty, exhausted, spent; if you use your energy in compassion it comes back a thousandfold.So now I will tell you what a good sannyasin is. A good sannyasin is one who has understood this fundamental law of life: that giving love, it comes back a thousandfold. Give in anger and it is gone forever; give in greed and it is gone forever. Share it and it is never gone; on the contrary, you are enriched.When I say “a good sannyasin” I don’t mean a moral or immoral sannyasin: my word good has nothing to do with morality. It is something to do with what Buddha calls aes dhammo sanantano, what Buddha calls the eternal law of life.A good man is an understanding man. A good man is alert, aware, that’s all. Awareness is the only value for me, all else is meaningless. Awareness is the only value for me, so when I say “a good sannyasin,” I mean a sannyasin who is aware. Of course when you are aware you behave according to the law, the fundamental law. When you are unaware you go on destroying yourself, you go on being suicidal.If you behave according to the fundamental law you will be enriched tremendously. Your life will become richer and richer every moment. You will become a king. You may remain a beggar in the outside world, but you will become a king, a pinnacle of inner richness. What Jesus calls the kingdom of God is within you. You will become a king of the kingdom that is within you – but more awareness is needed.So don’t misunderstand me. When I say “a good sannyasin” I don’t use the word in any moralistic sense. I use it in a more fundamental sense because to me morality is just a byproduct of awareness, and immorality is a shadow of unawareness. I am not concerned with shadows and byproducts; I am concerned with the fundamental, with the essential.Be aware and you will be good, be unaware and you will be bad.I have heard a small anecdote:An old farmer was watching his young son, Luke, lighting the wick of the hurricane lamp prior to departing for the evening.“What is the lantern for?” he asked.Said his son casually, “I am off courting, Dad. Don’t worry, I will pay for the oil.”“Dang me!” said the father, “When I was a-courting, I never took me no lamp along, son.”“That figures,” came the reply. “Look what you got!”If you don’t take the lamp of awareness with you, you are going to create a hell around you. Light your lamp wherever you go; courting, not courting, that is not the point. Wherever you go, whatsoever you do, always do it in the inner light, with awareness.And don’t be worried about moralities, concepts about what is good and what is bad. Good follows your inner light just like a shadow. Take care of the inner light.That’s what meditation is all about: to become more alert. Live the same life, just change your alertness, make it more intense. Eat the same food, walk the same path, live in the same house, be with the same woman and the children, but be totally different from your inside. Be alert! Walk the same path but with awareness. If you become aware, suddenly the path is no longer the same because you are no longer the same. If you are aware, the same food is not the same because you are not the same, the same woman is not the same because you are not the same. Everything changes with your inner change.If somebody changes his within, the without changes totally. My definition of the world is that you must be living in a deep inner darkness – hence the world. If you light your inner lamp, suddenly the world disappears and there is only godliness. The world and godliness are not two things but two perceptions of the same energy. If you are unaware the energy appears to you to be as the world, the samsara; if you are alert the same energy appears as godliness. The whole thing depends on your inner awareness or unawareness. That is the only change, the only transformation, the only revolution that has to be made.The third question:Osho,I feel sick with cowardice.There must be a desire not to be a coward. That desire creates the problem. If you are a coward, you are a coward. Accept it. What can you do about it? Whatsoever you do will create more problems, more complexities.And who is not a coward? When life is constantly in danger of death, how is it possible not to be a coward? It is impossible! When any moment you can die and life can be taken away from you, how is it possible, in the face of such danger, to be brave? You can pretend, you can manage to show that you are brave, but deep down you are going to remain a coward. It is natural. Just look at the tininess of human beings – so tiny, and existence is so vast. We are not even like drops, fighting against such an ocean. How is it possible not to be a coward?Try to understand it. Accept it, it is natural. Don’t create a goal against it because that goal is coming out of your cowardice. That goal is not going to help you. At the most you can become very tense and pretend that you are not a coward. You can move to the opposite extreme just to prove to the world and to yourself that you are not a coward.That’s what your generals and your great leaders are doing, just trying to prove to the world that they are not cowards. And because of their efforts the whole world has suffered tremendously. Please, don’t try any foolish thing like that. Just accept. It is helplessness. One has to accept it. Once you accept it and you start understanding it, you will see that by and by it disappears. Not that you become brave – but one day you simply find that through acceptance it disappears.There is no fight, it disappears. There is no resistance; you accept it and it disappears. It is not that you become brave, you simply become more understanding. Bravery is not a goal.But you have been taught from your very childhood, “Be brave!” so you go on trying to be brave. That creates much anxiety and tension. You are trembling everywhere inside and on the outside you are like a stone statue, divided. This has created much misery in you.The goals that have been taught to you from your childhood are foolish, are simply not based on reality. It is as if you say to a small leaf on a tree, “When strong winds come, don’t shake, don’t waver, don’t tremble. That is cowardice.” But what can a small leaf do? When the strong wind comes it shakes, the whole tree shakes. But trees are not so foolish, they won’t listen to you, they go on doing their thing.Have you watched two dogs fighting? They don’t start fighting immediately. First they move in a mock fight. Both start barking. That is just a game to gauge, to judge, who is the stronger. They are not going to fight immediately because that is foolish, stupid; that is done only by human beings. First they will try to bark at each other, jump at each other, show their totality. The one will show “I am this” and the other will show “I am this.” Then immediately they judge: that judgment needs nobody else to convince them. Immediately one feels that he is weaker, he puts his tail down and moves: “This is finished. What is the point of fighting? I am weaker and you are stronger and the stronger is going to win! The point is lost.” It is not that he is a coward; he is simply wise. I don’t call this cowardice.Human beings will stay even if you feel that you are weak. The more you feel that you are weak, the more you will be afraid to leave. People will say you are a coward, so you must fight, and you will be beaten badly and unnecessarily hurt.There is no point. It is a simple calculation. And the stronger one doesn’t go and show the other dogs that he has won. No, the thing is simply dropped. He also knows that he is stronger, so what is the point? He doesn’t go on advertising that he has won. No, the fight is dropped, he forgets all about it.But in the human situation the whole thing has taken a very wrong shape because you have been taught wrong goals. Each child should be taught to be true to life. If there is fear, then be afraid. Why hide it? Why pretend that you are not afraid? If you want to cry, cry. Why be afraid of tears? But we have been taught not to cry, particularly men. With small children the mother will say, “Don’t be a sissy. Don’t start crying, that is only for girls.” And the boy becomes hard. Look. Men cannot cry. They have missed one of the most beautiful things in life. Nature has not made any difference between man and woman. Man has as many tear glands as woman, so the thing is proved, there is no difference. Tears are needed. They are cleansing. But how to cry? What will people say? They will say, “You, and crying? Your wife has died and you are crying? Be a man. Be brave, face it. Don’t cry.”But do you understand? If you don’t cry, by and by your smile will be corrupted because everything is joined together. If you cannot cry you cannot laugh. If you don’t allow your tears to flow naturally you will not be able to allow your smiles also to flow naturally. Everything will become unnatural, everything will become strained. Everything will become a forced thing and you will move almost in a diseased way and you will never be at ease with yourself. That is what has happened, and now you are miserable.Life consists of flowing. If you are a coward, be a coward. Be honestly a coward. And I tell you there is nobody else who is not a coward. And it is good that people are not that way; otherwise even while they are so helpless, they would feel so egoistic. If they were not cowards they would be almost dead stones, they would not be alive – just egos, frozen.Don’t be bothered – accept it. If it is there, it is there, a fact of life. Try to understand it. Don’t listen to others; you are still being manipulated by others.I was reading an anecdote:Mrs. Jones pursued her small husband through the crowds at the zoo brandishing her umbrella and emitting cries of menace. The frightened Mr. Jones, noticing the lock on the lions’ cage had not quite caught, wrenched it off, flew into the cage, slammed the door shut again, pushed the astonished lion hard against the door and peered over its shoulder.His frustrated wife shook her umbrella at him and yelled furiously, “Come out of there, you coward!”This man, a coward?But each husband is a coward in the eyes of the wife. In others’ eyes, you are a coward. Don’t trust the opinion of others too much. If you feel yourself to be a coward, close your eyes, meditate on it. Ninety-nine percent is others’ opinion: the wife brandishing her umbrella, “Come out, you coward!” Ninety-nine percent is others’ opinion, drop it; one percent is reality, accept it; and don’t create any antagonistic goal. Accept it and then you will see that cowardice is no longer cowardice. Rejected, it becomes cowardice. The very word cowardice is a condemnation. Accepted, it becomes humbleness, helplessness.That’s how it is. We have to be humble: we are not the whole. We are the parts of a tremendously vast whole, very tiny parts, atomic parts, small leaves on a big tree.It is good to tremble sometimes, nothing wrong in it. It helps you to shake off the dust. You become fresh again.My whole point is, accept life as it is and don’t try to change it into something else. Don’t try to change your violence into nonviolence; don’t try to change your cowardice into bravery; don’t try to change your sex into celibacy. Don’t create the opposite. Rather, try to understand the fact of violence, and by and by you will become nonviolent. Understand the fact of cowardice and cowardice will disappear. Understand the fact of sex and you will find a new quality arising in it which goes beyond it. But always move through the fact, never against it.The fourth question:Osho,My father is obsessed with genealogy. Is there anything to such pursuits?Must be, otherwise why should your father be obsessed? He may have taken a wrong route, but there must be something in it. Even when people go astray they go astray for a certain reason, although they may not be aware of it.For example, let me tell you an anecdote first:Young Willie, aged eight, came to his father one morning and said, “Daddy, where did I come from?”Willie’s father felt a sinking sensation in his stomach, for he knew he was now up against it. He was a modern parent and realized a question like that deserved a full and frank answer. He found a quiet spot, and for the next half hour he carefully indoctrinated Willie into what are euphemistically called “the facts of life,” managing to be quite explicit.Willie listened with fascinated absorption, and when it was over, the father said, “Well, Willie, does that answer your question?”“No,” said Willie, “it does not. Johnny Brown came from Cincinnati. Where did I come from?”If your father is interested in genealogy he has misunderstood his inquiry. This is a natural question in everybody’s being: from where do we come? From where, from what source? Now if you get into genealogy, you are not getting anywhere. The basic question is religious, it has nothing to do with genealogy. The basic question is: who is the ultimate father or ultimate mother?” The basic question is: where is the beginning of all?Now this is pointless. I have a father, and my father had a father, and of course this goes on and on and you can go on searching and you can make a big tree of your family, but it is pointless because the question remains the same: who is the first?Searching into genealogy, you cannot come to the first. Always the question will remain, “From whom?” I can move a hundred generations back or a thousand generations back, but the question remains the same, it is not solved: from where? From where, from what source, has life arisen?Your father has missed. He has misinterpreted a religious inquiry. He has been thinking that it is a question of genealogy. It is not.This question, “From where do I come?” has to be asked because unless I know that, it is impossible to know who I am.There are two ways to know it. Either you ask, “From where do I come?” That is the way of the Christian, the Mohammedan and the Judaic religion. If you know from where you come, what the ultimate source is, what God is, then you will know who you are.Indian religions have a different way of solving it, and a better and more scientific way. Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism say it is difficult to know from where you come. There is more of a possibility that you may be lost in thinking and in philosophical doctrines. The better question is: “Who am I?” If you know this, you will know from where you come. So they say to forget all about God. They are not worried about who created the world, they are worried about, “Who am I?”In a way, that is more scientific because if I can understand the quality of my being, that will immediately give me the key to understanding the whole and what it is. If I can understand myself – because the source must still be existing in some way within me. The tree still goes on existing in the seed: if you can understand the seed you will be able to know the tree; in the fruit, the whole tree exists.If we can understand ourselves… Of course this is the closest approach possible because I am closer to myself than anything else. Just close your eyes and you reach into yourself. The only problem is how to drop the thoughts. Then, suddenly, you start sinking into your being. From there is the door to the whole, to the source.When you go back home, tell your father that genealogy is not going to help. He must have some religious inquiry within him which he has misunderstood. Once he is made aware of it his inquiry will be on the right lines.It is happening in the West because religion is no longer an accepted inquiry, it is a rejected inquiry, so people go on seeking religious inquiries through vicarious ways. You cannot accept directly that you are seeking God; people will think you are mad! “It is foolish. What are you talking about? Then you are not a contemporary. God is dead, have you not heard? What are you doing?” But the desire arises to know the source, and you cannot accept it in religious ways because religious ways are no longer accepted by the modern mind. So you have to search for it in a vicarious way – then you start asking about genealogy.Religion is a valid inquiry. It doesn’t matter whether society accepts it or rejects it. Man is a religious animal and is going to remain that way. Religion is something natural. To ask from where you come is relevant; to ask, “Who am I?” is always going to remain relevant. But the modern mind has created a climate of atheism so you cannot ask such questions. If you ask, people laugh. If you talk about such things, people feel bored. If you start inquiring in these ways, people think you are slipping out of your sanity. Religion is no longer a welcome inquiry.Tell your father. And of course, genealogy will remain an obsession because this is not the right inquiry, but once his consciousness shifts to the religious dimension he will be released from the obsession. And then something is possible, something of tremendous import is possible. He wants to know who the real father is, who has fathered existence, or who is still mothering existence?The last question. Listen to it very carefully, it is very important.Osho,How do you manage it, to have always the right anecdote at the right moment?Let me answer you with an anecdote:A king, passing through a small town, saw what he took to be indications of amazing marksmanship. On trees, barns and fences there were numbers of bull’s-eyes, each with a bullet hole in the exact center. He could not believe his eyes. It was superb marksmanship, almost a miracle of achievement. He himself was a good marksman, and he had known many great marksmen in his life, but never anything like this. He asked to meet the expert shot. It turned out to be a madman.“This is sensational! How in the world do you do it?” he asked the madman. “I myself am a good shot, but nothing compared to your skill and art. Please tell me.”“Easy as pie!” said the madman and laughed uproariously. “I shoot first and draw the circles in later!”Dig? I choose the anecdotes first and then draw the circles. I am just like that madman.There are other people who use anecdotes to illustrate some theoretical point. I do just the opposite: I use theoretical points to illustrate the anecdotes.Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When wolves were discovered in the village near Master Shoju’s temple, Shoju entered the graveyard nightly for one week and sat in zazen. This put a stop to the wolves’ prowling. Overjoyed, the villagers asked him to describe the secret rites he had performed.“I didn’t have to resort to such things,” he said, “nor could I have done so. While I was in zazen a number of wolves gathered round me, licking the tip of my nose and sniffing my windpipe, but because I remained in the right state of mind, I wasn’t bitten. As I keep preaching to you, the proper state of mind will make it possible for you to be free in life and death, invulnerable to fire and water. Even wolves are powerless against it. I simply practice what I preach.”What is meditation? Is it a technique that can be practiced? Is it an effort that you have to do? Is it something which the mind can achieve? It is not.All that the mind can do cannot be meditation. It is something beyond the mind; the mind is absolutely helpless there. The mind cannot penetrate meditation: where mind ends, meditation begins. This has to be remembered because in our life, whatsoever we do, we do through the mind; whatsoever we achieve, we achieve through the mind. And then when we turn inward we again start thinking in terms of techniques, methods, doings, because the whole of life’s experience shows us that everything can be done by the mind.Yes, except meditation, everything can be done by the mind. Everything is done by the mind except meditation because meditation is not an achievement. It is already the case, it is your nature. It has not to be achieved, it has only to be recognized, it has only to be remembered. It is there waiting for you – just a turning in and it is available. You have been carrying it always and always.Meditation is your intrinsic nature. It is you, it is your being. It has nothing to do with your doings. You cannot have it. You cannot not have it. It cannot be possessed, it is not a thing. It is you, it is your being.Once you understand what meditation is, things become very clear. Otherwise you can go on groping in the dark.Meditation is a state of clarity, not a state of mind. Mind is confusion. Mind is never clear, it cannot be. Thoughts create clouds around you, they are subtle clouds. A mist is created by them and the clarity is lost. When thoughts disappear, when there are no more clouds around you, when you are in your simple beingness, clarity happens. Then you can see far away, then you can see to the very end of existence. Then your gaze becomes penetrating, to the very core of being.Meditation is clarity, absolute clarity of vision. You cannot think about it. You have to drop thinking. When I say you have to drop thinking, don’t conclude in a hurry. Because I have to use language, so I say, “Drop thinking” – but if you start dropping you will miss, because again you will reduce it to a doing.“Drop thinking” simply means don’t do anything. Sit. Let thoughts settle themselves. Let mind drop on its own accord. Just sit gazing at the wall in a silent corner, not doing anything at all, relaxed, loose, with no effort, not going anywhere, as if you are falling asleep awake. You are awake and you are relaxing and the whole body is falling into sleep. You remain alert inside and the whole body moves into deep relaxation.Thoughts settle on their own accord. You need not jump among them, you need not try to put them right. It is as if a stream has become muddy: what do you do? Do you jump in it and start helping the stream to become clear? – you will make it more muddy.You simply sit on the bank. You wait. There is nothing to be done because whatsoever you do will make the stream more muddy. If somebody has passed through the stream and the dead leaves have surfaced, the mud has arisen, just patience is needed. You simply sit on the bank. Watch indifferently: the stream goes on flowing, the dead leaves will be taken away – and the mud cannot be there forever, it will start settling. After a while, suddenly you will become aware the stream is crystal clear again.Whenever a desire passes through your mind, the stream becomes muddy. Just sit. Don’t try to do anything. In Japan this “just sitting” is called zazen – just sitting and doing nothing. And one day meditation happens. Not that you bring it to you, it comes to you. And when it comes, you immediately recognize it. It has always been there but you were not looking in the right direction. The treasure has been with you but you were occupied somewhere else: in thoughts, in desires, in a thousand and one things. You were not interested in only one thing – and that was your own being.When energy turns in – what Buddha calls paravritti, the coming back of your energy to the source – suddenly clarity is attained. Then you can see clouds a thousand miles away, and then you can hear ancient music in the pines. Then everything is available to you.Before we enter this beautiful Zen story, a few things about the mind have to be understood because the more you understand the mechanism of the mind, the greater is the possibility that you will not interfere. The more you understand how the mind functions, the greater is the possibility that you will be able to sit in zazen, that you will be able just to sit – sitting and doing nothing – that you will be able to allow meditation to happen. It is a happening.But the understanding of the mind will be helpful. Otherwise you may go on doing something which helps the mind to function, which goes on giving cooperation to the mind.The first thing about the mind is that it is a constant chattering. Whether you are talking or not, it goes on doing some inner talk; whether you are awake or asleep the inner talk continues as an undercurrent. You may be doing some work but the inner talk continues. You are driving, or you are digging a hole in the garden, but the inner talk continues.The mind is constantly talking. If the inner talk can drop even for a single moment you will be able to have a glimpse of no-mind. That’s what meditation is all about. The state of no-mind is the right state; it is your state.But how to come to an interval where the mind stops the inner chattering? If you try, again you will miss. But there is no need to try. In fact, the interval is continuously happening. Just a little alertness is needed. Between two thoughts there is an interval; even between two words there is a gap. Otherwise words will run over each other, otherwise thoughts will overlap each other.They don’t overlap, whatsoever you say. You say, “A rose is a rose is a rose.” Between two words there is a gap; between a and rose there is a gap, howsoever small, howsoever invisible, howsoever imperceptible. But the gap is there, otherwise a will run over rose. With just a little alertness, just a little watchfulness and you can see the gap: a…rose…is…a…rose…is…a…rose. The gap is continuously recurring; after each word the gap is recurring.The gestalt has to be changed. Ordinarily you look at the words, you don’t look at the gaps. You look at the a, you look at the rose, but you don’t look at the gap between the two. Change your attention.Have you seen children’s books? There are many pictures, and you can look at the same picture in two ways: if you look one way there is an old woman, but if you go on looking, suddenly the picture changes and a young, beautiful woman can be seen. The same lines make both faces – of an old woman and a young woman. If you go on looking at the young face, again it changes because the mind cannot remain constant at anything; it is a flux. And if you go on looking again at the old face it will change back to a young face.You will notice one thing: when you see the old face you cannot see the young face, though you know it is hidden somewhere, you have known it, you have seen it. And when you see the young face, the old face cannot be seen. It disappears although you know it is there. But you cannot see both together; they are contradictory. They cannot be seen together: when you see the figure the background disappears, when you see the background the figure disappears.Mind has a limited capacity to know; it cannot know the contradictory. That’s why it cannot know godliness: godliness is contradictory. That’s why it cannot know the innermost core of your being: it is contradictory. It comprehends all contradictions, it is paradoxical.The mind can see only one thing at a time, and the opposite is not possible at the same time. When you see the opposite, the first disappears. The mind goes on looking at the words so it cannot see the silences that come after each word.Change the focus. Just sitting silently, start looking in the gaps – not with effort, no need to strain; relaxed, just easy, in a playful mood, just as a fun. No need to be religious about it, otherwise you become serious. And once you become serious it is very difficult to move from words to no words. It is very easy if you remain loose, flowing, nonserious, playful – as if it is just a fun.Millions of people miss meditation because meditation has taken on a wrong connotation. It looks very serious, looks gloomy, has something of the church in it; looks as if it is only for people who are either dead, or almost dead, who are gloomy, serious, have long faces; who have lost festivity, fun, playfulness, celebration. These are the qualities of meditation. A really meditative person is playful, life is fun for him. Life is a leela, a play. He enjoys it tremendously. He is not serious, he is relaxed.Sit silently, relaxed, loose. Just allow your attention to flow toward the gaps. Slip from the edges of words into the intervals. Let intervals become more prominent and allow words to fade away. It is just as if you are looking at a blackboard and I put a small white dot on it: you can see either the dot, then the blackboard goes far away, or you can see the blackboard, then the dot becomes secondary, a shadow phenomenon. You can go on changing your attention between the figure and the background.Words are figures, silence is the background. Words come and go, silence remains. When you were born you were born as a silence – just intervals and intervals, gaps and gaps. You came with infinite emptiness, you brought unbounded emptiness with you in life. Then you started collecting words.That’s why if you go back in your memory, if you try to remember, you cannot go past the age of four. Because before the age of four you were almost empty. Words started collecting in your memory after the age of four. Memory can function only where words function. Emptiness leaves no trace on you. That’s why when you go back and you try to remember, you can remember, at the most, the age of four, or if you were very intelligent then your remembering can go back to the age of three. But there comes a point where suddenly there is no memory. Up to that time you were an emptiness – pure, virgin, uncorrupted by words. You were pure sky. The day you die, again your words will drop and scatter. You will move into another world or another life again with your emptiness.Emptiness is your self.I have heard that Shankara used to tell the story of a pupil who kept asking his master about the nature of the ultimate self. Each time the question came, the master would turn a deaf ear – until finally he turned on his pupil one day and said, “I am teaching you, but you do not follow. The self is silence.”Mind means words, self means silence. Mind is nothing but all the words that you have accumulated. Silence is that which has always been with you, it is not an accumulation. That is the meaning of self: it is your intrinsic quality. On the background of silence you go on accumulating words, and the words in total are known as “the mind.” Silence is meditation. It is a question of changing the gestalt, shifting the attention from words into silence – which is always there.Each word is like a precipice: you can take a jump into the valley of silence. From each word you can slip into silence. That is the use of a mantra. Mantra means repeating a single word again and again and again. When you repeat a single word again and again and again, you get bored with that word because the novelty is lost. You get fed up with that word, you want to get rid of that word. Boredom helps, it helps you to get rid of the word – now you can slip more easily into silence.The silence is always there round the corner. If you go on repeating Ram, Ram, Ram… How long can you repeat it? Sooner or later you feel fed up, bored. The use of a mantra is to create such boredom that you want to get rid of it. That state is beautiful because then there is no other way than to slip into silence. Leave the word behind and move into the gap; use the word as a jumping board and jump into the abyss.If words change, as they always change… Ordinarily, of course, you are never fed up. A new word is always attractive, a new idea is always attractive, a new dream, a new desire, is always attractive. But if you can see that the mind is simply repeating the same thing again and again and again: either you fall asleep or you jump into silence, these are the two possibilities. And I know that most people who chant mantras fall into sleep. That too is a possibility which we have known for centuries.Mothers know it well. When a child is not falling asleep they do a mantra. They call it a lullaby. They repeat just two or three words in a monotonous tone and the child starts feeling sleepy. Go on repeating and the child gets bored – and he cannot escape, he cannot go anywhere, so the only escape is into sleep. He says, “Go on repeating. I am going to sleep!” and he falls asleep.Many chanters of mantras fall asleep, hence the use of Transcendental Meditation for people who suffer from sleeplessness; hence its appeal in America. Insomnia has become a normal thing. The more insomnia there is, the more will be the appeal of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi because people need some tranquilizers. A mantra is a perfect tranquilizer, but that is not its real use. There is nothing wrong in it; if it gives you good sleep, good – but that is not its real use.It is as if you are using an airplane like a bullock cart. You can use it, you can put the airplane behind bullocks and use it as a bullock car – nothing wrong in it, it will serve a little purpose, but that is not its use. You could soar very high with it.A mantra has to be used with full awareness that this is to create boredom, and you are to remember not to fall asleep. Otherwise, you miss. Don’t fall asleep. Go on repeating the mantra and don’t allow yourself to fall into sleep. So it is better if you repeat the mantra standing, or repeat it walking, so that you don’t fall asleep.One of the great disciples of Gurdjieff, P. D. Ouspensky, was dying. The doctors told him to rest but he would not rest; instead he continued walking the whole night. They thought he had gone crazy. He was dying, his energy was disappearing – what was he doing? This was the time to rest; he would die sooner if he went on walking. But he would not stop.Somebody asked, “What are you doing?”He said, “I would like to die alert, awake. I don’t want to die asleep, otherwise I will miss the beauty of death.” And he died walking.That is the way to do a mantra: walk.If you go to Bodhgaya where Gautama the Buddha attained enlightenment, near the bodhi tree you will find a small path. On that path Buddha walked continuously: for one hour he would meditate under the tree, and then for one hour he would walk.When his disciples asked, “Why?” he would say, “Because if I sit too much under the tree, then sleepiness starts coming.”The moment sleepiness starts coming one has to walk because otherwise you will slip into sleep and the whole mantra is lost. The mantra is to create boredom, the mantra is to create a fed up-ness so that you can jump into the abyss. But if you move into sleep the abyss is missed.All Buddhist meditations alternate: you do them sitting, but when you feel drowsiness setting in, immediately you get up and start doing them walking. Then the moment you see that the sleepiness has disappeared, sit again, do the meditation again. If you go on doing this, a moment comes when suddenly you slip out of the words, just like a snake who slips out of his old skin. And it happens very naturally, there is no effort to it.So the first thing to remember about mind is: it is a constant chattering. That chattering keeps it alive, that chattering is a food for it. Without that chattering the mind cannot continue. So drop out of the clutches of the mind, that is, drop out of inner chattering.You can do this by forcing yourself, but then again you miss. You can force yourself not to talk inside, just as you can force yourself not to talk outside; you can keep a forced silence. In the beginning it is difficult, but you can go on insisting and you can force the mind not to talk. It is possible. If you go to the Himalayas you will find many people who have attained to it, but you will find dullness on their faces, not intelligence. The mind has not been transcended, it has simply been dulled. They have not moved into an alive silence, they have simply forced the mind and controlled it. It is as if a child has been forced to sit in the corner and not to move. Watch him: he feels restless but he goes on controlling himself, afraid. He represses his energy, otherwise he will be punished.If this goes on for as long as it does – in schools children are sitting for five or six hours – by and by they are dulled, their intelligence is lost. Every child is born intelligent, and almost ninety-nine percent of people die stupid. The whole education dulls the mind, and you can also do the same to yourself.You will find religious people almost stupid, although you may not see it because of your ideas about them. But if you have open eyes, go and look at your sannyasins: you will find them stupid and idiotic, you will not find any sign of intelligence or creativity. India has suffered very much because of these people. They have created such an uncreative state that India has lived at the minimum. Paralysis is not meditation.It happened once in a church that the preacher shouted at the revival, “Let all you husbands who have troubles on your minds, stand up!”Every man in the church rose to his feet except one.“Ah!’ exclaimed the preacher. “You are one in a million!”“It is not that. I cannot get up,” said the man. “I am paralyzed.”Paralysis is not meditation, paralysis is not healthy. You can paralyze the mind; there are millions of tricks available to paralyze it. People lie on a bed of thorns: if you continuously lie on a bed of thorns your body becomes insensitive. It is not a miracle, you are simply desensitizing your body. When the body loses aliveness there is no problem; it is not a bed of thorns for you at all. By and by you may even start feeling comfortable. In fact, if you are given a good, comfortable bed, you will not be able to sleep on it. This is paralyzing the body.There are similar methods to paralyze the mind. You can fast. Then the mind goes on saying that the body is hungry but you don’t supply food, you don’t listen to the mind. By and by the mind becomes dull. The body goes on feeling the hunger but the mind does not report it, because what is the point? There is nobody to listen, there is nobody to respond. Then a certain paralysis happens in the mind. Many people who go on long fasts think they have attained meditation. It is not meditation, it is just low energy, paralysis, insensitivity. They are moving like dead corpses, they are not alive.Remember, meditation will bring you more and more intelligence, infinite intelligence, a radiant intelligence. Meditation will make you more alive and sensitive; your life will become richer.Look at the ascetics: their life has become almost as if it is not life. These people are not meditators. They may be masochists, torturing themselves and enjoying the torture. The mind is very cunning, it goes on doing things and rationalizing them. Ordinarily you are violent toward others. But mind is very cunning: it can learn nonviolence, it can preach nonviolence. Then it becomes violent toward itself, and the violence that you do to your own self is respected by people because they have an idea that to be an ascetic is to be religious. That is sheer nonsense.Existence is not an ascetic, otherwise there would be no flowers, there would be no green trees, only deserts. God is not an ascetic, otherwise there would be no song in life, no dance in life, only cemeteries and cemeteries. God is not an ascetic, God enjoys life. God is more epicurean than you can imagine. If you think about God, think in terms of Epicurus. Godliness is a constant search for more and more happiness, joy, ecstasy, remember that.But mind is very cunning: it can rationalize paralysis as meditation, it can rationalize dullness as transcendence, it can rationalize deadness as renunciation. Watch out! Always remember that if you are moving in the right direction, you will go on flowering. Much fragrance will come out of you and you will be creative. And you will be sensitive to life, to love, and to everything that existence makes available to you.Have a very penetrating eye inside your mind, see what its motivations are. When you do something, immediately look for the motivation because if you miss the motivation, the mind goes on befooling you and goes on saying that something else was the motivation. For example, you come home angry and you beat your child. The mind will say, “It is just for his own sake, to make him behave.” This is a rationalization. Go deeper: you were angry and you wanted somebody with whom you could be angry. You could not be angry with the boss in the office, he is too strong for that, and it is risky and economically dangerous. No, you needed somebody helpless. Now this child is perfectly helpless, he depends on you. He cannot react, he cannot do anything; he cannot pay you back in the same coin. You cannot find a more perfect victim.Look: are you angry? If you are angry, then the mind is befooling you. The mind goes on befooling you twenty-four hours a day, and you cooperate with it. Then in the end you are in misery, you land in hell. Watch every moment for the right motivation. If you can find the right motivation, the mind will become more and more incapable of deceiving you. And the further away you are from deception, the more you will be capable of moving beyond mind, the more you will become a master.I have heard:A scientist was saying to his friend, “I don’t see why you insisted that your wife wear a chastity belt while we were away at the convention. After all, between us, as old buddies, with Emma’s face and figure, who would?”“I know, I know,” replied the other. “But when I get back home, I can always say I lost the key.”Look: watch for the unconscious motivation. The mind goes on bullying you and bossing you because you are not capable of seeing its real motivations. Once a person becomes capable of seeing real motivations, meditation is very close because then the mind no longer has a grip on you.The mind is a mechanism, it has no intelligence. The mind is a bio-computer. How can it have any intelligence? It has skill but it has no intelligence, it has a functional utility but it has no awareness. It is a robot. It works well, but don’t listen to it too much because then you will lose your inner intelligence. Then it is as if you are asking a machine to guide you, lead you. You are asking a machine which has nothing original in it – cannot have. Not a single thought in the mind is ever original, it is always a repetition. Watch: whenever mind says something, see that it is again putting you into a routine. Try to do something new and the mind will have less of a grip on you.People who are in some way creative are always easily transformed into meditators, and people who are uncreative in their life are the most difficult. If you live a repetitive life the mind has too much control over you: you cannot move away from it, you are afraid. Do something new every day. Don’t listen to the old routine. In fact, if the mind says something, tell it, “We have always been doing this. Now let me do something else.”Even small changes: in the way you have always been behaving with your wife, just small changes; in the way you always walk, just small changes; the way you always talk, small changes, and you will find that the mind is losing its grip on you. You are becoming a little freer.Creative persons get more easily into meditation and go deeper. Poets, painters, musicians, dancers, can get into meditation more easily than businessmen. They live a routine life, absolutely uncreative.I have heard about a father who was giving advice to his son. The father, a noted playboy in his younger days, was discussing his son’s forthcoming marriage.“My boy,” he said, “I have got just two pieces of advice to give you. Make it a point to reserve the right to one night a week out with the boys.”He paused. His son asked for the second piece of advice and then he said, “Don’t waste it on the boys!”He is transferring his own routine, his own ways to his son. The old mind goes on giving advice to the present consciousness: the father giving advice to the son.Each moment you are new, reborn. Consciousness is never old. Consciousness is always the son and the mind is always the father. The mind is never new and the consciousness is never old, and the mind goes on advising the son. The father will create the same pattern in the son, then the son will repeat the same thing.You have lived in a certain way up to now, don’t you want to live in a different way? You have thought in a certain way up to now, don’t you want some new glimpses in your being? Then be alert and don’t listen to the mind. Mind is your past constantly trying to control your present and your future. It is the dead past which goes on controlling the alive present. Just become alert about it.But what is the way? How does the mind go on doing it? The mind does it with this method. It says, “If you don’t listen to me, you will not be as efficient as I am. If you do an old thing you can be more efficient because you have done it before. If you do a new thing you cannot be so efficient.” The mind goes on talking like an economist, an efficiency expert. It goes on saying, “This is easier to do. Why do it the hard way? This is the way of least resistance.”Remember, whenever you have two things, two alternatives, choose the new one, choose the harder, choose the one in which more awareness will be needed. At the cost of efficiency, always choose awareness and you will create the situation in which meditation will become possible. These are all just situations. Meditation will happen. I am not saying that just by doing them you will get to meditation, but they will be helpful. They will create the necessary situation in you without which meditation cannot happen.Be less efficient but more creative. Let that be the motto. Don’t be bothered too much about utilitarian ends. Rather, constantly remember that you are not here in life to become a commodity. You are not here to become a utility – that is below dignity. You are not here just to become more and more efficient. You are here to become more and more alive, you are here to become more and more intelligent, you are here to become more and more happy, ecstatically happy. But then that is totally different from the ways of the mind.A woman received a report from the school:“Your little boy is very intelligent,” said the teacher’s note accompanying the report card, “but he spends entirely too much time playing with the girls. However, I am working on a plan to break him of the habit.”The mother signed the report and sent it back with this note: “Let me know if it works, and I will try it out on his father.”People are constantly searching for cues to control others, cues which can give you more profit, “profitable cues.” If you are after cues on how to control others, you will be in the control of the mind always. Forget about controlling anybody.Once you drop the idea of controlling others – husband or wife, son or father, friend or foe – once you drop the idea of controlling others, the mind cannot have the same grip on you because it becomes useless.It is useful in controlling the world, it is useful in controlling society. A politician cannot meditate – impossible – even more impossible than for a businessman. A politician is at the very other end. He cannot meditate. Sometimes politicians come to me: they are interested in meditation but not exactly in meditation – they are too tense and they want a certain relaxation. They come to me and they ask if I can help them because their work is such that they are too tense, and constant conflict, leg-pulling, rat-racing, continues. They ask for something so that they can have a little peace. I tell them that it is impossible, they cannot meditate.The ambitious mind cannot meditate because the basic foundation of meditation is to be non-ambitious. Ambition means the effort to control others. That is what politics is: the effort to control the whole world. If you want to control others, you will have to listen to the mind because the mind enjoys violence very much.And you cannot try new things, they are too risky. You have to try the old things again and again. If you listen to the lessons of history, they are amazing.In 1917 Russia went through a great revolution, one of the greatest in history – but somehow the revolution failed. When the communists came into power, they became almost like the czars – worse, even. Stalin proved more terrible than Ivan the Terrible: he killed millions of people. What happened? Once they came into power, to do something new was too risky; it might not work. It had never worked before, “So who knows? Try the old methods which have always been useful.” They had to learn from the czars.Every revolution fails because once a certain group of politicians comes into power it has to use the same methods. The mind is never for the new, it is always for the old. If you want to control others you will not be able to meditate. About that one point, be absolutely certain.The mind lives in a sort of sleep, it lives in a sort of unconscious state. You become conscious only very rarely. If your life is in tremendous danger you become conscious; otherwise you are not conscious. The mind goes on moving, sleepy. Stand by the side of the road and watch people and you will see shadows of dreams on their faces. Somebody is talking to himself, making gestures. If you look at him you will be able to see that he is somewhere else, not here on the road. It is as if people are moving in deep sleep.Somnambulism is the state of the ordinary mind. If you want to become a meditator you have to drop this sleepy habit of doing things. Walk, but be alert. Dig a hole, but be alert. Eat, but while eating don’t do anything – just eat. Each bite should be taken with deep alertness, chew it with alertness. Don’t allow yourself to run all over the world. Be here, now. Whenever you catch your mind going somewhere else… It is always going somewhere else, it never wants to be here – because if the mind is here it is no longer needed. Right in the present there is no need for the mind; consciousness is enough. The mind is needed only there somewhere else in the future, in the past, but never here.So whenever you become alert that the mind has gone somewhere else – you are in Pune and the mind has gone to Philadelphia – immediately become alert. Give yourself a jerk, come back home. Come to the point where you are. Eating, eat; walking, walk – don’t allow this mind to go all over the world. It is not that this will become meditation, but it will create a situation.The party was in full swing and a man decided to call up a friend and invite him to join the fun. He dialed the wrong number and apologized to the sleepy voice that answered. On the next try he got the same voice.“I am terribly sorry,” he said, “I dialed very carefully. Can’t understand how I got the wrong number.”“Neither can I,” said the sleepy voice. “Especially since I have no phone.”People are living almost asleep, and they have learned the trick of how to do things without disturbing their sleep. If you become a little alert, you will catch yourself red-handed many times doing things that you never wanted to do, doing things that you know you are going to repent for, doing things that you had decided – just the other day – never to do again. And you say many times, “I did it, but I don’t know how it happened. It happened in spite of me.” How can something happen in spite of you? It is possible only if you are asleep. And you go on saying that you never wanted it, but somewhere deep down you must have wanted it.Just the other day, Paritosh sent me a beautiful joke, one of the rare ones, a jewel of the finest water. Listen to it carefully.It was after the last war and a journalist was interviewing the Reverend Mother of a convent in Europe.“Tell me,” said the journalist, “what happened to you and your nuns during those terrible years? How did you survive?”“Well, first of all,” said the Reverend Mother, “the Germans invaded our country, seized the convent, raped all the nuns – except sister Anastasia – took our food and left. Then came the Russians. Again they seized the convent, raped all the nuns – except Sister Anastasia – took our food and left. Then again the Russians were driven out and the Germans came back again, seized the convent, raped all the nuns – except Sister Anastasia – took our food and left.”The journalist made the required sympathetic noises, but was curious about Sister Anastasia. “Who is this Sister Anastasia?” he asked. “Why did she escape these terrible happenings?”“Ah, well,” replied the Reverend Mother, “Sister Anastasia does not like that kind of thing.”Even rape is your desire; that too happens because you want it. It may look too extreme but psychoanalysts say it is so, and I also observe it is so. Without your cooperation even rape is not possible. A deep desire for being raped is hidden somewhere. In fact, it is very rare to find a woman who has not fantasized about herself being raped, who has not dreamed of herself being raped. Deep down, rape shows that you are beautiful, desired – desired wildly! It is said, it is a historical fact that when one of the most beautiful women of Egypt died, her dead body was raped, the mummy. If the spirit of that woman knew about it, she must have felt tremendously happy. Just think: a dead body being raped…You may deny it.Just a few days ago a woman came to me. She had been raped in Kabul. And she was telling her whole story with such relish that I said to her, “You must have been cooperating.”She said, “What are you saying?” She felt hurt.I said, “Don’t feel hurt. You are enjoying the whole story.” I said. “Close your eyes and be true. At least once, be true to me. Have you enjoyed it?”She said, “What are you saying? Rape, and me enjoying it? I am a Catholic, a Christian!”I said, “Still, close your eyes. It makes no difference whether you are Catholic, Hindu, or Buddhist, still, just close your eyes and meditate.”She relaxed. She was really a sincere woman. Then her face changed and she opened her eyes and said, “I think you are right – I enjoyed it. But please don’t say it to anybody! My husband is going to come to see you soon. Never mention it!”Just watch your mind: on the surface it says something, but deep down, simultaneously, it is planning something else. Be a little more alert and don’t move in sleep.The nagging old lady had been in bed for a week on doctor’s orders. Nothing suited her. She complained about the weather, the medicine, and especially about her husband’s cooking.One day after taking in her breakfast tray and cleaning up the kitchen, the old man sat down in his den. She heard the scratching of his pen.“What are you doing now?” she called.“Writing a letter.”“Who are you writing to?”“Cousin Ann.”“What are you writing to her about?”“I am telling her you are sick, but the doctors say you will be okay soon, and there is no danger.”And then he asked, after a small pause, “How do you spell cemetery, with a c or with an s?”On the surface one thing, deep down something exactly the opposite. He is hoping against hope, he is hoping against doctors. On the surface he will go on saying that she is going to be okay again soon, but deep down he is hoping that somehow she will die. And he will not accept the fact, even to himself. That’s how you go on hiding from yourself.Stop these tricks. Be sincere with your mind, and the grip that your mind has on you will be lost.Now this small anecdote.When wolves were discovered in the village near Master Shoju’s temple, Shoju entered the graveyard nightly for one week and sat in zazen. This put a stop to the wolves’ prowling. Overjoyed, the villagers asked him to describe the secret rites he had performed.“I didn’t have to resort to such things,” he said, “nor could I have done so. While I was in zazen a number of wolves gathered round me, licking the tip of my nose and sniffing my windpipe, but because I remained in the right state of mind, I wasn’t bitten. As I keep preaching to you, the proper state of mind will make it possible for you to be free in life and death, invulnerable to fire and water. Even wolves are powerless against it. I simply practice what I preach.”A simple story, but very meaningful. The master simply went to the graveyard and sat there for one week, not doing anything, not even praying, not even meditating. He simply sat there in meditation – not meditating, just in meditation. He simply sat there. That is the meaning of the word zazen. It is one of the most beautiful words to be used for meditation: it simply means just sitting, doing nothing. Za means sitting – he simply sat there. And this sitting, when the mind is not there and thoughts are not there, when there is no stirring and the consciousness is like a cool pool of water with no ripples, is the right state. Miracles happen on their own accord.The master said: “While I was in zazen a number of wolves gathered round me, licking the tip of my nose and sniffing my windpipe, but because I remained in the right state of mind, I wasn’t bitten.” A very fundamental law of life is that if you become afraid, you give energy to the other to make you more afraid. The very idea of fear in you creates the opposite idea in the other.Each thought has a negative and positive polarity, just like electricity. If you have the negative pole, on the other side a positive pole is created. It is automatic. If you are afraid the other immediately feels a desire arising in him to oppress you, to torture you. If you are not afraid the desire in the other simply disappears. And it is not only so with man, it is so even with wolves. With animals it is also the same.If you can remain in the right state – that is, undistracted, silent, just a witness to everything, to whatsoever is happening, with no idea arising in you – then no idea will arise in others around you.There is an old Indian story:In the Hindu heaven, there is a tree called kalpataru. It means “the wish-fulfilling tree.” By accident a traveler arrived there and he was tired, so he sat under the tree. And he was hungry, so he thought, “If somebody was here, I would ask for food. But there seems to be nobody.”The moment the idea of food appeared in his mind, food suddenly appeared. And he was so hungry that he didn’t bother to think about it; he ate it.Then he started feeling sleepy and he thought, “If there was a bed here…” and the bed appeared.But lying on the bed the thought arose in him, “What is happening? I don’t see anybody here. Food has come, a bed has come – maybe there are ghosts doing things to me!” Suddenly ghosts appeared.Then he became afraid and he thought, “Now they will kill me!” And they killed him.In life, the law is the same: if you think of ghosts they are bound to appear. Think and you will see: if you think of enemies you will create them, if you think of friends they will appear. If you love, love appears all around you; if you hate, hate appears. Whatsoever you go on thinking is being fulfilled by a certain law. If you don’t think anything, then nothing happens to you.The master simply sat there in the graveyard. The wolves came, but finding nobody there, they sniffed. They must have sniffed to see whether this man was thinking or not. They circled around, they watched, but there was nobody – just emptiness. What to do with emptiness?This emptiness, this silence, this bliss, cannot be destroyed. Not even wolves are that bad. They felt the sacredness of this emptiness and they disappeared.The villagers thought that this man had done some secret rites, but the master said, “I have not done anything, nor could I have done so. I simply sat there and everything changed.”This anecdote is a parable. If you sit in this world silently, if you live silently, as an alive nothingness, the world will become a paradise, the wolves will disappear. There is no need to do anything else; just the right state of your consciousness and everything is done.There are two laws. One law is of the mind. With the law of the mind you go on creating hell around you: friends become foes, lovers prove enemies, flowers become thorns. Life becomes a burden; one simply suffers life. With the law of mind you live in hell, wherever you live.If you slip out of the mind you have slipped out of that law, and suddenly you live in a totally different world. That different world is nirvana. That different world is godliness. Then, without doing, everything starts happening.So let me say it in this way: if you want to “do” you will live in the ego, and the wolves will surround you and you will be constantly in trouble. If you drop the ego, if you drop the idea of being a doer and you simply relax into life and are in a let-go, you are again back in the world of godliness, back in the Garden of Eden, Adam has come back home. Then things happen.The Christian story says that there was no need for Adam to do anything in the Garden of Eden; everything was available. But then he fell from grace and he was thrown out. He became knowledgeable, he became an egoist, and since then humanity has been suffering.Each person has to come back to the Garden of Eden again. The doors are not closed. “Knock and they shall be opened unto you. Ask and it shall be given” – but one has to turn back. The path is from doing toward happening, from the ego toward no-ego, from mind toward no-mind. No-mind is what meditation is all about.Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Can you talk about facing the death of each moment and letting go?Death is already happening. Whether you face it or not, whether you look at it or not, it is already there.It is just like breathing. When a child is born he inhales, he breathes in for the first time. That is the beginning of life. And when one day he becomes old, dies, he will exhale.Death always happens with exhalation and birth with inhalation. But exhalation and inhalation are happening continuously: with each inhalation you are born, with each exhalation you die.So the first thing to understand is that death is not somewhere in the future waiting for you, as it has always been pictured. It is part of life, it is an ongoing process – not in the future; here, now. Life and death are two aspects of existence, simultaneously happening together.Ordinarily, you have been taught to think of death as being against life. Death is not against life. Life is not possible without death, death is the very ground on which life exists. Death and life are like two wings: the bird cannot fly with one wing, and the being cannot be without death. So the first thing is a clear understanding of what we mean by death.Death is an absolutely necessary process for life to be. It is not the enemy, it is the friend, and it is not there somewhere in the future, it is here, now. It is not going to happen, it has always been happening. Since you have been here it has been with you. With each exhalation it happens – a little death, a small death – but because of fear we have put it in the future.The mind always tries to avoid things which it cannot comprehend, and death is one of the most incomprehensible mysteries. There are only three mysteries: life, death and love. And these three are all beyond mind.So mind takes life for granted, then there is no need to inquire. That is a way of avoiding: you never think, you never meditate on life; you have simply accepted it, taken it for granted.It is a tremendous mystery. You are alive, but don’t think that you have known life.For death, mind plays another trick: it postpones it – because to accept it here and now would be a constant worry. So the mind puts it somewhere in the future, then there is no hurry: “When it comes, we will see.” And for love, mind has created substitutes which are not love: sometimes you call your possessiveness your love, sometimes you call your attachment your love, sometimes you call your domination your love. These are ego-games, love has nothing to do with them. In fact, because of these games, love is not possible.Between life and death, between the two banks of life and death, flows the river of love. And that is possible only for a person who does not take life for granted, who moves deep into the quality of being alive and becomes existential, authentic. And love is for the person who accepts death here and now and does not postpone it. Then between these two a beautiful phenomenon arises: the river of love.Life and death are like two banks. The possibility is there for the river of love to flow, but it is only a possibility. You will have to materialize it. Life and death are there, but love has to be materialized – that is the goal of being a human. Unless love materializes you have missed, you have missed the whole point of being.Death is already happening, so don’t put it in the future. If you don’t put it in the future there is no question of defending yourself; if it is already happening – and it has been already happening always – then there is no question of protecting yourself against death. Death has not killed you; it has been happening while you were still alive. It is happening just now, and life is not destroyed by it. In fact, because of it life renews itself each moment: the old leaves fall, they make space for the new leaves to come; the old flowers disappear, the new flowers appear. One door closes, another immediately opens. Each moment you die and each moment there is resurrection.Once a Christian missionary came to me and he asked, “Do you believe in Jesus Christ’s resurrection?”I told him that there is no need to go so far. Each moment everybody is resurrected. But he could not understand. It is difficult for people who are too much into their ideology.He said, “But do you believe that he was crucified? Is this not just a myth, or is it a reality? What do you think?”I said to him again that everybody is crucified every moment. That is the whole meaning of Jesus’ crucifixion and his resurrection. Whether it is historical or not does not matter a bit. It is simply irrelevant to think whether it happened or not – it is happening.Each moment the past is crucified, the old leaves disappear. And each moment a new being arises in you, resurrects. It is a constant miracle.The second thing to understand about death is that death is the only certainty. Everything else is uncertain: it may happen, it may not happen. Death is certain because in birth, half of it has already happened, so the other end must be somewhere, the other pole must be somewhere in the dark. You have not come across it because you are afraid, you don’t move in the dark. But it is certain: with birth, death has become a certainty.Once this certainty penetrates your understanding, you are relaxed. Whenever something is absolutely certain, then there is no worry. Worry arises out of uncertainty.Watch: a man is dying and he is very worried. The moment death becomes certain and the doctors say, “Now you cannot be saved,” he is shocked. A shivering goes through his being, but then things settle, and immediately all worries disappear. If the person is allowed to know that he is going to die and death is certain, with that certainty a peace, a silence comes to his being.Every person who is dying has the right to know it. Doctors go on hiding it many times, thinking, “Why disturb?” But uncertainty disturbs; certainty, never. This hanging in between, this being in limbo – wondering whether one is going to live or die – this is the root cause of all worry. Once it is certain that you are going to die then there is nothing to do. Then one simply accepts it, and in that acceptance a calmness, a tranquility.So if the person is allowed to know that he is going to die in the moment of death he becomes peaceful. In the East we have been practicing that for millennia. Not only that, in countries like Tibet particular techniques were evolved to help a man to die. They called it Bardo Thodol. When a person was dying, friends, relatives and acquaintances would gather together around him to give him the absolute certainty that he was going to die, and to help him to relax; if you can die in total relaxation, the quality of death changes. Your new birth somewhere will be of a higher quality because the quality of birth is decided by death. And then, in turn, it will decide the quality of another death. That’s how one goes higher and higher, one evolves. And whenever a person becomes absolutely certain about death, a flame arises on his face – you can see it. In fact, a miracle happens: he becomes alive as he has never been before.There is a saying in India that before a flame dies it becomes tremendously intense. Just for a moment, it flares up to totality.I was reading a small anecdote:Once there were two little worms. The first was lazy and improvident, and always stayed in bed late. The other was always up early, going about his business. The early bird caught the early worm. Then along came a fisherman with a flashlight, and caught the night crawler.Moral: You can’t win.Death is certain. Whatsoever you do – get up early or not – death is certain. It has already happened, that’s why it is certain; it is already happening, that’s why it is certain. So why wait for the moment when you are dying on your bed? Why not make it certain right now?Just watch. If I say death is certain, can’t you feel fear disappearing within you? Can’t you feel the very idea – and it is just an idea right now, not your experience – just an idea that death is certain and you are calm and quiet. If you can experience it… And you can, because it is a fact; I am not talking about theories, I don’t deal in theories. This is a simple fact. Just open your eyes and watch it. And don’t try to avoid it, there is no way to avoid it. In avoiding, you miss. Accept it, embrace it, and live with the consciousness that each moment you die and each moment you are born. Allow it to happen. Don’t cling to the past: it is no more, it is already gone.Why go on carrying dead things? Why be so burdened with corpses? Drop them, and you will feel weightlessness, you will feel unburdened. And once you drop the past, the future drops on its own accord because the future is nothing but a projection of the past. In the past you had some pleasures, now the mind projects those same pleasures into the future. In the past you had some sufferings, now the mind projects a future in which those sufferings are not allowed to happen. That’s what your future is. What else is your future? Pleasures that you enjoyed in the past are projected, miseries are dropped. Your future is a more colorful and modified past, repainted, renovated, but it is the past.Once the past drops, suddenly the future drops, and then you are left here and now: you are in existence, you are existential, and that is the only way to be. All other ways are just to avoid life, and the more you avoid life, the more you become afraid of death.A person who is really living is not in any way afraid of death. If you are living rightly, you are finished with death, you are already too grateful, fulfilled. But if you have not lived, then the constant worry continues: “I have not lived yet and death is coming. And death will stop all and with death there will be no future.” So one becomes apprehensive, afraid, and tries to avoid death.In trying that, in avoiding death, one goes on missing life. Forget about that avoidance. Live life. In living life, death is avoided. In living life, you become so fulfilled that if this very moment death comes and the future stops, you will be ready. You will be happily ready. You have lived your life, you have delighted in existence, you celebrated it, you are contented. There is no complaint, no grumbling; you don’t have any grudge. You welcome death. And unless you can welcome death, one thing is certain: you have not lived.I have heard one anecdote:Two Hungarian noblemen fell into a deadly quarrel. But since neither was anxious to risk his life with either sword or pistol, a bloodless duel was decided upon. Each was to speak a number, and the one presenting the higher number would be adjudged the winner.The seconds were of course at hand, and the excitement and suspense were extreme as the two noblemen, seated at opposite ends of a long table, bent to the task of thinking of a high number. The challenged party who had the privilege of going first thought long and hard. The veins on his temples swelled, and the perspiration stood out on his forehead.“Three,” he said finally.The other duelist said at once, “Well, that beats me.”When you are afraid of death even the number three is the ultimate. When you are afraid of death, you go on finding excuses for how to go on living. Whether your life means anything or not one simply goes on finding excuses to prolong it.In the West now, there is a craze about how to prolong life. That simply shows that somewhere life is being missed. Whenever a country or a culture starts thinking about how to prolong life, it simply shows one thing, that life is not being lived. If you live life, then even a single moment is enough. A single moment can be equal to eternity. It is not a question of length, it is a question of depth; it is not a question of quantity, it is a question of quality.Just think: would you like one moment of Buddha’s life or would you like a thousand years of your own life? Then you will be able to understand what I mean about the quality, the intensity, the depth. In a single moment fulfillment is possible, you can bloom and blossom: but you may not bloom for one thousand years, and you may remain hiding in the seed.This is the difference between the scientific attitude toward life and the religious attitude. The scientific attitude is concerned with prolongation: how to prolong life. It is not concerned with significance. So you can find old people in hospitals, particularly in the West, just hanging on. They want to die but the culture won’t allow them. They are fed up with just being alive; they are simply vegetating – no significance, no meaning, no poetry; everything has disappeared, and they are a burden to themselves. They are asking for euthanasia but society does not allow it. Society is so afraid of death that it does not allow it even for people who are ready to die.The very word death is a taboo word, more taboo than sex. Sex has by and by become almost acceptable. Now death also needs a Freud to make it accepted, so that it is no more a taboo and people can talk about it and people can share their experiences about it. And then there is no need to hide it and there is no need to force people to live against themselves. In hospitals, in old people’s homes, people are simply hanging on because the society, the culture, the law, won’t allow them to die. And if they ask that they should be allowed to die, it looks as if they are asking for suicide. They are not asking for suicide, in fact, they have become dead corpses; they are a living suicide and they are asking to be rid of it – because the length is not the meaning, how long you live is not the point. How deeply you live, how intensely you live, how totally you live, the quality…Science is concerned about quantity; religion is concerned about quality. Religion is concerned with the art of how to live life and how to die life. Seven years, seventy years or seven hundred years – what difference will it make? You will go on repeating the same vicious circle again and again and again. You will simply get more and more bored.So change the focus of your being. Learn how to live each moment and learn how to die each moment because both are together. If you know how to die each moment, you will be able to live each moment – fresh, young, virgin. Die to the past. Don’t allow it to interfere with your present. The moment you have passed from it, let it be no more there. It is no longer there; it only goes on in your memory, it is just a remembrance. Let this remembrance also be released. This psychological hang-up should not be allowed.I am not saying that you should forget everything that you know. I am not saying that all memory is bad. It has technical uses. You have to know how to drive, you have to know where your home is; you have to recognize your wife and your children. But those are not psychological hang-ups. When you come home of course you recognize that this is your wife. This is factual memory – useful, enhances life, facilitates it. But if you come home and you look at your wife with all the past experiences with her, then that is a psychological hang-up. Yesterday she was angry, now again you look with that memory in between, your eyes are clouded by that memory. The day before yesterday she was sad or nasty and nagging – now if you look through all these psychological impressions, then you are not looking at the woman who is right now standing in front of you. You are looking at someone who is not there, you are seeing someone who does not exist. You are looking at a ghost – she is not your wife. And she may also be looking at you in the same way.So ghosts meet, and realities remain separate. Ghosts are married and realities are divorced. Then these two ghosts will make love, these two ghosts will fight, quarrel, and do a thousand and one things, and the realities will be far, far away. There will be no contact; realities will not have any connection. And then there can be no communication, there can be no dialogue. Only realities can love. Ghosts can only make impotent gestures, movements, but with no life in them.Drop the past each moment. Remember to drop it. Just as you clean your house every morning, every moment clean your inner house of the past. All psychological memories have to be dropped. Just keep factual things and your mind will be very, very clean and clear.Don’t move ahead of yourself into the future because that is not possible to do. The future remains unknown; that is its beauty, that is its grandeur, glory. If it becomes known, it will be useless because then the whole excitement and the whole surprise will be lost.Don’t expect anything in the future. Don’t corrupt it because then all your expectations, if fulfilled, will make you miserable. You will not be happy about it because it is your expectation and it is fulfilled. Happiness is possible only through surprise, happiness is possible only when something happens which you had never expected, when something takes you completely unawares.If your expectations are fulfilled a hundred percent, you will be living as if you are in the past, not in the future. You come home and you expected your wife to say something and she does and you expected your child to behave in a certain way and the child does. Just think, you will be constantly in boredom. Nothing will happen, everything will be just a repetition, as if you are seeing something which you have seen before, hearing something which you have heard before. You will continuously see that it is a repetition of something, and repetition can never be satisfying. The new, the novel, the original, is needed.So if your expectations are fulfilled you will remain completely unfulfilled. And if your expectations are not fulfilled then you feel frustrated. Then you feel constantly as if you propose and God goes on disposing, you feel that God is the enemy, you feel as if everybody is against you and everybody is working against you. Your expectations are never fulfilled, you feel frustrated.Just meditate upon your expectations: if they are fulfilled you will feel bored, if they are not fulfilled you will feel cheated, as if a conspiracy is going on against you, as if the whole existence is conspiring against you. You will feel exploited, you will feel rejected, you will not be able to feel at home. And the whole problem arises because you expect.Don’t go ahead into the future. Drop expectations.Once you drop expectations you have learned how to live. Then everything that happens fulfills you – whatsoever it is. For one thing, you never feel frustrated because in the first place you never expected, so frustration is impossible. Frustration is a shadow of expectation. With expectation dropped, frustration drops on its own accord.You cannot frustrate me because I never expect anything. Whatsoever you do, I will say “Good.” I always say “Good,” except for only a few times when I say “Very good!”Once expectations are not there you are free – to move into the unknown and accept the unknown, whatsoever it brings, and to accept it with deep gratitude. Complaints disappear, grumbling disappears. Whatsoever the situation, you always feel accepted, at home. Nobody is against you; existence is not a conspiracy against you. It is your home.The second thing: then everything happens unexpectedly, everything becomes new. It brings a freshness to your life; a fresh breeze is continuously blowing and it does not allow dust to gather on you. Your doors and your windows are open; in comes sunshine, in comes the breeze, in comes the fragrance of the flowers – and everything is unexpected. You have never asked for it, and existence goes on showering on you. One feels godliness is.The proposition “God is” is not a proposition; it is a statement of someone who has lived un-expectingly, without any expectations; who has lived in wonder. God is not a logical hypothesis; it is an exclamation of joy. It is just like “Aha!” And it doesn’t mean anything more, it simply means, “Aha!” – so beautiful, so wonderful, so new, so novel, and beyond anything that you could have dreamt. Yes, life is more adventurous than any adventure that you can imagine. And life is pregnant, always pregnant, with the unknown.Once you expect, everything is destroyed. Drop the past; that is the way to die each moment. Never plan for the future. That is the way to allow life to flow through you, and then you remain in an unfrozen state, flowing. This is what I call a sannyasin – no past, no future, just at this moment alive, intensely alive, a flame burning from both the ends, a torch burning from both the ends. And this is what let-go is.The second question:Osho,A short time ago I heard you say that you saw yourself standing in the marketplace with a bottle of alcohol in your hand. Today I was refused darshan because alcohol was on my breath.This is from Vedanta.What I say and what you hear are not necessarily the same. My alcohol is my alcohol, your alcohol is your alcohol. When I am talking about alcohol, I am not talking about your alcohol. I am talking about the alcohol of buddhas. Yes, they are drunk, drunk with the divine.But I can understand. You go on hearing that which you want to hear. You don’t hear me, you manipulate. You manage to hear whatsoever you want to hear. Your unconscious goes on interfering, it goes on confusing you. Yes, I said that I am in the marketplace and not only in the marketplace, but with a bottle in my hand. This is an old Zen saying.Zen says that one who has finally understood himself comes back to the world – and comes completely drunk. But why a bottle in the hand? The meaning is clear. Not only is he drunk, he has something to offer to you also. That is the meaning of the bottle in the hand. If you are ready, he can make you also drunk – he has something to offer you. It is not only that he is drunk. He can share his drunkenness with you, hence the bottle. He has an invitation for you.That’s why he has come to the marketplace. You go to the marketplace to get something, he has come to the marketplace to give something. He has found something, and this finding is such that it has to be shared. Sharing is its intrinsic nature. You cannot keep your bliss to yourself: it is as if a flower is trying to keep its fragrance to itself or a star is trying to keep its light to itself. It is not possible. When there is light it spreads, it goes to others, it helps even those who are not prepared to take its help. The fragrance disperses into the winds for friends and for foes alike.Once a man has attained, he has to share. Not that he has to do something to share it; he simply finds himself sharing – he cannot do otherwise. He moves to the marketplace where people are. Where people are stumbling in darkness, he brings his light to them; where people are thirsty, he brings his own drunkenness to be shared with them.Yes, I am drunk and I have a bottle in my hand – can’t you see it? – but it is not your bottle. People have an unconscious tendency to hear something which is not said.I have heard one anecdote:A cavewoman came running to her husband in the greatest possible agitation.“Wok!” she called out. “Something terrible has just happened. A saber-toothed tiger has just gone into my mother’s cave and she is in there. Do something! Do something!”Wok looked up from the mammothian drumstick which he was gnawing and said, “Why should I do something? What the devil do I care what happens to a saber-toothed tiger?”It is not necessarily that you hear that which is said. Your unconscious continuously colors whatsoever you hear; it continuously interprets in its own ways. The words may be the same, but a slight jerk to the meaning, a slight turning, and everything changes.After ten years of marriage, a man was consulting a marriage counselor.“When I first married,” he said, “I was very happy. When I would come home at night, my little dog would race around barking, and my wife would bring me my slippers. Now, after all these years, when I come home, my dog brings me my slippers, and my wife barks at me.”“What is the complaint?” asked the counselor, “You are still getting the same service!”Yes, the service is the same, but still, not the same. You may hear my words and you may think the meaning is the same. It is not, so please be careful. Handle my words very carefully; they are delicate. And before you decide what they mean, don’t be in a hurry. Meditate. Otherwise not only will you miss, you may misunderstand, and not only will my words not be able to help you, they can be harmful.The third question:Osho,Is it possible for a politician to be enlightened?Never heard of it, it has never happened. There are intrinsic problems. The very dimension the politician moves in is against enlightenment.A few things have to be understood. Politics is a diametrically opposite phenomenon to religion. A scientist can easily become religious. His approach is different but not opposite. He may have been working with matter, with the objective world, but his working is a sort of meditation. He needs a certain space in his consciousness, a silent space, to work and to discover. It is not very difficult to move from the objective toward subjectivity because the same space can be used for the inner journey.A poet can very easily become religious. He is very close, very, very close, almost in the neighborhood. A painter or a sculptor can very easily become religious; they are already religious, unknowingly. They are already worshippers though they have not yet worshipped. They may not have thought about God, they may not have consciously been religious at all, they may not go to the church or to the temple, they may not be concerned with the Bible and the Koran and the Gita – but that is not the point. A painter goes on seeing something divine in nature: colors are divine for him. A poet goes on feeling something of the religious romance all around. All creative arts are very closely related – any moment consciousness can dawn, any ray can become a transformation.But a politician moves in a diametrically opposite direction. His whole training is against religion.I have heard an anecdote:The congressman had delivered a stirring speech against a controversial bill. He was promptly buried in mountains of mail from back home as constituents wrote condemning his stand. Next day he was back on his feet in the house, this time making a speech in favor of the bill. When he finished, a colleague collared him.“Yesterday,” said the colleague, “you made an eloquent explanation of the principles which motivated your stand. I wonder, what has happened to change your mind?”“Someday,” said the congressman, “you will learn that there comes a time in every man’s life when he must rise above mere principles.”A politician is an opportunist; in fact, he has no principles. He talks about principles, but a politician has no principles. He pretends that he has principles, but if he is a politician worth the name he cannot have any principles. Those principles are just to fool people. He is on an ego trip. He uses all sorts of principles.I have heard about one politician. In an election campaign he was speaking in his constituency and there was a great controversy about prohibition: about whether alcohol should be totally prohibited or not. When he was speaking, a man stood up and asked, “What is your stand on prohibition?”Now he became a little shaky because half the population was for it and half was against it. And he could see that half the crowd was for it and half the crowd was against it. Whatsoever he said was going to lose half the votes: if he said yes, then half, if he said no, then half. It was really difficult. He was in a dilemma.And then he said, “You are all my friends. Please raise their hands those who are in favor and those who are against.” Half the people raised their hands in favor, and half against.Then he said, “Good. I am with my friends, I am all for my friends. You are all my friends and I am for you.”Now he is neither saying yes nor saying no.The trip is of the ego: how to become more powerful, how to control others. Religion is just the opposite. It is not in any way an ego trip. One has to lose his ego. And one is not trying to be powerful, in fact, one is trying to understand the total helplessness of the part against the whole. One is learning how to surrender, not how to conquer; and one is not concerned with others, one is totally concerned with himself. If this much is possible, that, “I can become aware of my own being” – enough, more than enough.The politician is concerned with the outside world, he is an extrovert. The religious person is an introvert. He is not concerned with things, with the world, with situations; he is concerned with the quality of his consciousness. A religious person is trying to find out how to be fulfilled; a politician is trying to show to the world that he is somebody. He may not be fulfilled but he pretends that he is fulfilled; the politician has opted for pretensions, hypocrisy. He simply wants the whole world to know that he is somebody; special, extraordinary, very happy. Deep inside he may be carrying a hell, but he believes that if he can fool everybody else, he will be able to fool himself.That dream is never fulfilled. You can fool everybody else by smiling a false smile, but how can you fool yourself? Deep down you know that everything is getting cold and dead; deep down you know that everything is empty, in vain. But one goes on thinking, “If I can convince everybody else that I am somebody, then somehow I will be able to convince myself that I am somebody.”The politician is a liar. He is trying to lie to himself and to the whole world. The religious dimension is the dimension of being true, authentic.Once it happened that a man entered a bar and said, “Bartender, I want you to meet my dog. He talks. I will sell him to you for only ten dollars.”“Who do you think you are kidding?” said the bartender.The dog, tears in his eyes, looked up. “Please buy me,” he said. “This man treats me cruelly. He never gives me a bone. He never bathes me. He is always kicking me around. And once I was the richest trick-dog in the country. I performed before presidents and kings. My name was in the papers every day, and…”“So he does talk,” said the bartender. “But why sell a valuable dog like that for only ten dollars?”“Because,” said the customer, “I hate liars.”A politician is a liar, and he is trying to convince himself through convincing others.A politician is almost mad – mad for power. Many people are in the madhouses in the world. Somebody thinks he is Adolf Hitler, somebody thinks he is Napoleon, somebody thinks he is Ford or Mao Zedong. And they are in the jails, or in the madhouses, or in the hospitals, because we think they have gone mad. Somebody thinking that he is Adolf Hitler is thought to be mad, but what about Adolf Hitler himself? The only difference is this: that this man, this madman who thinks himself to be Adolf Hitler, has not been able to prove it, that’s all. He is innocent. His madness is just innocence. Adolf Hitler, who proved to the world that, yes, he is Adolf Hitler is more mad than this man. His madness was such that he proved to the whole world that he is somebody: if he cannot create, then he can destroy.There are only two possibilities. Either you can be a creator, and then you will feel a certain fulfillment that comes to a mother when she gives birth to a child, or that comes to a poet when poetry is born, or to a sculptor when he has created something – a beautiful piece in marble, in stone, in wood. Whenever you create something you feel enhanced, you reach toward peaks, you get high. All people who are creative are close to religion.Religion is the greatest creativity because it is an effort to give birth to yourself, to become a father and mother to yourself, to be born again, to be reborn through meditation, through awareness. A poem is good, a painting is good, but when you give birth to your own consciousness, then there is no comparison. Then you have given birth to the ultimate poetry, the ultimate music or the ultimate dance. This is the dimension of creativity. On the rungs of creativity, religion is the last. It is the greatest art, the ultimate art. That’s why I call it “the ultimate alchemy.”Just the opposite is the rung, the ladder of destruction. People who cannot be creative become destructive because through destruction they can have a vicarious feeling that they are powerful. When Hitler destroyed millions of people, of course he had a very powerful feeling that “I am somebody, I can destroy the whole world.” He was almost ready to destroy the whole world – he has almost destroyed it.A politician is a destructive mind. He may talk about the nation, the country; he may talk about utopias, socialism, communism, but basically a politician is a destructive mind, and a destructive mind cannot become enlightened.First, the whole energy should move toward construction, toward creation. Then only is there the possibility that by and by you participate in the ultimate creation that is nirvana, the ultimate creation in which you are born divine, infinite, unlimited. You expand, you spread all over existence. Then you are no longer a wave, you have become the ocean.The politician can never become enlightened. I am not saying that the politician cannot move toward enlightenment – he can move, but as he moves, he will have to drop politics. A politician is also a human being, but he will have to drop the politics. By the time he comes to meditate he will no longer be a politician. Remaining a politician, a politician cannot become enlightened. His humanity is there: even a Hitler can become a buddha – some day. One hopes he will. Some day, far away in the future, even an Adolf Hitler is going to become a buddha; that is his potentiality. But then, by that time, he will not be an Adolf Hitler.Nuclear war had come and gone. Only one tiny monkey in one isolated part of the world remained alive. After weeks of wandering about, he finally came across a little female monkey. He threw his arms around her in greeting.“I am starved,” he said. “Have you found anything to eat?”“Well,” she said. “I found this little old apple.”“Oh no you don’t!” he snapped. “We are not going to start that all over again!”Even monkeys are worried about humanity. And I have heard monkeys talking. They don’t believe in Darwin, they don’t say that man has evolved out of monkeys, they don’t think that man is a developed form; they think man has fallen from the monkeys. Of course – fallen from the trees, fallen from the height, fallen from the monkeys.And this is true in a way, because man has up to now remained political. The whole history up to now has been political; no civilization has yet existed which has been religious, not even Indian civilization. Not a single nation has come into being which is religious, only rare individuals, here and there, far apart – somewhere a Buddha, a Jesus, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu – islands. Otherwise, ordinarily, the main current of humanity has remained political.Politics is basically ambition. Politics is basically wrong because ambition is wrong. You are not to become somebody, says religion, you are already. You are not to become powerful, you are already. You are extensions of God. You need not be worried about being powerful and being somebody on a throne; those are all stupid games, childish, very juvenile, immature. You cannot find more immature people than politicians.In fact, in a better world, politicians will be kept in madhouses, and mad people will be allowed to move into the world. Those mad people have not done anything wrong. They may be a little off the track but they have not been harmful. Politicians are dangerously mad people, tremendously dangerous.I have heard that before Richard Nixon renounced his throne, he called a meeting of his colleagues and he threatened that he had the power, he could go into the other room, push a button, and the whole world could be destroyed in twenty minutes.And, yes, he had that power. Millions of atom bombs are ready, a button just has to be pushed. The power of the atom and H-bombs already made is seven times more than is needed to destroy this earth – seven times more. Seven earths of this size can be destroyed. We have become so skilled, super-skilled in destruction. And nobody can say, any day any president of America, or Russia, or China, can go mad. And politicians are almost mad – any day, anybody can push the button. And now it is only a question of pushing a button, and everybody has mad moments, angry moments… The threat is very, very real.Politics has been the disease of humanity, the cancer of consciousness. Drop all politics within you. And remember, when I am talking about politicians, I don’t mean particularly those people who are in politics, I mean all those who are ambitious. Wherever ambition is, politics comes in; wherever you are trying to get ahead of somebody, politics comes in; wherever you are trying to dominate somebody – maybe your wife, or your husband – politics comes in.Politics is a very, very common disease, like the common cold.The last question:Osho,Since I have been here, I have lost my ability to concentrate. It is hard for me to utter a logical sentence and I have become very forgetful. I feel myself as a stupid child. Is that the way to the intelligence you talk about?The ability to concentrate is not something to feel blessed about. It is a frozen state of mind, a very narrow state of mind. Useful of course: useful for others, useful in scientific inquiry, useful in business, useful in the market, useful in politics, but absolutely useless for yourself. If you become too much attuned with concentration you will become very, very tense. Concentration is a tense state of mind; you will never be relaxed. Concentration is like a torch, focused, and consciousness is like a lamp, unfocused.My whole effort here is to teach you consciousness, not concentration. And this is the point to be remembered: if you become conscious, any moment you want to concentrate on a particular problem, you can. It is not a problem. But if you become too focused with concentration the vice versa is not true: you cannot relax. A relaxed mind can always concentrate easily, there is no trouble about it. But a focused mind becomes obsessed, narrow. It is not easy for it to relax and leave the tension. It remains tense.If you meditate, first concentration will disappear and you will be feeling a little at a loss. But if you go on, by and by you will attain to an unfocused state of light – that’s what meditation is. Once meditation is attained, concentration is child’s play. Whenever you need to, you can concentrate. There will be no problem about it and it will be easy and without any tension.Right now, you are being used by society. Society wants efficient people; it is not worried about your soul, it is worried about your productivity. I am not worried about your productivity: man has already too much, more than he can enjoy, there is no need to go on producing more. Now there is more need to play around more; there is more need to be more conscious. Science has developed enough; now, whatsoever science is doing is almost futile. Now going to the moon is simply useless but tremendous energy is wasted. Why? Because scientists are now obsessed, they have to do something. They have learned a trick of concentration: they have to do something, they have to produce, they have to go on producing something. They cannot relax. They will go to the moon, they will go to Mars, and they will persuade people that whatsoever they are doing is tremendously important. It is absolutely useless.But this happens. Once you become trained in a certain thing, you go on, on that line, blind – unless a cul-de-sac comes and you cannot go on anymore. But life is infinite. There comes no cul-de-sac. You can go on and on and on. Now scientific activity has almost become ridiculous.Religious activity is totally different. It is not worried about being more efficient. The whole point is how to be more joyful, how to be more celebrating. So if you go with me, by and by, concentration will relax. And in the beginning you will feel afraid because you will see your skill disappearing, your efficiency disappearing. You will feel you are losing something that you have gained with so much effort. In the beginning it will happen. The ice is melting and becoming water. The ice was solid, something concentrated; it becomes water – loose, relaxed, flowing in all directions. But anytime you need ice, the water can be turned into ice again. There is no problem, just a little more cooling is needed.This is my own experience. Whatsoever I say, I say from my own experience: the same has happened to me. First, concentration disappeared; but now I can concentrate on anything. There is no problem. But I don’t remain in concentration; I can concentrate and relax whenever the need arises. Just as whenever the need arises, you walk; you don’t just sit on the chair and go on moving your legs. There are a few people who go on moving because they cannot sit relaxedly – you will call this man restless! Legs in perfect order are needed so whenever you need, you can walk, you can run; but when there is no need you can relax, and then the legs will no longer be functioning.But your concentration has become almost as focused as if you are continuously preparing for the Olympics. Runners in the Olympics cannot relax. They have to run a particular amount every morning and evening; they are continuously on the go. If they relax for a few days they will lose their skill. But I call all Olympics political, ambitious, foolish. There is no need.Competition is foolish; there is no need. If you enjoy running, perfectly good – run and enjoy. But why compete? What is the point of competition? Competition brings illness, unhealthiness; competition brings jealousy, and a thousand and one diseases.Meditation will allow you to concentrate whenever the need arises, but if there is no need you will remain relaxed, flowing in all directions like water.“It is hard for me to utter a logical sentence…” Feel blissful, feel blessed. What is the point of uttering logical sentences? Utter nonsense: make sounds, gibberish, like birds, like trees. Look…![At this moment a nearby tree decides, with the help of a passing breeze, to illustrate Osho’s words by shaking its branches and causing hundreds of leaves to fall with loud rustling sounds to the ground.]This way! Is this logical? The tree is enjoying, delighting, simply shedding away the past.Delight, sing, utter sounds, forget all logic! By and by you will become more alive – less logical of course. That is the price one has to pay. You become dead if you become more logical and you become more alive if you become less logical.Life is the goal, not logic. What are you going to do with logic? If you are hungry logic is not going to feed you, if you need love logic is not going to hug you, if you are thirsty logic will tell you that water is H2O, it is not going to give you water, real water, no, it simply functions in formulas, maxims.Look at life, and by and by you will understand that life has its own very logical logic. Be attuned to it. That will become the door for your ecstasy, samadhi, nirvana.“…and I have become very forgetful.” Perfectly good! If you can forget, you will be able to remember more. Forgetfulness is a great capacity: it simply means getting the past dusted off. There is no need to remember everything that happens. Almost ninety-nine percent of it is trivia. But you go on remembering…Just think: what do you go on remembering? Write it down and just look at it. It is trivia. What goes on in your mind? You will not be able to show it to your intimate friend because he will think you are mad. This goes on in your mind?It is good. Forget. Forgetfulness is a great capacity because it will allow you to remember. It is part of remembrance. The useless has to be forgotten so that the useful is remembered – and the useful is very, very small, the useless is too much. In twenty-four hours’ time, millions of bits of information are collected by the mind. If you collect them and remember them all, you will be mad.I have heard about a man. He was once presented to the governor-general in India because he was a man of rare memory. He knew only one language, Rajasthani Hindi. He was a poor man, uneducated, but if you told him anything in any language, he would never forget it. He would repeat it like a parrot, not knowing what it meant.He was called to the governor-general’s palace; the governor-general was surprised to hear about his capacity. Thirty other persons were called, and in thirty languages they uttered a few sentences. It was arranged in the following manner: the man went to one person, the first, and the first person said the first word of a sentence. Then he went to another person and he said the first word of his sentence, in another language. Then he went to the third. In this way he went to thirty people. Then he went back to the first who said his second word. And in this way again – it took many rounds, many hours. And then he repeated all the sentences separately.The governor-general was simply puzzled. He could not believe it. But this man went mad.This much memory is dangerous. These types of people are almost always idiotic. Too much memory is not a good sign: it simply says that you have a very mechanical mind, it is not a sign of intelligence. Hence you hear so many stories of absent-mindedness about great scientists, philosophers. They are not people of great memory. Great intelligence has nothing to do with great memory. Memory is mechanical, intelligence is non-mechanical. They are totally different.So don’t be worried, it is good. The memory is relaxing, many things will disappear, space will be created in you. And in that space you will be able to become more brilliant, more intelligent, more understanding. Intelligence means understanding; memory means a quality, a mechanical quality of repetition. Parrots have good memories. Don’t be worried about your memory. In the beginning it happens because you have accumulated much rubbish. When you meditate that rubbish starts disappearing, falling away.“…and I feel myself a stupid child.” That is the way, the way to the kingdom of God. Lao Tzu says: Be like an idiot in this world so that you can understand the illogical ways of Tao. Jesus says: Be like a child – because only those who are like children will be able to enter into the kingdom of God. Don’t be worried about those things; the nonessential is dropping away. Feel happy and grateful. Once the rubbish has dropped, the real will arise; with the nonessential gone, the essential will arise. This is the way to reach to one’s own source.But many times you will get scared because you are losing your grip on whatsoever you have valued up till now. But I can tell you only one thing: I have traveled the same path and have passed through the same phases. They are phases, they come and go. And your consciousness will become more and more purified, virgin, pure, uncorrupted. That uncorrupted consciousness is godliness.Enough for today.

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Ancient Music in the Pines 01-09Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Ancient Music in the Pines 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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After nine years, Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch, who took Zen to China from India in the sixth century, decided that he wished to return home. He gathered his disciples around him to test their perception.Dofuku said, “In my opinion, truth is beyond affirmation or negation, for this is the way it moves.”Bodhidharma replied, “You have my skin.”The nun Soji said, “In my view, it is like Ananda’s insight of the Buddha-land – seen once and forever.”Bodhidharma answered, “You have my flesh.”Doiku said, “The four elements of light, airiness, fluidity, and solidity, are empty, and the five skandhas are no-things. In my opinion, no-thing is reality.”Bodhidharma commented, “You have my bones.”Finally, Eka bowed before the master and remained silent.Bodhidharma said, “You have my marrow.”I can see clouds a thousand miles away,hear ancient music in the pines.Of what music have I been talking to you? The Hindu mystics have called it omkar, the ultimate sound, or even better, they have called it the anahata, the soundless sound, the sound that is uncreated, the sound that has always been there, the sound of existence itself. It is surrounding you, it is within you, without you. You are made of it.Just as modern physics says that everything is made of electricity, Eastern mystics have said that everything is made of sound. On one thing modern physics and ancient mystics agree: modern physics says sound is nothing but electricity, and ancient mystics say electricity is nothing but sound.It seems that if you observe the eternal music from the outside, as if it is an object, then it appears like electric energy. If you feel it introspectively, not as an object but as your very being, as your subjectivity, then it is heard as sound, anahata; then it is heard as music. This music is constantly there, you need not do anything else except listen to it. Listening is all that meditation is about: how to listen to that which is already there.In a small school it happened that a small boy sitting in the rear of the classroom appeared to be daydreaming.“Johnny,” asked the teacher, “do you have trouble hearing?”“No ma’am,” he replied, “I have trouble listening.”I know you can hear, there is no trouble about it, but you cannot listen. Listening is totally different from hearing. Listening means hearing without mind, listening means hearing without any interference of your thoughts, listening means hearing as if you are totally empty. If you have even a small trembling of thinking inside, waves of subtle thoughts surrounding you, you will not be able to listen although you will be able to hear. And to listen to the music, the ancient music, the eternal music, one needs to be totally quiet, as if one is not. When you are you can hear, when you are not you can listen.How not to be is the whole problem of religion: how to be in such a deep silence that being becomes almost equivalent to nonbeing – that there remains no difference between being and nonbeing, that the boundaries between being and nonbeing disappear. You are, and yet in a certain sense you are not; you are not and yet in a certain sense, for the first time, you are.When thought is not disturbing you…thoughts are like ripples on the lake; silence is like no ripples on the lake, just being…suddenly you become aware of a music that has always surrounded you. Suddenly it enters from everywhere. You are overwhelmed, you are possessed.This is the first thing to understand. You will not be able to know truth unless you have become capable of listening to the ancient music of omkar. This music is the very heartbeat of existence, this music is the very door of existence. You will not be able to enter the temple of godliness but with this music as the bridge. Only on this music, riding on this music, will you enter it. The kingdom of God is available only to those who have become capable of listening to the eternal music.It has been heard, I have heard it. You can hear it: nobody except yourself is barring the path, nobody is hindering. If you are missing, you are missing only on your own account. There is not a wall between you and the music; even if you feel there to be a wall it is only of your own thoughts, and even then the music goes on penetrating you. You may not listen to it, but it goes on massaging your whole being; it goes on nourishing you, it goes on giving you life, it goes on rejuvenating you. Your heart throbs in the same rhythm as the heart of the whole.Whenever your heart falls out of line with the whole you are in trouble, you are ill. Whenever the heart is in rhythm with the whole you are healthy. Let this be the definition of health: whenever there is no conflict between you and the whole, not even a rumor of conflict, you are healthy. To be whole is to be healthy, to be whole is to be holy.And what is the way to be holy, healthy, whole? Your heart should beat in the same rhythm as the heart of the whole; you should not fall out of line, out of step. It is a great cosmic dance, it is a great harmony. When you sit still, silent, not doing anything, meditative, prayerful, suddenly you start merging into the whole. You come closer and closer and closer and your steps are no longer heard as separate from the whole. You become part of this great symphony. Suddenly you are healthy, holy, whole.How to come to this tuning with the whole? Why are you missing it? You are constantly in discord, you have many contradictions within you. Those contradictions go on like a tug-of-war within you, continuously, day and night, awake and asleep. You are constantly pulled into opposite directions. This tense state of affairs does not allow you to listen.Even when you are in love you go on fighting. Even in love you don’t fall in step with the whole. Even lovers go on fighting with each other; otherwise love can become a door to the ancient music. Hence Jesus says that God is love. If you love somebody, at least drop all conflict with him, or with her – with your child, with your wife, with your brother, friend, with your master – drop! But even there, conflict continues; a subtle way of fighting continues.Because you are constantly in conflict within yourself, whatsoever you do is going to be an extension of the same conflict, a reflection of the same disharmony. This is making you incapable of listening.I have heard an anecdote:In Eastern Europe, half a century ago, when marriages were still arranged by marriage brokers, young Samuel had been introduced to the young woman of whom the marriage broker had sung a gorgeous hymn of praise.After a short interview, Samuel motioned the marriage broker into a corner and said to him, in a furious whisper, “What is this woman you have brought me? She is ugly. She has a cast in one eye. She’s unintelligent and she has bad breath.”The marriage broker said, “But why are you whispering? She’s also deaf.”God is whispering. God is a whisper, and you are deaf, and God cannot shout. He is incapable of it because he cannot be aggressive, because he cannot interfere, because he cannot trespass, because he respects your freedom. He whispers and you are deaf. The whole of existence is a whisper, it is very subtle. Unless you are tuned, unless you have become capable of listening to the whisper, you will not be able to understand, you will not be able to hear the music.And you have become very gross: you cannot even hear if God starts shouting. Jesus told his disciples, “Go to the housetops and shout from there. Tell people what has happened to you.” He had to tell his disciples to shout because people are deaf.A great sensitivity is needed. To be religious is to be tremendously sensitive. And now comes the irony: religions have made you, on the contrary, more insensitive. They have made you almost gross by their constant talk of conflict, struggle, fight, ascetic methods; they have made religion also a battleground. Jainas call their tirthankara, Mahavira. Mahavira means “the great warrior” – as if there is a constant war with truth, as if truth has to be conquered.No, truth is not to be conquered; you are to be conquered by truth. Truth… Just to think in terms of conquering it – it is absurd. You have to surrender to it. If you fight, with your methods, yogas, techniques, you will become more and more gross. You will not be able to feel subtle, delicate experiences that are constantly happening all around you.Have you watched? If you are a musician your ears become very, very sensitive. If you are a painter your eyes become tremendously sensitive. Then you see colors others have never seen. Then green is not just green, there are a thousand and one shades of green. Then each leaf of a tree is different, has a different shade of green, is unique, is individual. If you are a poet then each word has its own romance; then each word has its own subtle music, a poetry around it. There are poetic words and there are nonpoetic words. If you are a poet you become capable of seeing poetry everywhere: wherever you look, you look with the eyes of a poet. You see something else which cannot be seen except by you. Whatsoever you do, you become more sensitive about it.Religion needs total sensitivity of all the senses – of the eyes, of the nose, of the ears, of the taste, of the touch – because religion is not a part of life, it is the whole. You can have a musical ear and you may not have eyes at all. In fact, blind people have better musical ears because their whole energy starts moving through the ears. Their ears become very, very sensitive because the eyes are not there, and eighty percent of your energy moves through the eyes. Eyes closed, the energy moves through the ears. Blind people become very, very musical. They start listening to subtle sounds of which you have never been aware. A blind person starts recognizing people by the sound of their footsteps.I used to go to a blind man. Whenever I would enter his room he would immediately recognize me. So I asked him, “How do you do it?”He said, “Because of your footsteps. Your footsteps are different from anybody else’s.”Each thing is different. Just as your thumb impressions are different from anybody else’s in the world – past, present or future – in exactly the same way the sound of your footsteps is different, unique. Nobody has walked that way before and nobody is going to walk that way again. But we cannot recognize people by their foot sounds, impossible.The ear can be very, very sensitive; then you become a musician. If the eyes are very sensitive you become an artist, a painter, a sculptor. But religion is your total being, you become sensitive in all the ways possible. All the doors of your house have to be opened so the sun can come in and the sunshine can come in, so the fresh breeze can come in and keep you constantly alive and young and pure and vital. Be sensitive if you want to be religious.What I am saying is almost the opposite to what you have been trained to look for. If you go to your religious people, the so-called saints, you will find them almost dull. They are not sensitive, in fact, they are afraid of sensitivity. They have been trying to eat food without tasting it, they call it aswad. They have made it a great method. Mahatma Gandhi used to teach his disciples, “Eat, but without tasting.” Now if you do that, by and by you will lose the delicate sensitivity of your tongue. Then you will not be able to taste godliness. If you cannot taste food, how can you taste godliness? Godliness is food also, and in food godliness is hidden. The Upanishads say “Annam Brahma.” Food is Brahma. Now if you cannot taste food – you can dull your tongue, your tongue can become almost dead, you can simply go on stuffing yourself without tasting – then you are losing one dimension of reaching to godliness. Then you will not be able to understand when Jesus says, “I am your food, eat me.” Impossible to think of it: you will eat Jesus also without tasting him!Islam became afraid of music because music has tremendous power over humanity, and it is good that it has. Wherever religion sees that something has tremendous power over humanity, religion becomes competitive, jealous. Food has tremendous power over humanity. There are many people who live to eat and many who don’t eat to live. Religion became afraid. Their God became jealous of food. A competition arose. They said, “Kill this sensitivity of taste, otherwise people will choose food rather than choosing God.”Music has tremendous power – it can possess. It can almost make you ecstatic, intoxicated. Islam became afraid; music was debarred. Music was thought to be irreligious because the ecstasy should come from God, not from music – as if music comes from somewhere else.It happened in an emperor’s court that a musician came. He was a very rare genius, and he said, “I will play on my veena, on my instrument, with only one condition: that nobody should move his head while I am playing. Nobody should move his body, people should become like stone statues.”The emperor whom he told that this condition had to be fulfilled was a madman. He said, “Don’t be worried. If somebody moves his head, his head will be cut off immediately.”The whole town was made alert that if they came to listen to the musician, know well that it was risky: “Come prepared, don’t move, particularly your head.”Thousands of people wanted to come. They had long cherished the idea of hearing this musician, and now he had come with such a dangerous condition, almost absurd. Who has ever heard of any musician asking for such a condition to be fulfilled? In fact, musicians become happy when people sway and their heads move and their body energy starts a subtle dance. They feel happy because their music is possessing people, their music is effective, people are moved. Emotion is a movement; hence the word emotion. It comes from motion.When people are moved, thrilled, stirred, a musician feels happy, rewarded, appreciated. So what type of man was this? Only a very few people came, only people who were madly in love with music, who said, “Okay, at the most we can be killed, but this man has to be heard.” Just a very few people came.The king had made arrangements: soldiers were standing all around with naked swords. Then the musician started playing on his veena. For half an hour nobody moved. People were like yogis, sitting like stone buddhas, unmoving, as if dead. Then suddenly the people were possessed. As the musician entered deeper, deeper, deeper, a few heads started moving and swaying, then a few more.When the musician finished in the middle of the night, many persons were caught. They were to be beheaded but the musician said, “No, no need to kill them. In fact, these are the only people who have the capacity to listen. Don’t kill them. The others who have remained like statues have to be thrown out. Now I will sing only for these people. These are the real listeners.”The king said, “I don’t understand.”The musician said, “It is simple. If you cannot be possessed so much that even life becomes irrelevant, you are not possessed. If you cannot risk life, then music is secondary and life is primary.”A moment comes when you can risk life. Then music becomes primary, then music becomes ultimate. Then you hear the ancient music in the pines, not before it.But religions have killed your sensitivities. Hinduism and Jainism have been killing the taste, Islam the ear. And all the religions have been against the eyes. There are stories of saints who plucked out their eyes because they became afraid: eyes could lead them into desire, into passion.In India a story is told about Surdas. He was moving through a town when he saw a beautiful woman. He became possessed. Then he felt guilty, so he went home and plucked his eyes out.But eyes are not the culprit. In fact, to see a beautiful woman… Nothing is wrong in it. If you really see a beautiful woman and you have really sensitive eyes, you will see a glimpse of godliness there – because all beauty is it, all forms are it. Surdas goes on singing about the beauty of Krishna, but if Krishna’s beauty is godliness, what about that woman whose beauty attracted him? By whom did he become hypnotized? Godliness is hypnotic.Plucking out your eyes is a crime against godliness. If Surdas ever did it, then he is no longer a saint to me. He may be a great poet, but not a saint. But I have been moving deeply into his poetry and I feel somehow the story seems to be fabricated. It must be a creation of the priests, of the so-called religious, the mediocre, the stupid, who don’t understand life. Otherwise every sensitivity leads to him, all roads go to him – where else can they go? If the problem arises it is not of the eyes, the problem is that you don’t have enough eyes. Then a woman looks like a woman; you don’t have enough eyes.If it happens to you, my suggestion is clean your eyes. Become more sensitive. Train your eyes, let them be more and more pure, unclouded – and the woman will start transforming into divineness, and the man will become godliness, and the trees will disappear and they will be green flames of divinity, and the rivers will disappear and they will be nothing but constant flow of his energy.All the religions have been against your senses, your indriyas. I am not against them because my understanding is that whatsoever you are against, you are against godliness: every door opens toward it and every path leads to it. Enhance your senses, become more alive in your senses. Let your sensitivity be total and from every dimension you will have glimpses of godliness.Because of these wrong and foolish teachings, you are constantly in conflict within yourself. Because of these foolish teachings you love a woman and you also feel guilty because you love her – because somehow it looks like a sin. You love a woman and you hate her also because she is the cause of your sin. Of course you will take revenge. How can you forgive the woman who has drawn you into the mud, as the religious people say? How can you forgive her?Listen to your saints: nobody seems to have forgiven the woman. Even after they have become great saints they go on taking revenge. Still, somewhere deep in the unconscious, the woman is lingering. They are still afraid. Then there is a constant fight, a quarrel, even in love – so what to say of other things?Love is closest to godliness because in love you fall in tune with another being; in love you are no more a solitary instrument. A small symphony is created between two persons. Then the children are born and the symphony has more members. It is becoming an orchestra: children, family, friends. You are no longer alone, you have become part of something bigger than you. And this has to go on growing so that one day the whole existence is your family. That is the meaning when Jesus says, “God, my father.” His actual word is not father, his actual word is abba; it is closer. Father also looks a little clinical, smells of institutionalization. Abba, bapu – they are so close, so intimate. A bridge has happened, godliness is not a faraway thing: “God is abba and I am his son. I am his continuity. If he is my past, I am his future. That is the meaning of a son: the same river flows.If you go on growing in your sensitivity, a moment comes when your family grows and the whole existence becomes your home. Right now, even your home is not your home; even in your home you are not at home.I have heard an anecdote:In some of the more remote sections of Tennessee there are still a few counties without any telephone. The Tennessee State Forest Service recently installed a telephone in one of these counties and linesmen tried to get a native to converse with his wife, then in a small town some thirty miles distant.After much persuasion, Uncle Joe put the receiver to his ear. Just at that moment, there was a terrific thunderclap and the old man was knocked to his knees.As he climbed to his feet, he turned and said, “That’s her all right. That sure is my old woman.”Even in your home you are not at home. The very word wife creates some uneasiness in you, the very word husband creates some uneasiness in you. In Urdu, the word for husband is kasam. It also means “the enemy.” The original root from where it comes is Arabic. In Arabic kasam means “the enemy” and in Urdu it means “the husband.” Both are true, both are the meanings of the same word.Even the people we love, we don’t love enough. Also in our love, hatred goes on and on and continues. We are never one, we are never a unity; we are a divided self, divided against ourselves. This dividedness creates confusion, conflict, noise, and because of this noise it is difficult to listen to the eternal music.If you go on continuously listening to this noise within you, by and by you completely forget that something else also exists by the side, round the corner. This inner noise becomes your whole life. The whole day you are listening to your inner noise – a feverish state – and in the night also you are listening to the same noise.Of course, this noise goes on creating layers upon layers around you. You become almost insulated. You become like a capsule, closed from every side. You don’t live in my world, you don’t live in your wife’s world, you don’t live in your child’s world. You live in your own world, in a capsule. Your child lives in his world, your wife lives in her world. In the world there are as many worlds as there are persons. Everybody is closed into himself and goes on projecting things out of these noises, goes on hearing things which have not been uttered, goes on seeing things which are not there, and goes on believing that whatsoever he is seeing is true.Whatsoever you have seen up to now is not true, it cannot be because your eyes are not functioning as pure receptivity, they are functioning more as projectors. You go on seeing things that you want to see, you go on believing in things that you want to believe. Humanity lives in a sort of neurosis.I have heard that once a man asked a psychiatrist, “In simple, everyday terms, without any of that scientific jargon, what is the difference between a psychotic and a neurotic?”“Well,” said the psychiatrist, after thinking a moment, “you could put it this way. A psychotic thinks two plus two equals five. The neurotic knows perfectly well that two plus two equals four, but it worries the hell out of him.”There are two types of people in the world: the psychotic and the neurotic. The psychotic has arrived, he has got the conclusions. He is the dogmatic person. He says, “Only my religion is the true religion”; he says, “Only my God is the true God.” He’s absolutely certain. He is very dangerous. His certainty is not because of his experience, his certainty is because deep down he is very much uncertain, in deep conflict, turmoil. How to avoid it? He clings to a conclusion, he will not listen to anything going against his ideology. He may be a communist or a Catholic or a Hindu or a Jaina – it makes no difference.The psychotic person has already arrived, he has conclusions. He’s no longer growing, he’s no longer learning, he’s no longer listening. He lives out of his conclusions. He, of course, misses life because life is a process, there is no conclusion to it. Life is always in the middle, there is no beginning and no end to it. And life is tremendously vast. All dogmas can have a certain truth about them, but no dogma is the truth – it cannot be. Life is so big that no dogma can comprehend it in its totality.So a really intelligent person is hesitant. He’s never dogmatic. He’s ready to learn, ready to listen.So many people come here. Whenever I see somebody who, while listening to me, is trying to compare notes with his conclusions, I know he’s in deep trouble. And I can see from your faces whether you are comparing notes or listening to me. Sometimes you nod your head, you say, “Right, you are perfectly right, this is also my principle.” You agree with me, not because you are listening to me – in fact you are happy because you feel I am agreeing with you. Sometimes your head says, “No.” You may not even be aware of what you are doing, it may be just unconscious, but the gesture is bringing something from your unconscious. You say, “No, I cannot agree with this. This is against my conclusion. This doesn’t fit with me.” Then you are not listening. You are psychotic. You may not be in much trouble and you may not need a psychiatrist yet, but that doesn’t matter much – it is only a question of degrees. Any day you can be in a psychiatric hospital. You are getting ready for it, preparing.And then there is the neurotic person. He’s continuously in conflict – he cannot decide even small things. The psychotic has decided even ultimate things. And the neurotic cannot decide even small things: what dress to wear today? Have you watched women standing there before their cupboards, so puzzled? They bring out one sari and put it back, and they bring out and put back – what dress to wear today? To help you out of such neurosis, I give you one color – orange. Free! No need to worry. No alternatives left.Both are in trouble. The one who has decided for ultimate things: he has stopped learning, and the one who cannot decide for trivia: he cannot learn because he is in such a hell, such a confusion.In my village, just in front of my house, lived a goldsmith. He was the sort of person you would call neurotic. He would lock his door, he would go a few steps and then come back again and shake the lock just to see whether he has locked it or not.It had become a joke in the whole town. He might be in the market and somebody would say, “Have you locked your door or not?”Now it was impossible. He would stop whatsoever he was doing; he would say, “Wait! I am coming,” and he would run back home.One day he was taking his bath in the river and somebody said something about the door. He jumped out naked and he ran toward his home.I have watched him: he would come back again and again and again. It has become almost impossible for him to do anything else. The lock… Just think about his misery.Ordinarily, you are both. These are extreme cases: ordinarily you are both. In certain ways you are psychotic. You have decided the ultimate: that Jesus is the only son of God, the only begotten son. This is psychosis. Then what about Buddha and what about Lao Tzu and what about Zarathustra? In certain matters you have decided and in certain matters you are completely in confusion. A part of your being is neurotic and a part of your being is psychotic. And because of this madness you cannot hear the ancient music which is always there.Meditation is to get out of your psychosis and to get out of your neurosis. It is simply to slip out of them so you don’t have any ultimate conclusion with you on one hand, and on the other hand you are not worried about trivia. You are simply silent. You are simply being yourself, with no decision, with no conclusion, with no center, and not worried about small things. If you can be in a state where no thought interferes with your being, no thought passes by, suddenly you are overwhelmed.Now this beautiful anecdote, one of the most beautiful in the history of Zen. And of course, it belongs to the first Zen patriarch, Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma is the genius of the absurd. Nobody has ever surpassed him.When he reached China, the emperor went to receive him. Rumors had arrived that a great man was coming – and he was a great man, one of the greatest. The emperor went, but when he saw Bodhidharma he repented. He started thinking, “It would have been better if I had not come. This man seems to be almost mad!” Bodhidharma was coming with one shoe on his foot and one shoe on his head.Even the emperor started feeling embarrassed to receive such a man, and when they were alone he asked, very politely, why he did this.Bodhidharma said, “This is just the beginning. I have to prepare my disciples. If you cannot accept this much contradiction you will be incapable of understanding me because I am all contradictions. The shoe is just symbolic. In fact, I wanted to put my feet on my head.”Bodhidharma took Zen from India to China. He planted the seed of Zen in China. He started a great phenomenon on its way. He is the father and, of course, Zen has carried the qualities of Bodhidharma all these centuries. Zen is one of the most absurd religions. In fact, a religion has to be absurd because it cannot be logical. It is beyond logic.I was reading an anecdote. When I read it I remembered Bodhidharma. Listen to it.A great zoologist informed a colleague that he was trying to cross a parrot with a mountain lion.“No!” exclaimed the other. “What do you expect to get?”“I don’t know exactly,” the scientist admitted, “but I will tell you this: if it starts talking you had better listen.”Reading this anecdote, suddenly Bodhidharma surfaced in me. He was the man who was also a lion. Ordinarily he would not speak, but his silence was also terrible and terrific. He would look into your eyes, absolutely silent, and he would go like a cold shudder through your spine. Or he would speak – then too he was like thunder. Find a picture of Bodhidharma and look: very ferocious, and still very sweet. A parrot crossed with a lion – very sweet and very ferocious.The whole Zen discipline has carried the same quality with it. Zen masters are very hard on the outside and very sweet on the inside. Once you have earned their love they are as sweet as honey, but you will have to pass through hardship.For nine years while he was in China, Bodhidharma sat facing a wall, gazing at a wall. He was known in China as the man, the ferocious man, who gazed at the wall for nine years. It is said that his legs withered away sitting and just looking at the wall. People would come and they would try to persuade him, “Look at us. Why are you looking at the wall?” and he would say, “Because you are also like a wall. When somebody comes who is really not like a wall, I will look.”Then one day, his successor came. And the successor cut off his hand and gave it to Bodhidharma and said, “Look this way, otherwise I am going to cut off my head.”He turned, immediately about-turned and said. “Wait! So you have come. I have been waiting for nine years for you.”After nine years he came back to India. When he was coming back, this incident happened:After nine years, Bodhidharma, the first Zen patriarch, who took Zen to China from India in the sixth century, decided he wished to return home. He gathered his disciples around him to test their perception.…what they had learned from him and what they knew about truth. So he asked, “What is truth? Tell me in short.” The first disciple, Dofuku, said:“In my opinion, truth is beyond affirmation or negation, for this is the way it moves.”Bodhidharma replied, “You have my skin.”What the disciple said was true, but not truth. It was not wrong, but it was philosophical. It was not experiential, it was not existential. He said, “In my opinion…” as if truth depends on your opinion.Truth is independent of all opinions. What you think about truth is irrelevant; in fact, because you think, you will not be able to know what is. That which is can be known only when all thinking stops, when all opinions are thrown away, put aside. So I say true, but not truth; the opinion is not wrong, it is well-informed, but it is still an opinion. Dofuku has not experienced it himself. He seems to be of the philosophical bent. He has been speculating, thinking, weaving and spinning theories.Bodhidharma replied, “You have my skin.” If it had been just philosophical, Bodhidharma would not have said even this much. But he said, “You have my skin – the outermost part, the very circumference of my being.” Why? – because he said that truth is beyond affirmation or negation. Neither can it be said about truth that it is, nor can it be said that it is not. He has some insight. He has groped in the dark through thinking, logic, but he has come to a certain insight. And that insight is beautiful: nothing can be said about truth.You cannot say God is, you cannot say God is not, because if you say God is, you will make God like a thing, as a table is or the house is. Then God will become an ordinary commodity, an ordinary thing. And then, as linguistic philosophers say, the table can be destroyed. Whatsoever is can become “is not.” The house can be demolished. The tree is here today, tomorrow it may not be.So what about God? If you use the word is, then what about God? Can God be in a situation where he is not? – because wherever is is used, is not is also a possibility. No, it cannot be said that God is. But can we say the opposite, “God is not”? That too is not possible because if he is not, what’s the point of saying “God is not”? What are you denying, and for what? If he is not, he is not. What is the point of denial? And people deny so passionately that their very passion says, “It must be, God must be.”Look at the atheists who say, “No, there is no God.” They are ready to fight. For something which is not, who fights? Why are you worried? I know atheists who have been thinking their whole life and trying to prove that God is not. Why are you wasting your life for something which is not? For centuries people have been writing books and arguing and discussing that God is not. But why be concerned? It seems that God is, in some way, and you cannot rest at ease unless you prove that he is not, otherwise he will go on challenging you, he will go on calling you, invoking you. So to put yourself at ease you have to create a philosophy that he is not. This is rationalization.And then God is so vast. Call it truth, as Bodhidharma would like. Buddhists don’t like the word God and in a way they are right because the word is so corrupted, and so many people have used it with such wrong connotations, that it has almost become a dirty word. Truth must be both because in truth existence and nonexistence must meet. Existence cannot be alone, it needs nonexistence by the side. Just as the day needs the night, just as life needs death, existence needs nonexistence. So the ultimate must comprehend both, that is what Dofuku said. But it is still philosophical; on the right track, but still philosophical, just on the periphery. Bodhidharma replied, “You have my skin.”It happened that Pierre Laplace was a mathematician, an astronomer, who in Napoleon’s time wrote a ponderous five volume work on celestial mechanics. In it, using Newton’s law of gravity, he painstakingly worked out the motions of the solar system in finest detail.Napoleon, who fancied himself – with only partial justification – an intellectual, leafed through the early volumes, and said to Laplace, “I see no mention of God in your explanation of the motions of the planets.”“I had no need of that hypothesis, sir,” said the scientist politely.Another astronomer, Legrange, hearing of the remark, is reported to have said, “But it is a beautiful hypothesis just the same. It can be used to explain so many things.”To the philosophical mind God remains, at the most, a beautiful hypothesis; not a truth, but a helpful hypothesis which can be used in explaining many things; at the most, a help to explanation – just a theoretical need, not an existential need. When a philosopher talks about God, the God is cold, the God is not warm enough. You cannot love that God, you cannot worship that God, you cannot pray to that God, you cannot surrender yourself to that God – it is just a hypothesis. How can you surrender to the theory of H2O or to the Theory of Relativity? How can you surrender, how can you raise a temple to the Theory of Relativity? Howsoever beautiful it is, it cannot be revered, it cannot be worshipped, you cannot pray to it. It remains a hypothesis, a tool in your hands to explain a few things which cannot be explained otherwise. But a hypothesis can be discarded any moment; whenever you can find a better hypothesis it can be discarded. Truth is not a hypothesis, it is a lived experience.That is why Bodhidharma said, “You have only my skin.” Skin goes on changing. Every seven years your whole skin has gone through a change; you don’t have even a single cell of the same skin. If you live for seventy years, your skin will have changed ten times. Skin is your outermost part, it can be replaced very easily; it is being replaced every moment. It is just the bag in which you are; it is not very, very essential. It is not your being, just the outer wall of your abode.The nun Soji – the second disciple – said:“In my view, it is like Ananda’s insight of the Buddha-land – seen once and forever.”Bodhidharma answered, “You have my flesh.”A little better than the first; deeper than the skin, is flesh. A little better because this is no longer a philosophical standpoint, it comes closer to experience. But the experience is borrowed. She says: “In my view, it is like Ananda’s insight of the Buddha-land…”Ananda was the chief disciple of Buddha who lived with him for forty years continuously, like a shadow following him. So the nun said that truth is like Ananda’s insight of the Buddha-land – of that land of paradise, land of light. Once seen, it is seen forever. Then you can never forget about it, it is a point of no return. Once known, it is known forever; then you cannot fall from it.But the experience is not her own, the insight is Ananda’s. She is still comparing. Her answer is theological, not philosophical – theological, as a Christian theologian goes on talking about the experience of Jesus, and a Buddhist goes on talking about the experience of Buddha, and a Jaina goes on talking about the experience of Mahavira. It is secondhand, not firsthand; leaning more toward the existential, but still theological; more contemplative than the first – the first is more speculative, the second is more contemplative – better, but yet far away.Then the third disciple, Doiku, said:“The four elements of light, airiness, fluidity, and solidity, are empty, and the five skandhas are no-things. In my opinion no-thing is reality.”Bodhidharma commented, “You have my bones.”Still deeper, but not yet home. The statement is true but it is still a statement. The truth is said better than the other two, but it is still said – and the truth cannot be said. Once you say it, you falsify it. The very saying makes it false. He is right: the four elements of light, airiness, fluidity and solidity – that means the whole existence – is empty; there is no substance in it, it is just like a dream, of the same stuff as dreams are made, maya, illusory, nothing is reality. “Nothingness is reality” – right, but he is trying to say something which cannot be said.Wittgenstein has said that it is better to keep silent where saying is going to falsify. Keep quiet if it cannot be said because whatsoever you say will be a betrayal of the truth.Bodhidharma commented, “You have my bones.” You have come very, very close, but still missed.Finally, Eka bowed before the master and remained silent. Bodhidharma said, “You have my marrow.”“You have my very soul.” Eka bowed before the master. That was his statement: bowing down in deep gratefulness, a gesture of thankfulness, and then remaining silent. This is the true statement, and it is not a statement at all. It is only through silence that truth can be said because it is only through silence that the truth is heard. It is through silence that one comes to hear the ancient music in the pines. And only through silence can you say it without betraying it.Eka did two things. He bowed down: that is a gesture, a gesture of deep reverence, respect, gratefulness, gratitude. That moment Bodhidharma could see an emptiness bowing down before him. There is nobody in this fourth disciple, Eka. He is just emptiness within. He is what the third was saying: emptiness, nothingness. He has the experience of what the second was saying: Ananda’s Buddha-land. He is what the first was trying to utter philosophically: beyond yes and no.Only silence is beyond negation and affirmation. Only silence is neither atheistic nor theistic. Only silence is religious, only silence is sacred. To show that sacredness of silence, he bowed down and then he kept silent. He really said it without saying it. That is the only way to say it, and there is no other way.Bodhidharma said, “You have my marrow.” You have my innermost core of being.I can see clouds a thousand miles away,hear ancient music in the pines.You can also hear it. It is your birthright. If you miss it, only you, and only you will be responsible for it. Listen in the pines…just listen. In this very moment it is there. You have to be just like Eka: in deep gratefulness, in silence, it is immediately here and it has never been otherwise. A turning in is needed, paravritti.Someone asked Buddha, “What is the greatest miracle?” He said, “Paravritti, turning in.”Turn in, tune in, and you will be able to see clouds a thousand miles away, and you will be able to hear the ancient music in the pines.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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When Yamaoka was a brash student he visited the master Dokuon.Wanting to impress the master he said: “There is no mind, there is no body, there is no buddha. There is no better, there is no worse. There is no master, there is no student. There is no giving, there is no receiving. What we think we see and feel is not real. None of these seeming things really exists.”Dokuon had been sitting quietly smoking his pipe, and saying nothing. Suddenly he picked up his staff and gave Yamaoka a terrible whack.Yamaoka jumped up in anger.Dokuon said: “Since none of these things really exists, and all is emptiness, where does your anger come from? Think about it.”Knowledge is not of much help. Only being can become the vehicle for the other shore. You can go on thinking, accumulating information – but those are paper boats, they won’t help in an ocean voyage. If you remain on the shore and go on talking about them, it is okay – paper boats are as good as real boats if you never go for the voyage. But if you go for the voyage with paper boats then you will be drowned. And words are nothing but paper boats – not even that substantial.When we accumulate knowledge, what do we do? Nothing changes inside; the being remains absolutely unaffected. Just like dust, information gathers around you – just like dust gathering around a mirror. The mirror remains the same, only it loses its mirroring quality. Your consciousness remains the same; what you know through the mind makes no difference, in fact it becomes worse. Accumulated knowledge is just like dust around your mirroring consciousness; the consciousness reflects less and less and less.The more you know, the less aware you become. When you are completely filled with scholarship, borrowed knowledge, you are already dead. Then nothing comes to you as your own. Everything is borrowed and parrotlike.Mind is a parrot. I have heard – it happened in the days of Joseph Stalin – a man, a very prominent communist, came to the Moscow police station and reported that his parrot was missing. Because this man was a very prominent communist, the chief at the police station inquired about the parrot, for it was significant and had to be searched for. In his inquiries he asked, “Does the parrot talk?”The communist, the comrade, felt a slight fear, and then he said, “Yes, he talks. But note it down: whatever political opinions he has, they are completely his own.”But how can a parrot have opinions of its own? A parrot cannot have opinions of its own – and neither can the mind, because the mind is a mechanism. A parrot is more alive than a mind. Even a parrot may have some opinions of its own, but the mind cannot. Mind is a computer, a biocomputer. It accumulates. It is never original, it cannot be. Whatsoever it has is borrowed, taken from others.You become original only when you transcend mind. When the mind is dropped, and the consciousness faces existence directly, immediately, moment to moment in contact with existence, you become original. Then for the first time you are authentically your own. Otherwise all ideas are borrowed. You may quote scriptures, you may know by heart all the Vedas, the Koran, the Gita, the Bible, but that makes no difference – they are not your own. And knowledge that is not your own is dangerous, more dangerous than ignorance, because it is a hidden ignorance and you will not be able to see that you are deceiving yourself. You are carrying false coins and thinking you are a rich man, carrying false stones and thinking they are Kohinoors. Sooner or later your poverty will be revealed. Then you will be shocked.This happens whenever you die, whenever death comes near. In the shock that death gives to you, suddenly you become aware that you have not gained anything – because only that is gained which is gained in being.You have accumulated fragments of knowledge from here and there, you may have become a great encyclopedia, but that is not the point. And particularly for those who are in search of truth, it is a barrier, not a help. Knowledge has to be transcended.When there is no knowledge, knowing happens, because knowing is your quality – the quality of consciousness. It is just like a mirror: the mirror reflects whatsoever is there; consciousness reflects the truth that is always in front of you, just at the tip of your nose.But the mind is in between – and the mind goes on chattering, and the truth remains just in front of you and the mind goes on chattering. And you go with the mind. You miss. Mind is a great missing.Before we enter this beautiful anecdote, a few more things. First: knowledge is borrowed, realize this. The very realization becomes a dropping of it. You don’t have to do anything. Simply realize that whatsoever you know you have heard, you have not known it. You have read it, you have not realized it; it is not a revelation to you, it is a conditioning of the mind. It has been taught to you – you have not learned it. Truth can be learned, cannot be taught.Learning means being responsive to whatsoever is around you – that which is, to be responsive to it. This is a great learning, but not knowledge.There is no way to find truth – except through finding it. There is no short cut to it. You cannot borrow, you cannot steal, you cannot deceive, to get to it. There is simply no way unless you are without any mind within you – because mind is a wavering, mind is a continuous trembling; mind is never unmoving, it is a movement. Mind is just like a breeze, continuously flowing, and the flame goes on wavering. When mind is not there the breeze stops, and the flame becomes unmoving. When your consciousness is an unmoving flame, you know the truth. You have to learn how not to follow the mind.Nobody can give you the truth, nobody, not even a Buddha, a Jesus, a Krishna – nobody can give it to you. And it is beautiful that nobody can give it to you, otherwise it would become a commodity in the market. If it can be given, then it can also be sold. If it can be given, then it can also be stolen. If it can be given then you can take it from your friend, borrow it. It is beautiful that truth is not transferable in any way. Unless you reach it, you cannot reach. Unless you become it, you never have it. In fact, it is not something you can have. It is not a commodity, a thing, a thought. You can be it, but you cannot have it.In the world, in this world, we can have everything – everything can become part of our possessions. Truth can never be possessed, because there are two things which can be possessed: thoughts and things. Things can be possessed, thoughts can be possessed – truth is neither. Truth is being. You can become it, but you cannot possess it. You cannot have it in your safe, you cannot have it in your book, you cannot have it in your hand. When you have it, you are it. You become truth. It is not a concept, it is a being itself.The second thing to remember: this is a human tendency, to try to show you have that which you don’t have. If you have it, you don’t try to show it, there is no point. If you don’t have it you try to show it, as if you have it. So remember, whatsoever you want to show to people, that is the thing you don’t have.If you go to a rich man’s house and become his guest – nothing changes; if he is really rich nothing changes, he simply accepts you. Go to a poor man’s house – he changes everything. He may borrow furniture from his neighbor, a carpet from somebody else, curtains from somebody else. He would like to impress you that he is rich. If you are not rich you would like to impress people that you are rich. And if you don’t know, you would like people to think that you know. Whenever you want to impress somebody, remember this: it is a human tendency to impress, because nobody wants to look poor – and more so where things of the other world are concerned.You can be a poor man as far as things of this world are concerned, that is not much of a poverty; but as far as God, the soul, liberation, truth are concerned – it is too much to bear, to be poor is too much to bear. You would like to impress people that you have something, and it is difficult to impress them as far as things of this world are concerned, because those things are visible. It is easy to impress people about things of the other world because they are not visible. You can impress people that you know, without knowing.The problem arises because when you impress others, there is a possibility that you may be impressed yourself by their eyes and their convictions that you have something. By and by, if many people are convinced that you know, you will be convinced that you know – there is the problem, because deceiving others is not much of a problem. But if you are deceived by your own effort, then it will be almost impossible to bring you out of your sleep, because you think it is not a sleep at all! You think you are fully awake. It will be difficult to bring you out of your ignorance because you think you are enlightened already. It will be difficult to bring you out of your disease because you believe that you are healthy and whole already!The greatest barrier that stands between you and the truth is that you have convinced yourself via others that you already have it. So it is a vicious circle. First: you try to convince others – and you can convince others because the thing is invisible. Second: others don’t have it either, so they don’t know. If you go and start talking about God, and go on talking, sooner or later people will start thinking that you know about God – because they don’t know either. Except for the word god they don’t know anything about it, and you can be very clever and cunning, cunning about theories and philosophies, argumentative. And if you go on and on, just out of sheer boredom they will say, “Yes, we believe that you know, but be finished.”I have heard, once it happened:There was one great mystic, Baal Shem, a Jew, a Hasid. A scholar came to see him, a pretender – and all scholars are pretenders, because by “scholar” I mean someone who knows something through the scriptures, words, language, who has not encountered the reality himself – and he started talking about old prophets, and the Old Testament, and commenting about them…everything borrowed of course, unoriginal; foolish on his part because he was talking to a man who knows.Baal Shem listened out of compassion, and then in the end he said, “Too bad, too bad; had the great Maimonides known you…”Maimonides is a Jewish philosopher, a very great philosopher, so the pretender was very happy, overjoyed with this compliment, that had great Maimonides known him… So he asked, “I am so happy that you recognize me and you have given me recognition. Just one thing more: why do you say, ‘Too bad, too bad; had the great Maimonides known you…?’ What do you mean? Please tell me this, what do you mean?”Baal Shem said, “Then you would have bored him, not me.”Just out of sheer boredom people start believing, “Yes, you know – but keep quiet.” And then moreover, they don’t know, they are as ignorant as you. There is only one difference: you are more articulate, you have read more, you have accumulated a little more dust, and they cannot argue, and you can put them in their place and make them silent. They have to believe that you know, and it doesn’t make any difference to them whether you know it or not.Be happy if you think you know, but you are creating such a stone wall it will be difficult for you to break it – because if you convince others, you become convinced that, “Yes, I know”. That’s how there are so many so-called masters. They don’t know anything, but they have followers, and because of the followers they are convinced that they know. Take away their followers and you will see their confidence is gone.Deep down, depth psychologists say that people accumulate followers just to convince themselves that they know. Without followers, how will you convince yourself? There is no way – you are alone! And it is difficult to deceive oneself directly, it is easy to deceive oneself via others. When you talk to someone and you see the light in his eyes, you are convinced that you must have something, otherwise, “Why did this light come to his eyes, his face? He was impressed.” That’s why we hanker so much to impress people. The mind wants to impress people so that it can be impressed via them, and can then believe in its borrowed knowledge as if it is a revelation. Beware of this. This is one of the trickiest traps. Once you fall into it, it will be difficult for you to come out.A sinner can reach more easily to the truth than a scholar, because a sinner feels deep down that he is guilty, he can repent, and he feels he has done something wrong. You cannot find a sinner who is basically happy. He feels the guilt; he has done something wrong and he repents in the unconscious; he wants to undo whatsoever he has done to bring about the balance in his life, and some day or other he will bring the balance. But if you are a scholar, a man of words, theories and philosophies, a great pundit, then it is difficult, because you never feel guilt about your scholarship, you feel happy and egoistic about it.Remember one thing: whatsoever gives you a feeling of ego is a barrier; whatsoever gives you a feeling of egolessness is the way.If you are a sinner and you feel guilty, that means your ego is shaken. Through sin you cannot accumulate ego. It has happened many times that a sinner has taken the jump in a moment and has become a saint. It happened to Valmiki, an Indian saint, the first to tell the story of Rama. He was a robber and a murderer, and in a single moment the transformation happened. It has never happened like that to any pundit ever – and India is a great country of pundits: the brahmins, the scholars. You cannot compete with Indian scholars – they have a long heritage of thousands of years, and they have lived on words and words and words. But it has never happened that a scholar in a single moment took a jump, exploded, was broken from the past and became totally new. It has never happened that way. But it has happened many times with sinners, in a single moment, because deep down they were never able to make arrangements for their ego with whatsoever they were doing. Whatsoever they were doing was ego-shattering and ego is the wall, the stone wall.If you feel you are a moralist, a puritan, you will create a subtle ego. If you think you are a knower, you will create a subtle ego. Remember, there is no sin except the ego, so don’t accumulate it; and it is always accumulated through false things, because real things always shatter it. If you really know, the ego disappears; if you don’t know, it accumulates and becomes bigger and bigger and stronger. If you are really a pure man, a religious man, ego disappears; but if you are a puritan, a moralist, then ego is strengthened. This should always be the criterion to judge whether whatsoever you are doing is good or wrong: judge it by the ego. If ego is strengthened, then it is wrong: drop it as soon as you can, drop it immediately! If ego is not strengthened, it is good.If you go to the temple every day, or to church every Sunday, and you feel ego is strengthened, don’t go to church – stop; don’t go to the temple, it is not helping you, it is a poison. If you feel by going to church that you are religious, you are something extraordinary, greater, purer than others, holier-than-thou, if this attitude comes to you, holier-than-thou, then drop it, because this attitude is the only sin in the world that exists. All else is child’s play. This is the only sin – this attitude of holier-than-thou.Do only that which doesn’t strengthen your ego, and sooner or later you will become enlightened, because when the ego is not, if even for a single moment it leaves you – suddenly the eyes open and you have seen it. Once seen, it is never forgotten. Once glimpsed, it becomes such a powerful magnet in your life that it goes on drawing you nearer and nearer to the center of the world. Sooner or later you will be merged into it.But the ego resists, the ego resists surrender. It resists love, it resists prayerfulness, it resists meditation, it resists the divine. Ego is a resistance, a fight against the whole; that’s why it is a sin. And ego is always interested in impressing people. The more you can impress people, the more ego gets food. It is a fact. If you cannot impress anybody, the supports are withdrawn and the ego starts trembling. It has no base in reality, it depends on others’ opinions.Now try to enter this anecdote: “The brash student” – it is a contradiction, because a student cannot be brash, and if he is, he cannot be a student. A student cannot be impudent, he cannot be rude, he cannot be an egoist. If he is, he cannot be a student, because to be a student means to be receptive, to be ready to learn. And what is readiness to learn? Readiness to learn means: I know that I am ignorant. If I already know that I know, how can I learn? The doors are closed, I am not ready to learn; really, I am ready to teach.It happened once in a Zen monastery: a man came and he wanted to be initiated. The master said, “We have two categories of initiates here. I have five hundred inmates in the ashram, in the monastery, and we have two categories: one is that of disciple, and one that of master. So which category would you like to join?”The man was absolutely new, and even he felt a little hesitation. He said, “If it is possible then I would like to be initiated as a master.”The master was just joking. He was just joking – and wanted to look into the deeper unconscious of this man.Everybody would like to be a master, and even if you become a disciple you become one only as a means, just as a means to become a master: you have to pass through it, it is compulsory; otherwise how can you become a master? So you have to be a disciple, but the search of the ego is to be the master. The ego would like to teach, not to learn, and even if you learn it is learning with the idea of how to get ready to teach.You listen to me. With listening I have two categories also: you can listen like a disciple or you can listen like a would-be master. If you listen like a would-be master you will miss, because you cannot listen with that attitude. If you are just waiting to get ready to jump into being a master and teach others, you cannot be receptive. You can learn only if you are a disciple with no thought of becoming a master. This was one of the oldest traditions in the East – that a person would not start teaching unless his master told him to.There was one disciple of Buddha who remained for many years with him; his name was Purna. He became enlightened, and he still remained with Buddha. After his enlightenment he would also come every day in the morning to listen to Buddha. He himself was now a buddha; nothing was lacking, he stood now in his own right, but he continued to come.One day Buddha asked Purna, “Why do you go on coming? Now you can stop.”Purna said, “Unless you say so, how can I stop? If you say so, it is okay.” Then he stopped coming to Buddha’s lectures, but he remained just like a shadow moving with the sangha, with the order. Then after a few years, again Buddha said, “Purna, why do you go on following me? You go and teach people! You need not be here with me.”And Purna said, “I was waiting. When you say so, I will go. I am a disciple, so whatsoever you say I will do. If you say so, it’s okay. So where should I go? Which direction should I go? Whom should I teach? You simply direct me and I will follow! I am a follower.”This man must have listened to Buddha totally, because even when he becomes enlightened he remains a disciple. And there are people who are absolutely ignorant and they are already “masters.” Even if they are listening, they are listening with an attitude that sooner or later they have to teach. You listen just to tell others what you have learned! Drop that idea completely from the mind, because if that idea is there, if the would-be master is there, the disciple cannot exist with that idea; they never coexist.A disciple is simply a disciple. One day it happens that he becomes a master – but that is not the end, that is just a consequence. Just by being a learner one becomes wise. That is a consequence, not the goal. If you learn simply to become wise you will never learn, because to be wise is an ego-goal, an ego-trip. And if you are just waiting to ripen, mature, and become a master, and this disciplehood is just a passage to be passed through – the sooner the better, it has to be finished, you are not happy in it, you would like to end it – then you are not a disciple, and you will never be a master. …Because when a disciple ripens, he becomes a master spontaneously. That is not a goal to be followed, it happens as a byproduct.The brash student – impudent, rude, thinking that he already knows… and that is the only impudence that can happen to a mind, to think that you already know.When Yamaoka was a brash student he visited the master Dokuon.Wanting to impress the master he said…These Yamaokas come to me almost every day. I have met many, this Yamaoka is a type. People come to me and sometimes I enjoy it very much.Once it happened: a man came; he talked for one hour – talked the whole Vedanta, and he had been asking for an interview for many days, writing letters to me, and he had traveled far, and he had been saying that he would like to ask a few questions. When he came he forgot about the questions, he started giving me answers – and I had not asked anything! For one hour he talked and talked and talked, there was not even a gap so I could interrupt him. No, he wouldn’t listen even, so I had to say yes, yes, yes. And I listened to him and enjoyed it, and after one hour he said, “Now I will have to go, my time is finished but I learned so many things from you. And I will remember this meeting for ever and ever. I will cherish this memory – and you have solved all my problems.”Really, this was his problem: that he wanted to talk and say things and give some knowledge to me. And he was very happy because I listened. He remained the same, but he went away happy.People come to me and they say that of course they know that “All is brahman.” India is burdened too much with knowledge, and fools have become greater fools because of that burden because they all know, and they talk as knowers. They say that all is brahman, that reality is nondual, and then in the end they ask, “My mind is very tense. Can you suggest something?”If you know that existence is non-dual, if you know that the two does not exist, how can you be troubled and tense? If you know this, all trouble has gone, all worry dissolved, anguish disappears! But if you say to them, “You don’t know,” they won’t listen. And if you just go on listening to them, in the end the real will come out automatically.In a court, it happened: a man was charged with stealing a pocket watch. The man whose watch was stolen was a little shortsighted, his eyes were weak and he could see only with specs. He had forgotten his specs somewhere, and then on the street this man cut his pocket and took the watch. When the judge inquired, “Can you recognize that this is the man who has taken your watch?” the robbed man said, “It is difficult, because my eyes are weak, and without specs I cannot see rightly, everything is a little blurred. So I cannot say exactly whether it is this man or not, but my watch is stolen and I feel it is this man.”But because there was no other eyewitness or anything, and it could not be proved, the magistrate had to free the man. He said, “Now you can go, now you are free.”But the man looked a little puzzled. The judge said, “Now you can go, you are free!” The man still looked puzzled, and the judge asked, “Do you want to ask anything?”He said, “Yes, can I have the watch? Can I keep it?”This is what is happening…people go on talking, and if you go on listening to them, in the end you will find all their Vedanta is useless. In the end they ask something that shows their reality. The other was just language, verbalization.This Yamaoka visited the master Dokuon – Dokuon was an enlightened man, one of the most loved in Japan, one of the most respected.Wanting to impress the master he said… When you want to impress a master you are a fool, you are a perfectly stupid man. You may want to impress the whole world, but don’t try to impress a master; at least there, open your heart. Don’t talk nonsense; at least there, be true.If you go to a doctor you expose all your diseases to him, you allow him to diagnose, to examine, you tell everything, whatsoever is there, you don’t hide anything. If you hide from a doctor, then why go to him in the first place? Go on hiding! But how do you expect him to help you if you hide?To a doctor you tell everything about the body, to a master you have to tell everything about the soul; otherwise no help is possible. When you go to a master, go completely! Don’t create a barrier of words between you and him. Say only whatsoever you know. If you don’t know anything, say, “I don’t know.”When P. D. Ouspensky came to Gurdjieff he was a great scholar, already world famous – more known in the world than Gurdjieff himself. Gurdjieff was an unknown fakir in those days; he became known through Ouspensky. Ouspensky had written a great book before he met Gurdjieff. The book is really rare because he talks as if he knows, and he is such an articulate man that he can deceive. The book is Tertium Organum, third canon of thought, and really one of the rarest books in the world. Even ignorance can sometimes do things; if you are skillful you can do things even in your ignorance.Ouspensky claims in that book – and his claim is right – that there exist only three real books in the world: one is Aristotle’s Organum, the first canon of thought; second is Bacon’s Novum Organum, new canon of thought, the second canon of thought; and the third is his own Tertium Organum, third canon of thought. And really these three books are rare. All the three authors are ignorant, none of them knows anything about truth, but they are very articulate men. They really have done miracles: without knowing about truth they have written beautiful books. They have almost come around, approximately they have reached.Ouspensky was a name; when he came to Gurdjieff, Gurdjieff was nobody. Of course he came with the knowledge that Gurdjieff was a man of being – really a man of no knowledge, but of very substantial being. What did Gurdjieff do? He did something beautiful: he remained silent. Ouspensky waited and waited and waited, became fidgety, started perspiring before this man because he simply remained silent, looking at him, and it was so awkward, and his eyes were very, very penetrating. If he wanted to he could burn you with his eyes. His face was such that, if he wanted to, he could simply shake you out of your being with his face. If he looked into you, you would feel very uneasy. He remained like a statue, and Ouspensky started trembling, a fever came over him. Then he asked, “But why are you silent? Why don’t you say something?”Gurdjieff said, “First one thing has to be decided, absolutely decided; only then will I say even a single word. Go into the other room, you will find a piece of paper there; write on it whatsoever you know, and also that which you don’t know. Make two columns: one of your knowledge, one of your ignorance, because whatsoever you know I need not talk about. We are finished with it; you know it, there’s no need to talk about it. Whatsoever you don’t know, I will talk about.”Ouspensky has reported that he went into that room, sat on a chair, took the paper and the pencil – and for the first time in his life realized that he didn’t know anything. This man Gurdjieff destroyed his whole knowledge because, for the first time with awareness, he was going to write: “I know God.” How to write that? – because he didn’t know. How to write: “I know truth?” Ouspensky was authentic; he came back after half an hour, gave the blank sheet of paper to Gurdjieff and said, “Now you start work. I don’t know anything.”Gurdjieff said, “How could you write Tertium Organum? You don’t know anything, and you have written the third canon of thought!”It’s as if people go on writing in their sleep, go on writing in their dreams. As if they don’t know what they are doing, they don’t know what is happening through them.Wanting to impress the master, Yamaoka said, “There is no mind, there is no body, there is no buddha. There is no better, there is no worse. There is no master, there is no student. There is no giving, there is no receiving. What we think we see and feel is not real. None of these seeming things really exists.”This is the highest teaching, the ultimate truth. This is the essence of the whole tradition of Buddha, that Buddha says everything is empty. That’s what we were talking about when I discussed Sosan with you: everything is empty, everything is just relative, nothing exists absolutely. This is the highest realization. But you can read it in a book, and if you read it in a book and say it, it is simply stupid.“There is no mind, there is no body, there is no Buddha.” Buddha has said, “I am not.” But when Buddha says it, it means something. When Yamaoka says it, it means nothing. When Buddha says it, it is very significant: “I am not.” He says, “Even I am not, so be more alert – you cannot be. This is my realization,” he says. “Personality is just like a wave, or a line drawn on the water. It is a form, and form is continuously changing. The form is not truth. Only the formless can be the true. Only the unchanging can be true.”And, Buddha says, “It may take seventy years for your form to disappear, but it disappears – and that which was not one day, and again one day will not be, cannot be in the middle. I was not, one day; I will not be, one day. On two sides, nothing – and just in the middle, I am? This is not possible. How, between two nonexistences, can existence exist? How, between two emptinesses, can there be something substantial? It must be a false dream.”Why, in the morning, do you say that the dream was false? It was, but why do you say it was false? What is the criterion of its being false or true? How do you judge? In the morning everybody says, “I dreamed, and the dream was false.” Dream means the false – but why? This is the criterion: in the evening it was not there, when I went to sleep it was not there, when I came out of sleep again it was not there, so how can it be in the middle? The room is real, the dream is false – because when you went into sleep the room was there, and when you came out of sleep the room was there. The room is real, the dream is false, because the dream has two nothingnesses around it, and between two nothingnesses, nothing can exist. But the room continues, so you say that the room is real, the world is real, and the dream is false.A buddha has awakened out of this world and he sees that, just like the dream, your world is also false. He has awakened out of this great dream which we call the world, and then he says, “It was not there, now again it is not there, so how could it be in the middle?” Hence buddhas, shankaras, go on saying, “The world is illusory, it is a dream.” But you cannot say it; you cannot just take the words and repeat them.This Yamaoka must have listened, must have learned, read, studied. He is repeating like a parrot: “There is no mind, there is no body, there is no buddha. There is no better, there is no worse” – because they are all relative. Remember, Buddha calls anything relative false, and anything absolute true. Absoluteness is the criterion of truth, relativity is the criterion of a dream.Try to understand this, because this is basic. You say your friend is tall. What do you mean? He can only be said to be taller, not tall – taller than somebody. He may be a pygmy next to somebody else, so tallness is not in him. Tallness is just a relationship, a relative phenomenon. In comparison to somebody he is taller, in comparison to somebody else he may be a pygmy. So who is he – is he a pygmy or a tall man? No, these two things are relativities. In himself, who is he – tall or a pygmy? In himself he is neither tall nor a pygmy. That’s why Buddha says, “The better does not exist, the worse does not exist.”Who is a sinner and who is a saint? Look! – if there are only saints in the world will there be any saint? If there are only sinners in the world will there be any sinner? The sinner exists because of the saint, the saint exists because of the sinner – they are relativities. So if you want to be a saint you will create a sinner; you cannot be a saint without there being sinners. So be aware not to become a saint, because if you become a saint that means somewhere the other polarity will have to exist.Saints are false, sinners are false. Who are you in yourself? If you are alone, are you a sinner or a saint? Then you are neither. Look into that reality which you are, unrelated to anything else; look into yourself without relation – then you will come to the absolute truth; otherwise everything is just a relative term. Relativities are dreams.Reality is not a relativity, it is an absoluteness. Who are you?If you go inside and you say, “I am light,” you are dreaming again, because what can light mean without darkness? Light needs darkness to be there! If you say, “Inside I am blissful,” again you are dreaming, because bliss needs misery to be there. You cannot use any term because all terms are relativities. That’s why Buddha says that we cannot use any term – because inside there is emptiness. Also, this “emptiness” is not against “fullness”; this is just to say that all terms are empty. In absolute truth, no term applies, you cannot say anything.Buddha will not be in agreement with Hindus and say that reality is sat-chit-anand, because he says that sat exists because of asat, chit exists because of achit, anand exists because of dukkha. Sat is existence; reality cannot be said to be existential because then nonexistence would be needed, and where will nonexistence exist? Reality cannot be said to be consciousness, because then unconsciousness would be needed, and where will unconsciousness exist? Reality cannot be said to be bliss, because then misery would be needed. Buddha says whatsoever word you use is useless, because the opposite will be needed.Look into yourself – then you cannot use language, only silence. Only through silence can reality be indicated. And when he says, “All terms are empty, all words are empty, all things are empty, all thoughts are empty,” he means this because they are relative – relativity is a dream.There is no better, there is no worse. There is no master, there is no student. There is no giving, there is no receiving. What we think we see and feel is not real. None of these seeming things really exists. This is the most profound teaching of Buddha, so one thing has to be remembered: you can repeat the most profound words ever uttered, and you can still be a stupid man. This Yamaoka is stupid. He’s repeating exactly the same words as Buddha.Words carry your being. When Buddha says the same words, they have a different significance, a different fragrance. The words carry something of the Buddha, something of his being: the aroma, the taste, of his inner being. The music of his inner harmony is carried by those words. When Yamaoka repeats those words they are dead, stale, they don’t carry any fragrance. They will carry something: they will carry Yamaoka and his bad odor.Remember, just by repeating the Gita, don’t think anything is going to happen, although the words are the same, and Krishna said the same words you are repeating. All over the world thousands of Christian missionaries go on repeating the same words that Jesus spoke. Those words are dead. It is better not to repeat them, because the more you repeat them, the more stale they become. It is better not to touch them, because your very touch is poisonous. It is better to wait. When you attain to a Christ-consciousness, or a Krishna-consciousness, or a Buddha-consciousness, then you will begin to flower, then things will start coming out of you – never before. Don’t be a gramophone record…because then you can only repeat, but that doesn’t mean anything.Dokuon had been sitting quietly smoking his pipe…A very beautiful man – he didn’t even bother. He didn’t interrupt, he simply continued smoking his pipe.Remember, only Zen masters can smoke a pipe, because they are not pretenders. They don’t bother what you think about them – they don’t bother! They are people at ease with themselves. You cannot think of a Jaina muni smoking a pipe, or a Hindu sannyasin smoking a pipe, impossible. These are men of rules, regulations, they have forced themselves into disciplines. No need to smoke a pipe if you don’t want to, but if you want to, then don’t force something dead upon yourself, because that desire will remain hidden somewhere and will disturb. And why? If you want to smoke a pipe, why not smoke it? What is wrong in it? You are as false as the pipe and the smoke, and the smoke and the pipe are as true as you.But why not? Deep down you want to be extraordinary, not ordinary. Smoking a pipe will make you very ordinary. This is what ordinary people are doing: smoking a pipe, drinking tea and coffee, and laughing and joking, this is what ordinary people are doing. You are a great saint – how can you do ordinary things in an ordinary way? You are very extraordinary.To pose extraordinariness you drop many things. Nothing is bad in dropping them – if you don’t like them, it’s okay. There’s no need to force yourself to smoke a pipe just to say that you are ordinary, no need…because this is how the mind goes! No need to do anything if you don’t want to, but if you want to then don’t pose, don’t try to have a mask of seriousness. Then be simple. Nothing is wrong if you are simple; everything is wrong if you are not simple.This monk Dokuon must have been a simple man: Dokuon had been sitting quietly smoking his pipe… Very meditative, just relaxing, listening to this pretender,…and saying nothing. Suddenly, he picked up his staff and gave Yamaoka a terrible whack.Zen masters carry a staff for such people. They are very gentle people, but very authentic, and there are people who will not listen to words, who can listen only to a whack. If you talk to them, they won’t listen, they will talk still more. They need shock treatment.Suddenly, he picked up his staff and gave Yamaoka a terrible whack.Yamaoka jumped up in anger.Dokuon said: “Since none of these things really exists, and all is emptiness, where does your anger come from? Think about it.”Dokuon has created a situation, and only situations are revealing. He could have said, “Whatsoever you are saying is just borrowed information.” That wouldn’t have made much difference because the man sitting before him was fast asleep. Just talking would not have brought him out of it; it may have even helped him go more into it, he may have started arguing. Rather than doing that, Dokuon did the right thing; he hit hard with the staff. Suddenly, because Yamaoka was not ready for it, it came unexpectedly. It was so sudden that he could not arrange his character accordingly, he could not manage a false pose. For a moment – the whack was so sudden – the mask slipped, and the real face came out. Just by talking this would not have been possible. Dokuon must have been very compassionate.Just for a single moment anger peeped out, the real came out – because if everything is empty, how can you be angry? Where can the anger come from? Who will be angry if even a Buddha is not, you are not, nothing is there, only emptiness exists? How, in emptiness, is anger possible?What Dokuon is doing is bringing this Yamaoka from knowledge to being; that’s what he is doing by whacking him. A situation is needed, because in a situation suddenly you become real, whatsoever you are. If words are allowed, if Dokuon talks and says, “This is wrong and that is right,” he helps the continuity of the mind. Then a dialogue will be there, but of no use. He gives a shock, he brings you back to your reality. Suddenly all thinking disappears; Yamaoka is Yamaoka, not a buddha. He was talking like a buddha, and just with a hit, the buddha disappears and in comes Yamaoka – angry. Dokuon said: “Since none of these things really exists, and all is emptiness, Yamaoka, where does your anger come from? Think about it.“Don’t talk about Buddha; and don’t talk about reality, and don’t talk about truth – think about this anger and from where it comes. If you really think about anger, from where it comes, you will reach to emptiness.”Next time, when you feel angry…or if you cannot, then come to me, I will give you a whack. I go on giving, but my whacks are more subtle than Dokuon’s. I don’t need a real staff – it is not needed; you are so unreal, a real staff is not needed. I need not physically give you a whack, but spiritually I go on giving. I go on creating situations in which I try to bring you back to your Yamaokahood from your buddhahood, because that Yamaoka is real within you, buddha is just a mask. And remember, Yamaoka has to live, not the mask; Yamaoka has to breathe, not the mask; Yamaoka has to digest food, not the mask. Yamaoka will fall in love, Yamaoka will be angry, Yamaoka will have to die, not the mask – so it is better that you are freed from the mask and brought back to your Yamaokahood.Remember, the buddha cannot be a mask. If Yamaoka goes on going deeper in himself, he will find a buddha there. And how to go deeper in yourself? Follow anything that comes from within; follow it back, regress back. Anger has come? – close your eyes; it is a beautiful moment, because anger has come from within…from the very center of your being it comes, so just look backward, move, just see from where it is coming. From where?What you would do ordinarily; and what this Yamaoka could have done, would be to think that the anger has been created because of this Dokuon. “Because he hit me, that’s why anger is created.” You would look at Dokuon as the source. Dokuon is not the source; he may have whacked you but he is not the source – if he whacked Buddha, anger would not come – it is Yamaoka.Go back, don’t look outside for the source, otherwise this beautiful moment of anger will be lost – your life has become so false that within a second you will put on your mask again, and you will smile, and you will say, “Yes, master, you did a very good thing.”The false will come in soon, so don’t miss the moment. When the anger has come, it is just a split second before the false comes. And anger is true; it is truer than what you are saying – the words of Buddha are false in your mouth. Your anger is true because it belongs to you. All that belongs to you is true. So find the source of this anger, from where it is coming. Close your eyes and move inward. Before it is lost, go backward to the source – and you will reach emptiness. Go backward more, go inward more, move deeper, and a moment comes when there is no anger. Inside, at the center, there is no anger. Now, the buddha will not be just a face, a mask. Now something real has been penetrated.From where does the anger come? It never comes from your center, it comes from the ego – and ego is a false entity. If you go deeper you will find it comes from the periphery, not from the center. It cannot come from the center: at the center is emptiness, absolute emptiness. It comes only from the ego, and ego is a false entity created by the society, it is a relativity, an identity. Suddenly you are whacked, and the ego feels hurt, anger is there.If you help somebody, smile at somebody, bow down to somebody and he smiles, that smile is coming from the ego. If you appreciate, give compliments to somebody, if you say to a woman, “How beautiful you are!” and she smiles, that smile is coming from the ego, because at the center there is neither beauty nor ugliness. At the center there exists absolute emptiness, anatta, no-selfness – and that center has to be achieved.Once you know it, you move as a nonbeing. Nobody can make you angry, nobody can make you happy, unhappy, miserable, no. In that emptiness all dualities dissolve: happy, unhappy, miserable, blissful, all dissolve. This is buddhahood. This is what happened under the bodhi tree to Gautam Siddhartha. He reached the emptiness. Then everything is silent. You have gone beyond the opposites.A master is to help you to go to your inner emptiness, the inner silence, the inner temple; and the master has to devise methods. Only Zen masters beat you; sometimes they throw a person out of the window, or they jump on him. Because you have become so false, such drastic methods are needed – and in Japan particularly, because Japan is so false. That’s why such drastic methods are needed.In Japan, a smile is a painted smile. Everybody smiles – it is just a habit, a beautiful habit as far as the society is concerned, because in Japan, if you are driving and you hit a person on a Tokyo road, something will happen which can never happen anywhere else: the person will smile and bow down and thank you. Only in Japan can this happen, nowhere else. He will say, “This is my fault,” and you will say, “This is my fault,” if you are Japanese. Both will say, “This is my fault,” and both will bow down and smile and go their ways. In a way it is good, because what is the use of being angry and shouting at each other and creating a crowd, what is the use?From their very childhood the Japanese are conditioned to always smile; that’s why in the West they are thought to be very sly people: you cannot rely on them because you don’t know what they are feeling. You cannot know what a Japanese feels, he never allows anything to come out.This is one extreme: everything false, painted. So Zen masters had to devise these drastic methods, because only through them would the Japanese mask fall down; otherwise it is fixed, it has almost become their skin, as if grafted on the skin. But this is happening to the whole world now, not only Japan. Degrees may differ, but now this is the whole world. Everybody laughs, smiles – neither the laugh is true, nor the smile. Everybody says good things about each other but nobody believes in them, nobody feels that way; it has become social etiquette.Your personality is a social phenomenon. Your being is buried deep down under this personality. You need a shock, so that the personality is thrown open, or for some moments you are no longer identified with it and you reach to the center. There, everything is empty.The whole art of meditation is how to leave the personality easily, move to the center, and be not a person. Just to be, and not be a person, is the whole art of meditation, the whole art of inner ecstasy.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A Zen student came to Bankei and said: “Master, I have an ungovernable temper – how can I cure it?” “Show me this temper,” said Bankei, “it sounds fascinating.” “I haven’t got it right now,” said the student, “so I can’t show it to you.” “Well then,” said Bankei, “bring it to me when you have it.” “But I can’t bring it just when I happen to have it,” protested the student. “It arises unexpectedly, and I would surely lose it before I got it to you.” “In that case,” said Bankei, “it cannot be part of your true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you – so it must come into you from the outside. I suggest that whenever it gets into you, you beat yourself with a stick until the temper can’t stand it, and runs away.”The true nature is your eternal nature. You cannot have it and not have it, it is not something that comes and goes – it is you. How can it come and go? It is your being. It is your very foundation. It cannot be sometimes, and not be sometimes; it is always there.This should be the criterion for a seeker of truth, nature, tao: that we have to come to the point in our being which remains always and always – even before you were born it was there, and even when you are dead it will be there. It is the center. The circumference changes, the center remains absolutely eternal; it is beyond time. Nothing can affect it, nothing can modify it, nothing really ever touches it; it remains beyond all reach of the outside world.Go and watch the sea. Millions of waves are there, but deep in its depth the sea remains calm and quiet, deep in meditation; just on the surface is the turmoil, just on the surface where the sea meets the outside world, the winds. Otherwise, in itself, it always remains the same, not even a ripple; nothing changes.It is the same with you. Just on the surface where you meet others there is turmoil, anxiety, anger, attachment, greed, lust – just on the surface where winds come and touch you. And if you remain on the surface you cannot change this changing phenomenon; it will remain there.Many people try to change it there, on the circumference. They fight with it, they try not to let a wave arise. And through their fight even more waves arise, because when the sea fights with the wind there will be more turmoil: now not only will the wind help it, the sea will also help – there will be tremendous chaos on the surface.All the moralists try to change a man on the periphery; the character is your periphery. You don’t bring any character into the world, you come absolutely characterless, a blank sheet, and all that you call your character is written by others. Your parents, society, teachers, teachings – all are conditionings. You come as a blank sheet, and whatsoever is written on you comes from others; so unless you become a blank sheet again you will not know what nature is, you will not know what brahman is, you will not know what tao is.So the problem is not how to have a strong character, the problem is not how to attain no-anger, how not to be disturbed – no, that is not the problem. The problem is how to change your consciousness from the periphery to the center. Suddenly you see that you have always been calm and then you can look at the periphery from a distance, and the distance is so vast, infinite, that you can watch as if it is not happening to you. In fact, it never happens to you. Even when you are completely lost in it, it never happens to you: something in you remains undisturbed, something in you remains beyond, something in you remains a witness.The whole problem for the seeker is how to shift his attention from the periphery to the center; how to be merged with that which is unchanging, and not to be identified with that which is just a boundary. On the boundary others are very influential, because on the boundary change is natural. The periphery will go on changing – even a Buddha’s periphery changes.The difference between a buddha and you is not a difference of character – remember it. It is not a difference of morality, it is not a difference in virtue or non-virtue. It is a difference in where you are grounded.You are grounded on the periphery, a Buddha is grounded in the center. He can look at his own periphery from a distance; when you hit him he can see it as if you have hit somebody else, because the center is so distant…as if he is a watcher on the hills and something is happening in the valleys and he can see it. This is the first thing to be understood.Second thing: it is very easy to control, it is very difficult to transform. It is very easy to control. You can control your anger, but what will you do? – you will suppress it. And what happens when you suppress a certain thing? The direction of its movement changes: it was going out, and if you suppress, it starts going in – just the direction changes. And for the anger to go out was good, because the poison needs to be thrown out. It is bad for the anger to move within, because that means your whole bodymind structure will be poisoned by it.And then if you go on doing it for a long time…as everybody has been doing, because the society teaches control, not transformation. The society says, “Control yourself,” and through controlling, all the negative things have been thrown deeper and deeper into the unconscious. Then they become a constant thing within you. Then it is not a question that sometimes you are angry and sometimes not – you are simply angry. Sometimes you explode, and sometimes you don’t explode because there is no excuse, or you have to find an excuse. And remember, you can find an excuse anywhere!A man, one of my friends, wanted to divorce his wife, so he went to a lawyer, an expert on marriage affairs, and he asked the lawyer, “On what grounds can I divorce my wife?”The lawyer looked at him and said, “Are you married?” The man said, “Of course, yes.” The lawyer said, “Marriage is enough grounds. There is no need to seek any other grounds. If you want a divorce, then marriage is the only thing that is needed, because it will be almost impossible to divorce a woman if you are not married. If you are married that’s enough!”And this is the situation. You are angry. Because you have suppressed so much anger, now there are no moments when you are not angry; at the most, sometimes you are less angry and sometimes more. Your whole being is poisoned by suppression. You eat with anger – and it has a different quality when a person eats without anger: it is beautiful to watch him, because he eats nonviolently. He may be eating meat, but he eats nonviolently; you may be eating just vegetables and fruits, but if anger is suppressed, you eat violently.Just through eating, your teeth and your mouth release anger. You crush the food as if this is the enemy. And remember, whenever animals are angry, what will they do? Only two things are possible – they don’t have weapons and they don’t have atom bombs, what can they do? Either with their nails or with their teeth they will do violence to you.These are the natural weapons of the body – nails and teeth. It is very difficult to do anything with your nails, because people will say, “Are you an animal?” So the only thing remaining through which you can express your anger or violence easily is the mouth – and that too you cannot use to bite anybody.That’s why we say, “a bite of bread,” “a bite of food,” “a few bites.” You eat food violently, as if the food is the enemy. And remember, when the food is the enemy, it does not really nourish you, it nourishes all that is ill in you. People with deep, suppressed anger eat more; they go on gathering unnecessary fat in the body. And have you observed that fat people are almost always smiling? Unnecessarily, even if there is no cause, fat people always go on smiling. Why? This is their face, this is the mask: they are so much afraid of their anger and their violence that they have to keep a smiling face continuously on themselves – and they go on eating more.Eating more is violence, anger. And then this will move in every way, in every arena of your life. You will make love, but it will be more like violence than like love, it will have much aggression in it. Because you never observe one another making love, you don’t know what is happening, and you cannot know what is happening to you because you are almost always so much in aggression.That’s why deep orgasm through lovemaking becomes impossible – because you are afraid deep down that if you move totally without control, you may kill your wife or kill your beloved, or the wife may kill the husband or the lover. You become so afraid of your own anger! Next time you make love, watch: you are doing the same movements as are done when you are aggressive. Watch the face, have a mirror around so you can see what is happening to your face – all the distortions of anger and aggression will be there.In taking food, you become angry: look at a person eating. Look at a person making love – the anger has gone so deep that even love, an activity totally opposite to anger, even that is poisoned. Eating, an absolutely neutral activity, even that is poisoned. Then you just open the door and there is anger, you put a book on the table and there is anger, you take off the shoes and there is anger, you shake hands and there is anger – because now you are anger personified.Through suppression, mind becomes split. The part that you accept becomes the conscious, and the part that you deny becomes the unconscious. This division is not natural, the division happens because of repression. And into the unconscious you go on throwing all the rubbish that society rejects – but remember, whatsoever you throw in there becomes more and more part of you. It goes into your hands, into your bones, into your blood, into your heartbeat. Now psychologists say that almost eighty percent of diseases are caused by repressed emotions: so many heart failures means so much anger has been repressed in the heart, so much hatred that the heart is poisoned.Why? Why does man suppress so much and become unhealthy? The society teaches you to control, not to transform, and the way of transformation is totally different. For one thing, it is not the way of control at all, it is just the opposite.First thing: in control you repress, in transformation you express. But there is no need to express on somebody else because the “somebody else” is just irrelevant.Next time you feel angry, go and run around the house seven times, and after it sit under a tree and watch where the anger has gone. You have not repressed it, you have not controlled it, you have not thrown it on somebody else – because if you throw it on somebody else a chain is created, because the other is as foolish as you, as unconscious as you. If you throw it on another, and if the other is an enlightened person, there will be no trouble; he will help you to throw and release it and go through a catharsis. But the other is as ignorant as you – if you throw anger on him he will react. He will throw more anger on you, he is repressed as much as you are. Then there comes a chain: you throw on him, he throws on you, and you both become enemies.Don’t throw it on anybody. It is just like when you feel like vomiting: you don’t go and vomit on somebody. Anger needs a vomit; you go to the bathroom and vomit – it cleanses the whole body. If you suppress the vomit it will be dangerous, and when you have vomited you will feel fresh, you will feel unburdened, unloaded, good, healthy. Something was wrong in the food that you have taken and the body rejects it. Don’t go on forcing it inside.Anger is just a mental vomit. Something is wrong that you have taken in. Your whole psychic being wants to throw it out, but there is no need to throw it out on somebody. Because people throw it on somebody, society tells them to control.There is no need to throw it on anybody. You can go to your bathroom, you can go on a long walk – it means that something is inside that needs fast activity so that it is released. Just do a little jogging and you will feel it is released, or take a pillow and beat it; fight and bite the pillow until your hands and teeth are relaxed. Within a five-minute catharsis you will feel unburdened, and once you know this you will never throw it on anybody, because that is absolutely foolish.The first thing in transformation then is to express anger, but not on anybody, because if you express it on somebody you cannot express it totally. You may like to kill, but it is not possible; you may like to bite, but it is not possible. But that can be done to a pillow. A pillow means “already enlightened”; the pillow is enlightened, a buddha. The pillow will not react, and the pillow will not go to any court, and the pillow will not bring any enmity against you, and the pillow will not do anything. The pillow will be happy, and the pillow will laugh at you.The second thing to remember: be aware. In controlling, no awareness is needed; you simply do it mechanically, like a robot. The anger comes and there is a mechanism – suddenly your whole being becomes narrow and closed. If you are watchful, control may not be so easy.Society never teaches you to be watchful, because when somebody is watchful, one is wide open. That is part of awareness – one is open, and if you want to suppress something and you are open, it is contradictory, it may come out. The society teaches you how to close yourself in, how to cave yourself in – don’t allow even a small window for anything to go out.But remember; when nothing goes out, nothing comes in either. When the anger cannot go out, you are closed. If you touch a beautiful rock, nothing goes in; you look at a flower, nothing goes in, your eyes are dead and closed. You kiss a person, nothing goes in, because you are closed. You live an insensitive life.Sensitivity grows with awareness. Through control you become dull and dead, that is part of the mechanism of control. If you are dull and dead then nothing will affect you, as if the body has become a citadel, a defense. Nothing will affect you, neither insult nor love.But this control is at a very great cost, an unnecessary cost. Then it becomes the whole effort in life: how to control yourself – and then die! The whole effort of control takes all your energy, and then you simply die. And the life becomes a dull and dead thing; you somehow carry it on.The society teaches you control and condemnation, because a child will control only when he feels something is condemned. Anger is bad; sex is bad; everything that has to be controlled has to be made to look like a sin to the child, to look like evil.Mulla Nasruddin’s son was growing up. He was ten years of age and so Mulla thought: Now, this is the time. He is old enough and the secrets of life must be revealed to him. So he called him into his study and gave him the lowdown on sex among birds and bees. And then in the end he told him, “When you feel your younger brother is old enough, you tell the whole thing to him also.”Just after a few minutes, when he was passing by the rooms of the kids, he heard the older, ten-year-old one, already at work. He was telling the younger: “Look, you know what people do, that stuff people do when they want to get a child, a baby? Well, Dad says birds and bees do the same darn thing.”A deep condemnation enters about all that is alive. And sex is the most alive thing – has to be! It is the source. Anger is also a most alive thing, because it is a protective force. If a child cannot be angry at all, he will not be able to survive. You have to be angry in certain moments. The child has to show his own being, the child has to stand in certain moments upon his own ground; otherwise he will have no backbone.Anger is beautiful; sex is beautiful. But beautiful things can go ugly. That depends on you. If you condemn them, they become ugly; if you transform them, they become divine. Anger transformed becomes compassion – because the energy is the same. A buddha is compassionate; from where does this compassion come? This is the same energy that was moving in anger; now it is not moving in anger, the same energy is transformed into compassion. From where does love come? A Buddha is loving; a Jesus is love. The same energy that moves into sex becomes love.So remember, if you condemn a natural phenomenon it becomes poisonous, it destroys you, it becomes destructive and suicidal. If you transform it, it becomes divine, it becomes a God-force, it becomes an elixir. You attain through it to immortality, to a deathless being. But transformation is needed.In transformation you never control, you simply become more aware. Anger is happening – you have to be aware that anger is happening – watch it! It is a beautiful phenomenon; energy moving within you, becoming hot!It is just like electricity in the clouds. People were always afraid of electricity. They thought in olden days, when they were ignorant, that this electricity was the god being angry, being threatening, trying to punish – creating fear so that people would become worshippers. So that people would feel that the god was there and he would punish them.But now we have domesticated that god. Now that god runs through your fan, through your air conditioner, through the fridge: whatsoever you need, that god serves. That god has become a domestic force, it is no longer angry and no longer threatening. Through science an outer force has been transformed into a friend.The same happens through religion for inner forces.Anger is just like electricity in your body: you don’t know what to do with it. Either you kill somebody else or you kill yourself. The society says if you kill yourself it is okay, it is your concern, but don’t kill anybody else – and as far as society goes that is okay. So either you become aggressive or you become repressive.Religion says both are wrong. The basic thing that is needed is to become aware and to know the secret of this energy, anger, this inner electricity. It is electricity because you become hot; when you are angry your temperature goes hot, and you cannot understand the coolness of a Buddha, because when anger is transformed into compassion everything is cool. A deep coolness happens. Buddha is never hot; he is always cool, centered, because he now knows how to use the inner electricity. Electricity is hot – it becomes the source of air conditioning. Anger is hot – it becomes the source of compassion.Compassion is an inner air conditioning. Suddenly everything is cool and beautiful, and nothing can disturb you, and the whole existence is transformed into a friend. Now there is no more enemy…because when you look through the eyes of anger, somebody becomes an enemy; when you look through the eyes of compassion, everybody is a friend, a neighbor. When you love, everywhere is God; when you hate, everywhere is the Devil. It is your standpoint that is projected onto reality.Awareness is needed, not condemnation – and through awareness, transformation happens spontaneously. If you become aware of your anger with no judgment, not saying good, not saying bad, just watching - in your inner sky there is lightning, anger, you feel hot. The whole nervous system shaking and quaking, and you feel a tremor all over the body – a beautiful moment, because when energy functions you can watch it easily; when it is not functioning you cannot watch.Close your eyes and meditate on it. Don’t fight, just look at what is happening – the whole sky is filled with electricity, so much lightning, so much beauty – just lie down on the ground and look at the sky and watch. Do the same inside.Clouds are there, because without clouds there can be no lightning – dark clouds are there, thoughts. Somebody has insulted you, somebody has laughed at you, somebody has said this or that…many clouds, dark clouds in the inner sky and much lightning. Watch! It is a beautiful scene – terrible also, because you don’t understand. It is mysterious, and if mystery is not understood it becomes terrible, you are afraid of it. And whenever a mystery is understood, it becomes a grace, a gift, because now you have the keys – and with keys you are the master.You don’t control it, you simply become a master when you are aware. And the more you become aware, the more inward you penetrate, because awareness is a going-inward, it always goes inward. More aware, more in. Totally aware, perfectly in. Less aware, more out. Unconscious – you are completely out, out of your house, wandering around. Unconsciousness is a wandering outside; consciousness is a deepening of the inside.So look! – and when anger is not, it will be difficult to look: what to look at? The sky is so vacant, and you are not yet capable of looking at emptiness.When anger is there, look, watch, and soon you will see a change. The moment the watcher comes in, the anger has already started being cool, the heat is lost. Then you can understand that the heat is given by you; your identification with it makes it hot, and the moment you feel it is not hot, the fear is gone, and you feel unidentified with it, different, a distance.It is there, lightning around you, but you are not it.A hill starts rising upward. You become a watcher: down in the valley, much lightning – distance grows more and more – and a moment comes when suddenly you are not joined to it at all. The identity is broken, and the moment the identity breaks, immediately the whole hot process becomes a cool process – anger becomes compassion.Sex is a hot process, love is not. But all over the world people always talk about warm love. Love is not warm; love is absolutely cool, but not cold – it is not cold because it is not dead. It is cool, just like a cool breeze. But it is not hot, not warm. Because of the identification with sex, the conception has come to the mind that love should be warm.Sex is hot. It is electricity, and you are identified with it. The more love, the more coolness – you may even feel cool love as cold; that is your misunderstanding, because you feel love has to be hot. It cannot be. The same energy, when not identified with, becomes cool. Compassion is cool, and if your compassion is still hot, understand it is not compassion.There are people who are too hot, and they think they have much compassion. They want to transform the society, they want to change the structure, they want to do this and that, they want to bring a utopia into the world: the revolutionaries, the communists, the utopians – and they are very hot.And they think they have compassion – no, they have only anger. The object has changed. Now their anger has an object, a very impersonal object – the society, the structure of the society, the state, the situation. They are very hot people. Lenin, or Stalin, or Trotsky – they are hot people but they are not against anybody in particular, they are against a structure.Gandhi is a hot person – against the British Empire. The object is impersonal, that’s why you cannot feel that he is angry – but he is angry. He wants to change something in the outside world, and wants to change it so immediately that he is impatient, fighting. The fighting may choose nonviolence as the means, but the fighting is violence. Fight as such is violence. You can choose nonviolent means to fight – women have always chosen them. Gandhi did nothing else, he simply used a feminine trick.If a husband wants to fight, he will beat his wife; and if the wife wants to fight, she will beat herself. This is as old as woman – and woman is older than man! She will start beating herself; that is her way to fight. She is violent, violent against herself. And remember, beating a woman you will feel guilty, and sooner or later you will have to come down and make a compromise. But beating herself, she never feels guilty. So either you beat a woman and you feel guilty, or she beats herself and then also you feel guilty – that you created the situation in which she is beating herself. In both cases she wins.The British Empire was defeated because it was a male aggressive force, and the British Empire could not understand this feminine fight of Gandhi’s: he will fast unto death – and then the whole British mind will feel guilty. Now you cannot kill this man, because he is not fighting in any way with you, he is simply purifying his own soul – the old feminine trick, but it worked. There was only one way to defeat Gandhi, and that was impossible. It was for Churchill to go on a fast unto death, and that was impossible.Either you are hot against someone in particular or just hot against some structure in general, but the heat remains.Lenin is not compassion, cannot be. Buddha is compassion – not fighting at all with anything, simply being and allowing things to be as they are; they move on their own. Societies change on their own, there is no need to change them; they change as trees change in season. Societies change on their own – old societies die on their own, there is no need to destroy them! And new societies are born just like new children, new babies, on their own. There is no need to force an abortion, it goes on automatically by itself.Things move and change. And this is the paradox: that they go on moving and changing and still in a sense they remain the same – because there will be people who are poor, and there will be people who are rich; there will be people who are helpless, powerless, there will be people who have power over them. Classes cannot disappear – that is not in the nature of things. Human society can never become classless.Classes can change. Now in Russia, there are not the poor and the rich, but the governed and the governors – they are there now. Now a new class division has arisen: the bureaucrats and the ordinary people, the managers and the managed – the same, it makes no difference. If now Tamerlane was born in Russia, he would become the prime minister. If Ford was born in Russia, he would become the general secretary of the communist party, he would manage from there.Situations go on changing, but in a subtle sense they remain the same. The managers, the managed; the governors, the governed; the rich, the poor – they remain. You cannot change it, because society exists through contradiction. A real man of compassion will be cool; he cannot be a revolutionary really, because revolution needs a very hot mind and heart and body.No control, no expression on others, more awareness – and then consciousness shifts from the periphery to the center.Now try to understand this beautiful anecdote.A Zen student came to Bankei and said: “Master, I have an ungovernable temper – how can I cure it?”He has accepted one thing, that he has an ungovernable temper; now he wants to cure it. Whenever there is a disease, first try to find out whether there is really a disease or a misunderstanding, because if there is a real disease then it can be cured, but if it is not a real disease, just a misunderstanding, then no medicine will help. Rather, on the contrary, every medicine that is given to you will be harmful. So first be perfectly clear about a disease, whether it is there or not, or whether you are simply imagining it, or are you simply thinking that it is there. It may not be there at all; it may be simply a misunderstanding. And the way man is confused, many of his diseases don’t exist at all – he simply believes they are there.You also are in the same boat, so try to understand this story very deeply; it may be helpful to you.The student said, “Master, I have an ungovernable temper – how can I cure it?” The disease is accepted, he does not doubt it; he is asking for the cure. Never ask for the cure. First try to find out whether the disease exists or not. First move into the disease and diagnose it, decipher it, scrutinize it; move into the disease first before you ask for a cure. Don’t accept any disease just on the surface, because the surface is where others meet you, and the surface is where others reflect in you, and the surface is where others color you. It may not be a disease at all, it may be just the reflection of others.It is just like a silent lake, and you stand on the bank of the lake with your orange robe, and the water near you looks orange, reflects you. The lake may think that it has become orange. How to get rid of it? Where to find the cure? Whom to ask?Don’t go to the experts immediately. First try to find out whether it is really a disease or just a reflection. Just being alert will do much: many of your diseases will simply disappear without any cure, no medicine is needed.“Show me this temper,” said Bankei, “it sounds fascinating.”A man like Bankei immediately starts working on the disease, not on the cure. He is not a psychoanalyst; a psychoanalyst starts working for the cure – and that is the difference. Now new trends in psychiatry are coming up which start working on the disease, not on the cure. New trends are developing: they are nearer to reality, and nearer to Zen, and nearer to religion. Within this century psychiatry will take on a more religious color, and then it will not be just a therapy, it will really become a healing force – because therapy thinks of a cure, and a healing force brings your consciousness to the disease.Out of a hundred diseases, ninety-nine will disappear simply by bringing your consciousness to them. They are false diseases; they exist because you are standing with your back toward them. Face them, and they go, and they disappear. That is the meaning of encounter – and encounter groups can be helpful, because the whole message is how to encounter things as they are. Don’t think of cure, don’t think of medicine, don’t think of what to do; the real thing is, first, to know what is there.Mind has deceived you in so many ways that a disease appears on the surface and there is no disease deep down; or a disease appears on the surface, but you move within and you find there are other diseases, and that was just a trick to deceive you, that was not the real disease.A man came to me and he said, “My mind is very much disturbed. I am continuously tense, anxiety is there, I cannot sleep. So give me some technique of meditation – how to be silent and at peace.”I asked him, “What is really the problem? Do you really want to be at peace with yourself? He said, “Yes, I am a seeker, and I have been to Sri Aurobindo’s ashram, and I have been to Shree Ramana’s ashram, and I have been everywhere, and nothing helps.”So I asked him, “Have you ever thought about it – that when nothing helps maybe the disease is false? Or that you have labeled it falsely? Or that the container contains something else which is not written on it? You easily accept that Sri Aurobindo failed, Sri Raman failed, and you have moved all around…” And he was feeling very victorious that everybody had failed, and nobody had been able to help, that everybody was bogus. And then I told him, “Sooner or later you will go and say the same about me also, because I don’t see that you are a spiritual seeker, I don’t see that you are really interested in being at peace with yourself. Just tell me, what is your anxiety? What is your tension? Just go on telling me what thoughts come continuously to you, and why you go on thinking about them.”He said, “Not many, only one thought: I had a son, he is still alive – but no more a son to me. I have thrown him out. I am a rich man, and he had fallen in love with a girl not of my caste, and economically also below my status, uneducated. And I told the boy, ‘If you want to marry this girl then never come back to this house.’ And he never came back.” And now I am getting old. The boy lives in poverty with the girl, and I continuously think about the boy, and this is my trouble. You give me some technique of meditation.”I said: “How will this technique of meditation help? – because the technique of meditation will not bring the boy home. And this is such a simple thing, there is no need to go to Aurobindo, there is no need to go to Sri Raman or to come to me. A sword is not needed for your problem, a needle will do; you are looking for swords, and then swords prove failures because you need only a needle. This is not a spiritual problem, just ego. Why shouldn’t one fall in love with a girl who is economically below one’s status? Is love something economical? Something to think of in terms of finance, economics, money, wealth, status?”I told him one story:One marriage agent came to a young man and told him, “I have got a very beautiful girl, just exactly right for you.”The boy said, “Don’t bother me. I am not interested.”The marriage agent said, “I know, but don’t be worried, I have another girl who will bring five thousand rupees in dowry.”The young man said, “Stop talking nonsense. I am not interested in money either! You simply go.”The man said, “I know. You don’t bother! If five thousand is not enough, I have another girl who will bring twenty-five thousand rupees in dowry.”The boy said, “You simply get out of my room, because if ever I get married, it is for me to think about, it is not a question for an agent to settle. You simply get out! Don’t make me angry!”The agent said, “Okay, now I understand. You are not interested in beauty, you are not interested in money. I have a girl who comes from a family of long tradition, a very famous family – everybody knows about it, and four prime ministers have come from that family in the past. So you are interested in family, right?”Now by this time the boy was very, very angry and he wanted to physically throw this man out. And when by physically forcing him he was just throwing him out of the door, he said, “If I ever get married it will be for love and nothing else.”The agent said, “Then why in the first place didn’t you tell me? I have those kinds of girls too.”I told this man this story.Love is not manageable, it is simply something that happens, and the moment you try to manage it everything misfires. So I told that man, “Just go and ask your son’s forgiveness – that’s what is needed. No meditation technique, no Aurobindo, no Raman, no Osho, nobody can help you. Simply go to your boy and ask his forgiveness! – that’s what is needed. Accept and welcome him back. It is just the ego that is troubling you. And if ego is troubling you then the disease is different. You seek meditation, and you think through meditation that silence will be possible? No.”Meditation can only be a help to that person who has come to a right understanding with his inner diseases, when he has come to understand which disease is false, which disease is wrongly identified, and which disease is not there at all – the container is empty.When one has come to an understanding, a deep understanding with all one’s diseases, then ninety-nine percent of the diseases disappear – because you can do something and they disappear. Then only one thing remains, and that one thing is the spiritual search… A deep anguish, unrelated to this world, not related with anything in this world: son, father, money, prestige, power – nothing. It is not related to them, it is simply existential. Deep down, if you can pinpoint it, it is how to know oneself. Who am I? Then this anguish becomes the search. Then meditation can help, never before it. Before it, other things are needed – needles will do, why carry a sword unnecessarily? And where needles will do, swords will be failures. This is what is happening to millions of people all around the world.This Bankei is a master. He immediately got to the point, to the business.Show me this temper, said he, it sounds fascinating.It sounds fascinating, really. Why does Bankei say it sounds fascinating? – because the whole thing is false. This boy, this student has never looked within. He is seeking for a method and he has not diagnosed what his disease is.“I haven’t got it right now,” said the student, “so I can’t show it to you.”You cannot manage to bring about anger, can you? If I tell you: “Be angry right now,” what will you do? Even if you act, even if you manage somehow to pretend, it will not be anger, because deep down you will remain cool and acting. It happens! What does it mean, “it happens”? It means it happens only when you are unconscious. If you try to bring it, you are conscious. It cannot happen when you are conscious, it can happen only when you are unconscious. Unconsciousness is a must – without it anger cannot happen. But still, the boy said:“I haven’t got it right now, said the student, so I can’t show it to you.” “Well then,” said Bankei, “bring it to me when you have it.” “But I can’t bring it just when I happen to have it,” protested the student. “It arises unexpectedly, and I would surely lose it before I got it to you.”Now, Bankei has put him on the right path. He has already moved along, he is already nearing the goal, because he is now becoming aware of things of which he was never aware. The first thing he became aware of is that he cannot produce it right now. It cannot be produced; it happens when it happens – it is an unconscious force, you cannot bring it about consciously. That means if he goes further, the next step will be that if he remains conscious it cannot happen.Even while anger is happening, if you suddenly become conscious it drops. You try it. Just in the middle, when you are feeling very hot and would like to commit murder, suddenly become aware, and you will feel something has changed: a gear inside – you can feel the click. Something has changed, now it is no more the same thing. Your inner being has relaxed. It may take time for your outer layer to relax, but the inner being has already relaxed. The cooperation is broken; now you are not identified.Gurdjieff used to play a very beautiful trick on his disciples. You are sitting here, and he will create a situation; he will tell you, “Somebody, A, is coming, and when he comes I will behave rudely with him, very rudely – and you all have to help me.”Then A comes and Gurdjieff laughs and he says, “You are looking a perfect fool!” – and everybody looks at the man and shows him that everybody agrees. And then he will say nasty things about this man, and everybody nods and feels in agreement. The man gets angrier and angrier, and Gurdjieff will go on and on, and everybody nods as if they are in complete agreement, and the man becomes hotter and hotter – and then he explodes. And when he explodes, suddenly Gurdjieff says “Stop and look!”Something inside relaxes. Immediately the man understands he has been moved into a situation, he has become angry – and the moment he realizes that this is a situation, that Gurdjieff has played a trick, the gear changes: he becomes alert, aware. The body will take a little time to cool down, but deep at the center everything is cool and he can look at himself now.The student is already on the path – Bankei has put him immediately on the path. The first thing he has become aware of is: “I cannot show it to you right now, because it is not there.”“Well then, bring it to me when you have it.” A second step has been taken.“But I can’t bring it just when I happen to have it,” protested the student. “It arises unexpectedly…”“I don’t know when it will arise. I may be very far away, you may not be available, and, moreover, even if I bring it to you, by the time I reach you it will not be there.” He has already arrived at a deep understanding.You cannot bring anger to me, can you?… Because in the very effort to bring it, you will become aware. If you are aware, the grip is lost; it starts subsiding. By the time you have reached me it will be no more.And it was easier to reach Bankei; it is difficult to reach me, you will have to pass through Mukta. By the time the appointment is given and by the time you reach me, it will not be there. Hence the appointment – because otherwise you will bring problems unnecessarily. They drop automatically by themselves – and if they persist, then they are worth bringing to me.By the time you come to me you will have already passed over it; and if you understand, that means that things that come and go are not worth paying any attention to – they come and go. You always remain, they come and go. You are the thing to be more attentive about, not things that come and go – they are like seasons, climate changes: in the morning it was different, in the evening it is again different. It changes. Find out that which doesn’t change.The student has already reached a beautiful understanding. He says: Unexpectedly it arises, “…and I would surely lose it before I got it to you.”“In that case,” said Bankei, “it cannot be part of your true nature.”…Because true nature is always there. It never arises and never sets, it is always there. Anger arises, goes; hate arises, goes; your so-called love arises, goes. Your nature is always there.So don’t be too bothered and concerned with all that comes and goes; otherwise you can remain concerned with it for years and years, and lives and lives, and you will never come to the point.That’s why Freudian psychoanalysis never serves much purpose. The patient lies down on the couch for years together – three years, four years, five years, he goes on talking; talking about things that come and go. Remember, the whole Freudian analysis is concerned with things that come and go: what happened in your childhood, what happened in your youth, what happened in your sex life, what happened in your relations with others – it goes on and on! It is concerned with what happened, not to whom it happened – and that is the difference between Bankei and Freud.If you are concerned with what happened then…so much has happened. Even in twenty-four hours so much happens that if you relate it, it will take years; and you go on relating. It is just like talking about the weather for your whole life, how it has been: sometimes very hot, sometimes very cloudy, sometimes rainy, sometimes this and that. But what is the point of it all?And what happens? How does this psychoanalysis help a patient? It helps a little. It simply gives time, that’s all. For two years you are continuously talking about things that happened. These two years, or one year, or even more, just give you time; the wound heals automatically, you become readjusted again. Of course, a certain understanding also arises, the understanding that arises when you go backward, and come forward, moving like a shuttle in your memory. A certain understanding arises because you have to watch your memories. Because of watching…but that is not the main thing.Freud is not concerned with your witness. He thinks that just by relating, telling your past, bringing it out through words, verbalization, something deep is changing. Nothing deep is changing. A little garbage is thrown out. Nobody listened to you, and Freud and his psychoanalysts are listening to you so attentively. Of course, you have to pay for it. They are professional listeners. They help in a way, because you would like to talk to someone intimately – even that helps. That’s why people talk about their miseries; they feel a little relaxed, somebody has heard patiently, with compassion. But now nobody listens, nobody has that much time.Bertrand Russell has written a small story. In the coming century there will be a great profession of professional listeners. In every neighborhood, every four or five houses there will be a house with a sign, “Professional Listener” – that is what psychoanalysis is – because nobody will have time, everybody will be in such a hurry. The wife will not be able to talk to the husband, the husband will not be able to talk to the wife, people will make love through phone calls, or will see each other on the television screen. That is going to happen, because what is the use of going to meet a friend when you can see him on the television screen, and he can see you? Phones will have screens also, so that you can see your friend talking to you, he can see you talking, so what is the point?…Because what will you do just sitting in front of each other in a room? The same thing is happening already: the distance is covered by the telephone and the television. Contact will be lost, so professional listeners will be needed.You go to psychoanalysts and they listen like a friend. Of course you have to pay – and psychoanalysis is the most costly thing in the world now, only very rich people can afford it. People boast about it: “I have been in psychoanalysis for five years. How many years have you been in it?” Poor people cannot afford it.But the Eastern methods of meditation have a different attitude: they are not concerned with what happened to you, they are concerned with to whom it happened. Find out: to whom?Lying down on a Freudian couch you are concerned with the objects of the mind. Sitting in a Zen monastery you are concerned with to whom it happened – not with the objects but with the subject.“In that case,” said Bankei, “It cannot be part of your true nature. If it were, you could show it to me at any time. When you were born you did not have it, and your parents did not give it to you – so it must come into you from the outside. I suggest that whenever it gets into you, you beat yourself with a stick until the temper can’t stand it, and runs away.”He is simply joking – don’t start doing it, don’t take the stick literally. In Zen, awareness is called the stick with which you beat yourself. There is no other way to beat yourself, because if you take an ordinary stick the body will be beaten, not you. You can kill the body, but not you. To beat with a stick means: when you feel angry, continuously be aware; bring awareness to it, become alert, conscious, and beat with the stick of awareness continuously inside, until the temper can’t stand it and runs away. The only thing that the temper can’t stand is awareness. Just beating your body won’t do. That’s what people have been doing – beating others’ bodies or their own. That’s not Bankei’s meaning – he is joking, and he is indicating a symbolic term Zen people use for awareness: the stick one has to beat oneself with.In the Zen tradition, when a master dies he gives his stick, the staff, to his chief disciple, to him whom he chooses as his heir, he who is going to replace him. He gives him the stick, the staff, that he carried his whole life. The meaning is that the one to whom this stick is given has attained to the inner stick – to awareness. To receive the stick of the master is the greatest gift, because through it he accepts, agrees, recognizes, that now your inner stick is born. You have become aware of what happens to you, to whom it happens. The distinction is there. The gap has come in, the space is there; now the periphery and your center are not identified.Said Bankei, “I suggest that whenever it gets into you, this anger, it must be coming from outside. You didn’t have it when you were born; nobody, not your parents or anybody, presented it to you as a gift, so from where is it coming? It must be coming from outside, the periphery must be touching other peripheries. From there, you must be getting the ripples and the waves.” So be conscious – because the moment you are conscious you are suddenly thrown to the center.Be unconscious and you live on the periphery. Be conscious and you are thrown to the center. And from the center you can see what is happening on the periphery. Then if two people touch on the periphery, if two people create trouble on the periphery, it will not be any trouble for you. You can laugh, you can enjoy it, you can say, “It sounds fascinating.”It happened: Buddha was passing near a village; a few people came and they abused him very badly, saying nasty things, and using vulgar words – and he just stood there. They got a little puzzled, because he was not reacting. Then somebody from the crowd asked, “Why are you silent? Answer what we are saying!”Buddha said, “You came a little late. You should have come ten years ago, because then I would have reacted. But now I am not there where you are doing these things to me; a distance has arisen. Now I have moved to the center where you cannot touch me. You came a little late. I am sorry for you, but I enjoy it. Now I am in a hurry, because in the other village where I am going, people will be waiting for me. If you are not yet finished, then I will pass back by the same route. You can come again. It sounds fascinating.”They were puzzled. What to do with such a man? Another from the crowd asked, “Really, are you not going to say anything?”Buddha said, “In the other village I have come from just now, people had come with many sweets to present to me, but I take things only when I am hungry, and I was not hungry, so I gave them back their sweets. I ask you, what will they do?”So the man said, “Of course, they will go in the village and give those sweets as prasad to people.”So Buddha started laughing and he said, “You are really in trouble, you are in a mess – what will you do? You brought these vulgar words to me, and I say I am not hungry – so now take them back! And I feel very sorry for your village, because people will get such vulgar things, vulgar words in their prasad.”When you are at the center it sounds fascinating, you can enjoy it. When you are cool you can enjoy the whole world. When you are hot you cannot enjoy it, because you get so much into it; you are lost, you get identified. You become so messed up in it, how can you enjoy it?This may sound paradoxical, but I tell you: only a buddha enjoys this world. Then everything sounds fascinating.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A master who lived as a hermit on a mountain was asked by a monk: “What is the way?”“What a fine mountain this is,” the master said in reply. “I am not asking you about the mountain,” said the monk, “but the way.”The master replied: “So long as you cannot go beyond the mountain, my son, you cannot reach the way.”The way is easy – but you are the mountain and beyond lies the way. Crossing yourself is very difficult. Once you are on the way there is no problem, but the way is very far from you. And you are such a mass of contradictions that one fragment of you goes to the east and another to the west – you are not moving in one direction. You cannot move in one direction as you are – because you need an inner unity, a crystallized being. As you are, you are a crowd with many selves, with no unity.At the most, if you make some arrangement, as everybody has to make – if you control yourself, at the most you can become an assembly, not a crowd; and then too you will be the Indian assembly, not the British. At the most the majority of your fragments can move in one direction, but the minority will always be there, going somewhere else.So even a very controlled man, disciplined, a man of character, of thinking, that man too never reaches to the way. He may be able to adjust to the society, but he is also unable to reach the way from where the door opens toward the divine.You are really a mountain.The first thing to be understood is that the crowd must go. The “polypsychic" existence must become “unipsychic”; you must be one. That means you must be thoughtless, because thoughts are a crowd; they divide you, and every thought pulls you apart. They create a chaos within you and they are always contradictory. Even when you decide, the decision is always against some part within you, it is never total.I have heard it happened…Mulla Nasruddin was very ill – tense, psychiatrically ill. And the illness was that he became, by and by, absolutely unable to make any decision – not big decisions at that, but small ones also: whether to take a bath or not, whether to wear this tie or that, whether to take a taxi to the office or drive the car – not big ones, small decisions, but he became unable to make them so he was put in a psychiatric hospital.Six months of treatment and everything settled, and the doctors felt that now he was okay. They said one day, “Now, Nasruddin, you are absolutely okay. You can go back into the world, take a job, start working and functioning. We are completely satisfied. Now there is nothing wrong.” But seeing a slight indecision on Nasruddin’s part the doctor said, “Don’t you feel that now you are ready to go into the world and start working and functioning?”Nasruddin said, “Yes and no.”But this is the situation. Whether you are ill or healthy is not the question, the difference is only of degree – but this remains the problem deep inside: yes and no, both.You love a person? – yes, and deep down is hidden the no. Sooner or later when you get bored and fed up with the yes, the no will come up and you will hate the person, the same person you loved. You like something but the dislike is hidden; sooner or later you will dislike the same thing.You were mad when you loved, when you liked; and you will be mad when you hate and dislike. As you are – yes and no, both – how can you move toward the divine? The divine needs total commitment, nothing less will do. But how can you commit totally? – you are not a total being! This is the mountain.The path is easy, but you are not on the path; and all the techniques, all the methods in the world, and all the masters, to be exact, they don’t give you the path – the path already exists. Their methods and techniques simply lead you toward the path; They are not paths. They create small pathways on the mountain so you can go beyond – because the path is there; there is no need to create a path, it already exists. But you are lost in a forest. You have to be brought to the path.So the first thing is: the more divided you are, the farther away from the way you will be; the more undivided, the nearer the path.Thoughts divide because they are always carrying the opposite within them: love carries hate, friendship carries enmity, liking carries disliking. Sosan is right when he says: “A slight distinction between like and dislike, a slight movement in your being of like and dislike, and heaven and earth are set apart.” No distinction – and you have reached, because with no distinction you are one.So the first thing to remember is how to drop thoughts and become thoughtless – thoughtless but alert, because in deep sleep also you become thoughtless, and that won’t do. It is good for the body, that is why after a deep sleep your body feels rejuvenated. But the mind remains tired even in the morning, because the mind continues its activity. The body relaxes, though it too cannot relax totally because of the mind; but still, it relaxes. So in the morning the body is okay, at least workably okay – but the mind feels tired, even in the morning. You go to bed tired, you get up in the morning more tired because the mind was continuously working, dreaming, thinking, planning, desiring; the mind was continuously working.In deep sleep for a few moments when you are absolutely unconscious you become one. This same oneness is needed with a conscious and alert mind. As you are in deep sleep – no thought, no distinction of good and bad, heaven and hell, God and the Devil, no distinction of any sort, you simply are, but unconscious – this has to be attained while you are alert and conscious. Samadhi, the final, the ultimate, the utter meditation, is nothing but deep sleep with full consciousness.In deep sleep you attain, so the only thing to be attained is to become more and more conscious. If you can add more consciousness to your deep sleep you will become enlightened. The mountain is transcended and the path opens – one thing.Second thing: you carry the past within you – that creates multiplicity. You were a child, the child is still hidden in you, and sometimes you can still feel the child kicking; in certain moments you regress and become the child again. You were once young, now you are old; that young man is hidden there, and sometimes even an old man starts being as foolish as a young man.You carry the whole past, every moment of it, and you have been many things! From the womb up to now you have been millions of persons, and they are all carried within you, layer by layer. You have grown, but the past has not disappeared; it may be hidden, but it is there – and it is not only in the mind, it is even in the body.If, when you were a small child and you were angry and someone said, “Stop! Don’t be angry,” and you stopped, that anger is still being carried by your hand. It has to be so because energy is indestructible, and unless you relax that hand it will persist. Unless you do something consciously to complete the circle of that energy – which became anger in a certain moment fifty or sixty years back – you will carry it within you, and it will color all your actions. You can touch somebody, but the touch won’t be pure: the whole past is carried by the hand; all repressed anger, all repressed hatred is there. Even if in love you touch a person, your touch is not pure, cannot be – because where will that anger go which is carried by the hand?Wilhelm Reich worked very much on this somatic repression. The body carries the past, the mind carries the past; because of this loaded state you cannot be here and now. You have to come to terms with your past. So meditation is not only a question of doing something here and now; before that is possible you have to come to terms with your past – you have to dissolve all hangovers, and there are millions of them.Even when one becomes old he is also a child, a young man, and all that he has ever been is there, because you don’t know how to die every moment. That is the whole art of life – to die moment to moment so that there is no hangover.A relationship has finished – you don’t carry it, you simply die to it! What can you do? Something was happening and now it is not happening. You accept it and you die to it – you simply drop it with full awareness, and then you are renewed in a new moment. Now you are not carrying the past. You are a child no more, but watch yourself and you will feel the child is there – and that child creates trouble! If you were really a child there would be no trouble, but you are young or old…I have heard:Mulla Nasruddin was hospitalized. He was eighty – and then came his birthday, and he was waiting for his three sons to bring him some present. They came of course, but they had not brought anything – because he was eighty years old! A child feels happy with a present, but an old man, eighty years old? His eldest son was sixty. So they didn’t think about it at all, but when they came and Mulla saw that they were empty-handed, he felt angry, frustrated, and he said, “What! Have you forgotten your old father, your poor old father’s birthday? It is my birthday!”The child…at that moment you could have looked into his eyes, and this eighty-year-old man was not there, just a child waiting for some toys.One son said, “Forgive us, we forgot completely.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “I reckon I will forgive you, because it seems this forgetfulness runs in our family. Really, I forgot to marry your mother.” He was really angry.So they all three shrieked in unison, and they said, “What! Do you mean we are…?”He said, “Yes! – and damned cheap ones at that!”The child continues somewhere in you. When you weep you can find him, when you laugh you can find him, when somebody gives you a present you can find him, when somebody forgets to, you can find him. When somebody appreciates you, you can find him; when somebody condemns you, you can find him – it is very difficult to be really mature. One can never be mature unless the child simply dies within you, is no more a part of you – otherwise it will go on influencing your actions, your relationships.And this is not only true for the child, every moment of the past is there and influencing your present – your present is so loaded. Millions of voices from the body and the mind go on manipulating you; how can you reach to the path? You are a mountain. This mountain has to be dissolved. What to do? It can be dissolved consciously – one thing is to live your past again, consciously.This is the mechanism of consciousness: whenever you live something consciously it never becomes a loaded thing on you; try to understand this. It never becomes a burden on you if you live it consciously. If you go to the market to purchase something and you move consciously, walk consciously, purchase the thing consciously with full remembrance, mindfully come back home, this will never be a part of your memory. I don’t mean that you will forget it – but it will not be a load. If you want to remember it, you can remember it, but it will not be constantly forcing your attention toward it, it will not be a loaded thing.Whatsoever you do consciously is lived through and is no longer a hangover. Whatever you live unconsciously becomes a hangover, because you never live it totally – something remains incomplete. When something is incomplete it has to be carried – it waits to be completed.You were a child, and somebody had broken your toy, and you were crying. Your mother consoled you, diverted your mind somewhere – gave you some sweets, talked about something else, told you a story, diverted you – and you were going to cry and weep, and you forgot. That has remained incomplete; it is there, and any day whenever somebody snatches a toy from you – it may be any toy, it may be a girlfriend, and somebody snatches her – you start weeping and crying. And you can find the child there, incomplete. It may be a position: you are mayor of the town and somebody snatches the position, a toy, and you are crying and weeping again.Find out…regress into the past, move into it again, because there is no other way now; the past is no longer there, so if something has remained hanging the only way is to relive it in the mind and move backward.Every night for one hour make it a point to go backward, fully alert, as if you are living the whole thing again. Many things will bubble up, many things will call your attention – so don’t be in a hurry, and don’t pay half-attention to anything and then move again, because that will again create incompleteness. Whatsoever comes, give total attention to it. Live it again. And when I say live it again I mean live it again – not just remember, because when you remember a thing you are a detached observer; that won’t help. Relive it!You are a child again. Don’t look as if you are standing apart and looking at a child as his toy is being snatched. No! Be the child. Not outside the child, inside the child – be again the child. Relive the moment: somebody snatches the toy, somebody destroys it, and you start crying – and cry! Your mother is trying to console you – go through the whole thing again, but now don’t be diverted by anything. Let the whole process be completed. When it is completed, suddenly you will feel your heart is less heavy; something has dropped.You wanted to say something to your father; now he is dead, now there is no way to tell him. Or you wanted to ask his forgiveness for a certain thing you did which he didn’t like, but your ego came in and you couldn’t ask his forgiveness; now he is dead, now nothing can be done. What to do? – and it is there! It will go on and on and destroy all your relationships.I am very much aware of that, because to be a master is to be in a certain sense a father – it is to be many things, but very importantly it is in a certain sense to be a father. When people come to me, if they are loaded with their relationship with their father, then it becomes very difficult to be related to me because I always feel their father comes in. If they have hated their father they will hate me, if they wanted to fight with their father, they will fight. If they love their father they will love me, if they respected their father they will respect me, if they respected him just superficially and deep down they had a disrespect, it will be the same with me – and the whole thing starts working.If you are conscious, you can watch. Go back. Now your father is no more, but for the eyes of the memory he is still there. Close your eyes; again be the child who has committed something, done something against the father, wants to be forgiven but cannot gather courage – now you can gather courage. You can say whatsoever you wanted to say, you can touch his feet again, or you can be angry and hit him – but be finished! Let the whole process be completed.Remember one basic law: anything that is complete drops, because then there is no meaning in carrying it; anything that is incomplete clings, it waits for its completion. And this existence is really always after completion. The whole existence has a basic tendency to complete everything. It does not like incomplete things – they hang, they wait; and there is no hurry for existence, they can wait for millions of years.Move backward. Every night for one hour before you go to sleep, move into the past, relive. Many memories by and by will be unearthed. With many you will be surprised that you were not aware that these things are there – and with such vitality and freshness, as if they had just happened! You will be again a child, again a young man, a lover, many things will come. Move slowly, so everything is completed. Your mountain will become smaller and smaller – the load is the mountain. And the smaller it becomes, the freer you will feel. A certain quality of freedom will come to you, and a freshness, and inside you will feel you have touched a source of life.You will be always vital – even others will feel that when you walk your step has changed, it has a quality of dance; when you touch, your touch has changed; it is not a dead hand, it has become alive again. Now life is flowing because the blocks have disappeared; now there is no anger in the hand, love can flow easily, unpoisoned, in its purity. You will become more sensitive, vulnerable, open.If you have come to terms with the past suddenly you will be here and now in the present, because then there is no need to move to the past again and again.Go on moving every night. By and by, memories will come up before your eyes and they will be completed. Relive them; completed, suddenly you will feel they drop. Now there is no more to be done, the thing is finished. Less and less memories will come as the time passes. There will be gaps – you would like to relive something but nothing is coming – and those gaps are beautiful. Then a day will come when you will not be able to move backward because everything is complete. When you cannot move backward, only then do you move forward. There is no other way. And to move forward is to reach the path, the whole consciousness moving ahead every moment into the unknown.But your legs are being pulled back continuously by the past, the past is heavy on you; how can you move into the future, and how can you be in the present? The mountain is really big, it is a Himalaya, uncharted, unmapped; nobody knows how to pass through it – and everybody is such a different Himalaya that you can never make a map, because it differs with everybody. You have your Himalayas to carry, others have their Himalayas to carry, and with these mountains, when you meet with people there is only clash and conflict. The whole life becomes just a struggle, a violent struggle, and everywhere you can see and feel and hear the clash. Whenever somebody comes near, you are tense and the other is also tense – both are carrying their Himalayas of tension and sooner or later they will clash. You may call it love but those who know, they say it is a clash. Now there is going to be misery.Be finished with the past. The more you are free from the past, the more the mountain starts disappearing. And then you will attain a unison: you will become, by and by, one.Now, try to understand this parable: What is the way?A master who lived as a hermit on a mountain was asked by a monk: “What is the way?”Every word has to be understood because every word carries meaning: A master who lived as a hermit on a mountain…It has been happening always, that a Buddha moves to the mountains, a Jesus moves to the mountains, a Mahavira goes into the mountains. Why do they move to the mountains, to the loneliness? Why do they become solitaries? Just to face their inner mountains immediately and directly. In society it is difficult because the whole energy is wasted in day-to-day work and routine and relationship. You don’t have enough time, you don’t have enough energy to encounter yourself – you are finished in encountering others! You are so much occupied – and to come face-to-face with oneself, a very unoccupied life is needed, because it is such a tremendous phenomenon to face oneself. You will need all your energies. It is such an absorbing job, it cannot be done halfheartedly.Seekers have always moved into solitary existence, just to face themselves. Wherever they go – just to face themselves, to make it uncomplicated. In relationship it becomes complicated because the other brings his or her miseries and mountains. You are already loaded – and then comes the other! And then you clash, then things become more complex. Then it is two diseases meeting, and a very complicated disease is created out of it. Everything becomes entwined, it becomes a riddle. You are already a riddle – it is better to solve it first and then move in relationship, because if you are not a mountain, only then you can help somebody.And remember, two hands are needed to make a sound, and two mountains are needed for a clash. If you are no longer a mountain, now you are capable of being related. Now the other may try to create a clash, but it cannot be created because there is no possibility of creating a sound with one hand. The other will start feeling foolish – and that is the dawn of wisdom.You can help if you are unburdened; you cannot help if you are not unburdened. You can become a husband, you can become a father, a mother, and you will be burdening others with your burdens also. Even small children carry your mountains; they are crushed under you – it has to be so because you never bother to have a clarity about your being before you become related.That must be the basic responsibility of every alert being: “Before I move in any relationship I must be unburdened. I should not carry a hangover; only then can I help the other to grow. Otherwise I will exploit, and the other will exploit me. Otherwise I will try to dominate and the other will try to dominate me.” And it will not be a relationship, it cannot be love, it will be a subtle politics.Your marriage is a subtle politics of domination. Your fatherhood, motherhood, is a subtle politics. Look at mothers; just simply watch and you will feel they are trying to dominate their small children. Their aggression, their anger, is thrown on them – they have become objects of catharsis, and by this they are already burdened. They will move in life carrying mountains from the very beginning, and they will never know that life is possible without carrying such loaded heads; and they will never know the freedom that comes with an unloaded being. They will never know that when you are not loaded you have wings and you can fly into the sky and into the unknown.Truth is available only when you are unburdened. But they will never know. They will knock at the doors of temples but they will never know where the real temple exists. The real temple is freedom: dying moment to moment to the past and living the present. And freedom to move, to move into the dark, into the unknown – that is the door of the divine.A master who lived as a hermit on a mountain… Alone. You must make a distinction between two words: lonely and alone. In the dictionary they carry the same meaning, but those who have been meditating, they know the distinction. They are not the same, they are as different as possible.Loneliness is an ugly thing, loneliness is a depressive thing – it is a sadness, it is an absence of the other. Loneliness is the absence of the other – you would like the other to be there, but the other is not, and you feel that and you miss them. You are not there in loneliness, the absence of the other is there.Alone? – it is totally different. You are there, it is your presence; it is a positive phenomenon. You don’t miss the other, you meet yourself. Then you are alone, alone like a peak, tremendously beautiful. Sometimes you even feel a terror – but it has a beauty. But the presence is the basic thing: you are present to yourself. You are not lonely, you are with yourself. Alone, you are not lonely, you are with yourself. Lonely, you are simply lonely – there is no one. You are not with yourself and you are missing the other. Loneliness is negative, an absence; aloneness is positive, a presence.If you are alone, you grow, because there is space to grow – nobody else to hamper, nobody else to obstruct, nobody else to create more complex problems. Alone you grow, and as much as you want to grow you can grow because there is no limit, and you are happy being with yourself, and a bliss arises. There is no comparison: because the other is not there, you are neither beautiful nor ugly, neither rich nor poor, neither this nor that, neither white nor black, neither man nor woman. Alone, how can you be a woman or a man? Lonely, you are a woman or a man, because the other is missing. Alone, you are no one, empty, empty of the other completely.And remember, when the other is not, the ego cannot exist; it exists with the other. Either present or absent, the other is needed for the ego. To feel “I” the other is needed; a boundary of the other. Fenced off from the neighbors I feel “I.” When there is no neighbor, no fencing, how can you feel “I”? You will be there, but without any ego. The ego is a relationship, it exists only in relationship.Alone the master lived – a hermit means alone – on a mountain, facing himself, meeting himself at every corner. Wherever he moves he is encountering himself – not burdened with the other, so knowing well what he is, who he is.Things start solving themselves if you can be alone, even things like madness. Just the other night I was talking to a few friends. In the West if a man goes crazy, mad, insane, neurotic, much treatment is given – too much really, for years. And the result is almost nothing; the man remains the same.I have heard, once it happened:A psychiatrist was treating a woman who had an obsession – the obsession is called kleptomania, stealing things. She was very rich, there was no need, just a psychological obsession. It was impossible for her not to steal: wherever she found an opportunity she would steal, even worthless things: a needle, a button. She was treated for years.After the five-year-long treatment – thousands of dollars had gone down the drain – after five years the psychiatrist who was treating her, the Freudian psychoanalyst, asked, “Now you look normal, and now there is no need to continue the treatment. You can drop out of it. What do you feel?”She said, “I feel perfect. I feel fine. Everything is good. Before you started treatment I always used to feel guilty about stealing things – now I steal, but I never feel guilty. Fine! Everything is good. You really did it. You helped me a lot.”This is all that happens. You simply become accustomed, attuned to your illness, that’s all.In the East, particularly in Japan – because of Zen – a totally different treatment has existed for at least one thousand years. Zen monasteries are not in any way hospitals, not meant for ill people, but in a village, if a Zen monastery exists, it is the only place; if someone goes mad or neurotic, where can they go? In the East they always bring the neurotic people to the master, because if he can treat normal people, why not neurotics? The difference is only of degree.So they will bring the neurotic people to the Zen monastery, to the master, and they will say, “What to do? You take charge of him.” And he will take charge. And the treatment is really unbelievable! The treatment is no treatment at all. The man has to be given a solitary cell somewhere at the back of the monastery, in a corner; the neurotic has to live there. He will be given food, every facility – that’s all. And he has to live with himself. Within three weeks, only three weeks, with no treatment, the neurosis disappears.Now many Western psychiatrists are studying this as a miracle. This is not a miracle. This is simply giving the man a little space to sort it out, that’s all. Because he was normal a few days ago, he can be normal again. Something has become too heavy on him and he needs space, that’s all. And they will not pay him much attention, because if you pay a neurotic person much attention, as happens in the West, he is never going to be back to normal again; because nobody paid him so much attention before.He is never going to be again as he was, because then nobody bothered about him. And now great psychoanalysts are bothering – great doctors, names, world-famous names, and they talk to him or her. The patient lying on the couch resting, and a great name just sitting behind, and whatsoever he or she says is listened to carefully, every word. And with so much attention! The neurosis becomes an investment, because people need attention.A few people start behaving foolishly because then the society gives them attention. In every old country, in every village, you will find a village fool – and he is not a mediocre man, he is very intelligent. Fools are almost always intelligent, but they have learned a trick: people pay them attention, they feed them, everybody knows them, they are already famous without holding any post – the whole village looks after them. Wherever they pass, they are like great leaders, a crowd follows them: children jumping and throwing things at them – and they enjoy it! They are great ones in the town, and they know now that this being a fool is a good investment. The village takes care of them, they are well fed, well clothed – they have learned the trick. No need to work, no need to do anything – just be a fool and it is enough.If a neurotic person…and remember ego is neurosis and it needs attention; pay it attention, and ego feels good. Many people have murdered simply to get the attention of the newspapers, because only when they murder are they covered in the headlines. They become suddenly very, very important – their pictures are shown, their names, their biographies are covered: suddenly they are not nobodies, they have become somebodies.Neurosis is a deep hankering after attention, and if you give it attention, you feed it – that’s why psychoanalysis has been a complete failure.In Zen monasteries they treat a person within three weeks. In Freudian psychoanalysis they cannot treat him in thirty years, because they miss the very point. But in Zen monasteries no attention is given to the neurotic person, nobody thinks that he is somebody important – they simply leave him alone, that is the only treatment. He has to sort out his own things; nobody bothers. Within three weeks he comes out absolutely normal.Solitariness has a healing effect, it is a healing force. Whenever you feel that you are getting messed up, don’t try to solve it. Move away from society for a few days, for at least three weeks, and just remain silent, just watching yourself, feeling yourself, just being with yourself, and you will have a tremendous force available which heals. Hence, in the East, many people have moved to the mountains, to the forests, somewhere alone, somewhere where there is nobody else to be bothered with. Only oneself…so one can feel oneself directly, and you can see what is happening within.Except yourself, nobody is responsible for you, remember. If you are mad you are mad; you have to sort it out – it is your doing.This is what Hindus say: it is your karma. The meaning is very deep. It is not a theory. They say, whatsoever you are it is your own work, so sort it out. Nobody else is responsible for you, only you are responsible.So go into solitary confinement – to sort out things, to meditate on your own being and your problems. And this is the beauty: that if you can just be quiet, living with yourself for a few days, things settle automatically, because an unsettled state is not natural. An unsettled state is unnatural, you cannot prolong it for long; it needs effort to prolong it. Simply relax and let things be, and watch, and make no effort to change anything. Remember; if you try to make any change you will continue the same because the very effort will continue to disturb things.It is just like sitting by the side of a river: the river flows, the mud settles, the dead leaves go to the sea; by and by the river becomes absolutely clean and pure. You need not go into it to clean it – if you go, you will muddy it more. Simply watch, and things happen. This is what the theory of karma is: you have messed yourself up, now move alone.So you need not throw your problems on others, you need not throw your diseases on others – you simply move alone; suffer them in silence, watch them. Just sit by the bank of the river of your mind. Things settle. When things settle you have a clarity, a perception. Then move back into the world – if you feel like it. That too is not a necessity, that too should not be an obsession. Nothing should be an obsession, neither the world nor the mountain.Whatsoever you feel is natural, whatsoever you feel is good and heals you, whatsoever you feel you are whole in, not divided – that is the path. The mountain is crossed. You have reached the path – now follow it, now flow into it. The mountain is the problem. The path is available when you have crossed the mountain. And you have accumulated this mountain in many lives – your karmas, whatsoever you have done. It is now heavy on you.A master who lived as a hermit on a mountain was asked by a monk… a seeker, “What is the way?”“What a fine mountain this is,” the master said in reply.Looks absurd – because the man is asking about the way and the master is saying something about the mountain. Looks absolutely irrational, outlandish, because the man has not asked anything about the mountain.Remember, this is my situation. You ask about A, I talk about B; you ask about the way, and I talk about the mountain. If you love me, only then can you feel; if you simply listen to me, I am absurd – because I am not talking relevantly. If I talk relevantly I cannot help you; that is the problem. If I say something which seems relevant to you it will not be of much help, because you are the problem; and if I talk relevantly that means I adjust to you. Even if to you I look relevant, it means something has gone wrong. By the nature of the phenomenon itself, I have to be irrelevant.I will look absurd, irrational. And this gap between the question and the answer can only be bridged if you have trust. Otherwise it cannot be bridged – how to bridge it? The gap between the seeker and the master, the disciple and the master, the gap between the question and the answer – because you question about the way and the answer is given about the mountain – how to bridge it?Hence trust becomes very, very significant. Not knowledge, not logic, not argumentative capacity, no – but a deep trust, which can bridge the irrelevant answer, which can see through the irrelevance deeply and can catch a glimpse of the relevancy.“What a fine mountain this is,” the master said in reply. “I am not asking you about the mountain,” said the monk, “but the way.”He sticks to his question. If you stick you will miss – because you are wrong, your question cannot be right; that’s impossible. How can you ask a right question? If you can ask a right question the right answer is not very far away, it is hidden there. If you can ask a right question you are already right! And with a mind which is already right, how can the answer remain hidden? No, whatsoever you ask, whatsoever you say, carries you.It happened:Mulla Nasruddin was getting fatter and fatter, stouter and stouter. The doctor advised a diet.After two months Mulla went to see the doctor. The doctor said, “My God! It is a miracle! You are even fatter than before – I cannot believe my eyes! Are you strictly following the diet I gave you? Are you eating only that which I prescribed and nothing else?”Nasruddin said, “Nothing whatsoever! Of course I’m following your diet.”The doctor couldn’t believe it. He said, “Tell me, Nasruddin, nothing whatsoever?”Nasruddin said, “Of course! Except my regular meals.” Regular meals plus the diet the doctor has prescribed.But this has to be so. Your mind moves in whatsoever you do, you ask, you think – it colors everything. You cannot ask a right question. If you can ask a right question there is no need to ask, because the right is the thing, not the question and not the answer. If you are right, you ask the right question – suddenly the right answer is there. If you can ask a right question you simply have no need to go anywhere; just close your eyes and ask the right question and you will find the right answer there.The problem is not with the right answer, the problem is not with the way; the problem is the mountain, the problem is the mind, the problem is you.“What a fine mountain this is,” the master said in reply. “I am not asking you about the mountain,” said the monk, “but the way.” The master replied, “So long as you cannot go beyond the mountain, my son, you cannot reach the way.”Many things to be understood – to be felt, rather. The master replied, “So long as you cannot go beyond the mountain, my son, you cannot reach the way.”Why suddenly, my son? Up to now the master has not used a single loving word; why suddenly, my son? Because now the trust will be needed, and you cannot create trust in a person just by saying something, even if it is the absolute truth. A trust can be created only if the master is loving, because only love creates trust. On the side of the disciple a trust is needed, shraddha, a deep faith is needed. But the faith arises only when the master says “my son.”Now the thing is moving differently. It is not an intellectual relationship, it is becoming one of the heart. Now the master is becoming more a father than a master; now the master is moving toward the heart. He is now making a relationship.If you ask head-oriented questions and the master goes on answering them, it may be a dialogue on the face of it, but it cannot be a dialogue. You can crisscross but you cannot meet that way. When people talk, listen to them: they crisscross each other but they never meet. This is not a dialogue. They both remain rooted in themselves, they never make any effort to reach the other. “My son” is an effort on the part of the master to reach the monk. He is preparing the way for the disciple to trust.But then again a problem arises because the disciple can think, “This is too much! I have not come here in search of love, I have come here in search of knowledge.” But a master cannot give you knowledge. He can give you wisdom, and wisdom comes only through the vehicle of love. Hence suddenly he says: My son, so long as you cannot go beyond the mountain you cannot reach the way.One thing more he says: What a fine mountain this is. To an enlightened person even madness is beautiful. To an unenlightened person even enlightenment is not beautiful. The whole attitude changes. He says: What a fine mountain. To an enlightened person even your neurosis is a beautiful thing, he accepts that also; it has to be transcended, but not destroyed. One has to go beyond it, but it also is beautiful while it lasts. One has to reach somewhere else, but the goal is not the thing – the thing is each moment, living the goal here and now.For an enlightened person everything is beautiful and for an unenlightened person everything is ugly. For an unenlightened person there are two categories: less ugly, more ugly. No beauty exists. Whenever you say to a person, “You are beautiful,” in fact you are saying, “You are less ugly.” Watch when you say it again and then find out what you really mean. Do you really mean beautiful? – because that is impossible for your mind; your mind cannot see beauty, you are not so perceptive. At the most you can manage to say that this person is less ugly than others – and less ugly can become more ugly any moment, with just a change of mood.Your friend is nothing but the person least inimical toward you. You have to be that way because your mind is so messed up, it is such a chaos; everything is muddled, murky, you cannot see direct. Your eyes are covered with millions of layers, it is really a miracle how you manage even to see; you are completely blind.You cannot hear, you cannot see, you cannot touch, you cannot smell. Whatsoever you do, it is impure; many things come into it. You love, and millions of things are there: immediately you start being possessive, and you never know that being possessive is part of hate, not part of love. Love can never possess. Love is giving freedom to the other. Love is an unconditional gift, it is not a bargain. But to your mind love is nothing but less hate, that’s all. At the most you think, “I can tolerate this person; I cannot tolerate that person so I cannot love him. This person I can tolerate.” But the valuation remains negative.When you are enlightened the valuation becomes positive. Then everything is beautiful; even your mountain, your neurosis is beautiful – even a madman is something beautiful. Beauty may have gone a little astray, but it is still beautiful. Existence may have gone a little astray and sinned, but it is existence.So nothing can be wrong for an enlightened person. Everything is right – less right, more right. The difference between the Devil and God is nothing, the difference is only of less and more. God and the Devil are not two poles, enemies.Hindus have beautiful words; no other country has been so understanding about words. Sanskrit is really something which exists nowhere else – very perceptive people! The English word devil comes from the same root as deva; deva means god. Devil and god come from the same root, dev. Dev means light; from the same dev comes the devil; and from the same dev comes deva, devata, the divine. The words divine and devil come from the same Sanskrit root dev. It is one phenomenon. Your seeing may be different, your standpoint may be different, but it is one phenomenon. An enlightened person will say even to the Devil: “How beautiful! How divine! How wonderful!”It happened:One Mohammedan mystic woman, Rabiya al-Adabiya, changed many lines in her Koran. Wherever it is said, “Hate the Devil,” she crossed it out. Once another mystic, Hassan, was staying with Rabiya, and on the journey he had forgotten his own copy of the Koran somewhere and in the morning, for morning prayers, he needed it. So he asked for Rabiya’s copy; Rabiya gave it to him. He was a little surprised in the beginning because the Koran had collected so much dust – that meant it was not used every day. It was not used at all it seemed; for many months it had not been used. But he thought it would be impolite to say something so he opened the Koran and started his morning prayer.Then he was surprised even more, even shocked, because nobody can correct the Koran, and there were many corrections. Wherever it is said, “Hate the Devil,” Rabiya had simply crossed it out completely, rejected it.Hassan couldn’t pray, he was so disturbed: this Rabiya had become a heretic, she had become an atheist, or what?…because it is impossible for a Mohammedan to conceive that you can correct the Koran. It is God’s word, nobody can correct it. That’s why they say that now no more prophets will be coming, because if a prophet comes again and he says something which is not in the Koran, it will create trouble. So the doors have been closed after Mohammed – he is the last prophet.And they are very clever. They say there have been many other prophets in the past: Mohammed is not the first, but he is the last. Now no more messages will be coming from God – he has given the final message with Mohammed. So how dare this woman Rabiya…? She is correcting the Koran? Hassan couldn’t pray, he was so disturbed. He finished somehow, went to Rabiya…Rabiya was an enlightened woman. Very few women have become enlightened in the whole world; Rabiya is one of them. Looking at Hassan she said, “It seems you couldn’t do your prayer. It seems the dust on the Koran disturbed you. So, you are still attached to things like dust? And it seems my corrections in the Koran must have shocked you very much.”Hassan said, “How…how could you know?”Rabiya said, “I passed by when you were praying and I felt all around you much disturbance; it was not a prayerful prayer at all. It was so neurotic, the vibrations – so what is the matter? Tell me and be finished with it!”Hassan said, “Now that you have started the conversation yourself… don’t think I am impolite, but I couldn’t believe a woman like you would correct the Koran!”Rabiya said, “But look first at my difficulty: the moment I came to realize, the moment I came face to face with the divine, after that, in every face I can see that same face. No other face is possible. Even if the Devil comes to stand before me, I see the same face. So how can I hate the Devil now that I have realized the face of the divine that I have come to see? Now every face is the face of the divine. I had to correct it, and if ever I meet Mohammed I have to tell him frankly that these words are not good. They may be good for the ignorant because the ignorant divide; but they are not good for those who know, because they cannot divide.”Hence the master says, “What a fine mountain this is.” Everything is beautiful and divine for a man who knows.“I am not asking you about the mountain,” said the monk, “but the way.” Have you ever observed that you never ask any question about yourself, about the mountain, you always ask about the way? People come to me and they ask, “What to do? How to reach God? How to become enlightened?” They never ask, “What to be?” They never ask anything about themselves, as if they are absolutely okay – only the path is missing. What do you think? You are absolutely okay, only the path is missing? So somebody can say, “Go to the right and then turn to the left and you are on the path”?It’s not so simple. The path is just in front of you. You are not missing the path at all. You have never missed it, nobody can miss it – but you cannot look at it because you are a mountain.It is not a question of finding the way, it is a question of finding yourself, who you are. When you know yourself, the way is there; when you don’t know yourself, the way is not there.People go on asking about the way, and there are millions of ways proposed – but there cannot be millions. There is only one way. The same way passes before Buddha’s eyes, and the same way passes before Lao Tzu, and the same way before Jesus. Millions are the travelers but the way is one, the same. That is the Tao, the Dharma, the Logos of Heraclitus – it is one.Millions are the travelers but the way is one. There are not a million ways, and you are not missing it; but you always ask about the way, and you always get entangled in the ways – because when you ask, when foolish people ask, there are more foolish people to answer them. If you ask and insist on an answer, then somebody has to supply it. This is the law of economics: you demand, and there will be a supply. You ask a foolish question and a foolish answer will be given…because don’t think that you are the ultimate fool – there are better ones. Smaller fools become disciples, and better fools become “masters.” You ask, and they supply the answer.Then there are millions of ways, and always in conflict. A Mohammedan saying is: You cannot reach through that way because it never leads anywhere, it goes into a cul-de-sac. Come to our way – and if you don’t listen we will kill you. Christians are persuading: Come to our way. They are cleverer than Mohammedans; they don’t kill really, they bribe, they seduce, they give you bread, they give you hospitals, they give you medicine, and they say, “Come our way! Where are you going?” They are merchants, and they know how to bribe people; they have converted millions just by giving things to them.There are Hindus, they go on saying: We possess the whole truth. And they are so arrogant they don’t bother even to convert anybody, remember: You are fools, you need not be converted. They are so arrogant, and they think: We know the way; if you want to you can come. We are not going to bribe you or kill you – you are not that important. You can come if you want, but we are not going to make any effort. And then there are three hundred religions in the world, and each religion thinking that this is the only way, the way, and all others are false.But the question is not of the way, the question is not, “Which way is true?” The question is, have you crossed the mountain? The question is, have you gone beyond you? The question is, can you look at yourself from a distance, as a watcher? Then, the one way is yours.Mohammed and Mahavira and Krishna and Christ – they all walked on the same way. Mohammed is different from Mahavira, Krishna is different from Christ, but they walk on the same way – because the way cannot be many. How can many lead to one? Only the one can lead you to the one.So don’t ask about the way and don’t ask about the method. Don’t ask about the medicine. First ask about the disease that you are. A deep diagnosis is needed first, and nobody can diagnose it for you. You have created it and only the creator knows all the nooks and corners. You have created it, so only you know how these complexities arise, and only you can solve them.A real master simply helps you to come to yourself. Once you are there, the way opens. The way cannot be given but you can be thrown upon yourself. And then the real conversion happens: not a Hindu becoming a Christian or a Christian becoming a Hindu, but an outward-moving energy becomes an inward-moving energy – that is conversion. You become inward-looking. The whole attention moves inward, and then you see the whole complexity – the mountain. And if you simply watch it, it starts dissolving.In the beginning it looks like a mountain; in the end you will feel that it was just a molehill. But you never looked at it because it was behind you, and it became so big. When you face it, it immediately decreases, becomes a molehill, you can laugh about it. Then it is no longer a burden. You can even enjoy it and sometimes can go in it for a morning walk.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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At the death of a parishioner, Master Dogo, accompanied by his disciple Zengen, visited the bereaved family.Without taking time to express a word of sympathy, Zengen went up to the coffin, rapped on it, and asked Dogo: “Is he really dead?” “I won’t say,” said Dogo. “Well?” insisted Zengen. “I’m not saying, and that’s final,” said Dogo.On their way back to the temple the furious Zengen turned on Dogo and threatened: “By God, if you don’t answer my question, why I’ll beat you.” “All right,” said Dogo, “beat away.”A man of his word, Zengen slapped his master a good one.Some time later Dogo died, and Zengen, still anxious to have his question answered, went to the master Sekiso, and, after relating what had happened, asked the same question of him. Sekiso, as if conspiring with the dead Dogo, would not answer. “By God!” cried Zengen. “You too?” “I’m not saying,” said Sekiso, “and that’s final.”At that very instant Zengen experienced an awakening.Life can be known, death also – but nothing can be said about them. No answer is true; it cannot be by the very nature of things. Life and death are the deepest mysteries. It is better to say that they are not two mysteries, but two aspects of the same mystery, two doors of the same secret. But nothing can be said about them. Whatever you say, you will miss the point.Life can be lived, death also can be lived. They are experiences – one has to pass through them and know them. Nobody can answer your questions. How can life be answered? or death? Unless you live, unless you die, who’s going to answer?But many answers have been given – and remember, all answers are false. There is nothing to choose. It is not that one answer is correct and other answers are incorrect; all answers are incorrect. There is nothing to choose. Only experience can answer, not answers.So this is the first thing to be remembered when you are near a real mystery, not a riddle created by man. If it is a riddle created by man it can be answered, because then it is a game, a mind game – you create the question, you create the answer. But if you are facing something which you have not created, how can you answer it, how can the human mind answer it? It is incomprehensible for the human mind. The part cannot comprehend the whole. The whole can be comprehended by becoming whole. You can jump into it and be lost – and there will be the answer.I will tell you one anecdote Ramakrishna loved to tell. He used to say: Once it happened that there was a great festival near a sea, on the beach. Thousands of people were gathered there and suddenly they all became engrossed in a question – whether the sea is immeasurable or measurable; whether there is a bottom to it or not; fathomable or unfathomable? By chance, one man completely made of salt was also there. He said, “You wait, and you discuss, and I will go into the ocean and find out, because how can one know unless one goes into it?”So the man of salt jumped into the ocean. Hours passed, days passed, then months passed, and people started to go to their homes. They had waited long enough, and the man of salt was not coming back.The man of salt, the moment he entered the ocean, started melting, and by the time he reached the bottom he was not. He came to know – but he couldn’t come back. And those who didn’t know, they discussed it for a long time. They may have arrived at some conclusions, because the mind loves to reach conclusions.Once a conclusion is reached, mind feels at ease – hence so many philosophies exist. All philosophies exist to fulfill a need: the mind asks and the mind cannot remain with the question, it is uneasy; to remain with the question feels inconvenient. An answer is needed – even if it is false, it will do; mind is put at rest.To go and take a jump into the sea is dangerous. And remember, what Ramakrishna says is true: we are all men of salt as far as the ocean is concerned – the ocean of life and death. We are men of salt, we will melt into it because we come out of it. We are made by it, of it. We will melt.So mind is always afraid of going into the ocean; it is made of salt, it is bound to dissolve. It is afraid, so it remains on the bank, discussing things, debating, arguing, creating theories – all false because they are based on fear. A courageous man will take the jump, and he will resist accepting any answer which is not known by himself.We are cowards, that’s why we accept anybody’s answer: Mahavira, Buddha, Christ, we accept their answers. Their answers cannot be our answers. Nobody else’s knowledge can be yours – they may have known, but their knowledge is just information for you. You will have to know. Only when it is your own is it knowledge; otherwise it will not give you wings. On the contrary, it will hang around your neck like stones, you will become a slave to it. You will not achieve liberation, you will not be set free by it.Says Jesus, “Truth liberates.” Have you seen anybody being liberated by theories? Experience liberates, yes, but theories about every experience? No, never! But the mind is afraid to take the jump, because mind is made of the same stuff as the universe; if you take the jump you will be lost. You will come to know, but you will know only when you are not.The salt man came to know. He touched the very depth. He reached the very center but he couldn’t come back. Even if he could, how would he relate…? Even if he comes back, his language will belong to the center, to the depth, and your language belongs to the bank, to the periphery.There is no possibility of any communication. He cannot say anything meaningfully, he can only remain silent meaningfully, significantly. If he says something he himself will feel guilty, because he will immediately know that whatsoever he knows has not been transferred through the words; his experience is left behind. Only words have gone to you, dead, stale, empty. Words can be communicated but not truth. It can only be indicated.The salt man can say to you, “You also come” – he can give you an invitation – “and take a jump with me into the ocean.”But you are very clever. You will say, “First answer the question; otherwise how do I know that you are right? Let me first consider and think and brood and ponder, then I will follow. When my mind is convinced, then I will take the jump.”But mind is never convinced, cannot be convinced. Mind is nothing but a process of doubt; it can never be convinced, it can go on arguing infinitely, because whatsoever you say it can create an argument around it.Once I was traveling with Mulla Nasruddin. At a station, at a stop, a newcomer came into the compartment – he may have known Nasruddin. He said, “Hello.” They greeted each other and then he said, “How are you, Nasruddin?”Nasruddin said, “Fine! Absolutely fine!”Then the man said, “And how is your wife?”Nasruddin said, “She is also fine, thank you.”“And how are your children?”Nasruddin said, “They are all very well, thank you.”I was surprised. When the man left at another stop, I asked Nasruddin, “What is the matter? – because I know well that you don’t have a wife, you don’t have any children.”Nasruddin said, “I also know – but why create an argument?”Many times buddhas have nodded to you, just not to create any argument. They have remained silent just not to create any argument. They have not said much, but whatsoever they have said has created enough argument around it. You are like that. You will weave theories, you will spin philosophies, and you will get so engrossed in them that you will completely forget that the ocean is just near. You will completely forget that the ocean exists.Philosophers completely forget what life is. They go on thinking and thinking and thinking and going astray, because mind is a distance from the truth. The more you are in the mind, the farther away you are from the truth; the less in the mind, the nearer. If there is no mind, even for a single moment, you have taken the jump – but then you become one with the ocean.So the first thing to remember is, if it is a question created by you, not relating to the existential mystery of the universe, then it can be answered. Really, only mathematical questions can be answered. That’s why mathematics is such a clear-cut science, because the whole thing is created by man. Mathematics does not exist in the universe, that’s why mathematics is the purest science – you can be certain about it; you have created the whole game.Trees are there, but not one tree, two, three trees, four trees – numbers don’t exist there. You create the numbers, you create the very base, and then you ask, “How many? If two are added to two, what is the conclusion, what is the result?” you can answer “Four,” and that answer will be true because you have created the whole game, all the rules: two and two make four. But in existence that is not true because in existence no arithmetic exists – it is a wholly man-made affair. So you can go on and on and create as many mathematics, as many arithmetics, as you like.Once people thought that there was only one mathematics; now they know there can be many, because man can create them. Once people knew that there was only one geometry – Euclid’s; now they know that you can create as many geometries as you want, because they are man-created. So now there is Euclidean geometry and non-Euclidean geometry.Many mathematicians have played with numbers. Leibnitz worked with three digits: one, two, three. In Leibnitz’ mathematics, two plus two cannot be four, because the four doesn’t exist: one, two, three – only three digits are there, so in Leibnitz’ mathematics two plus two will become ten, because after three comes ten. The four doesn’t exist. Einstein worked with two digits: one and two, so two plus two in Einstein’s mathematics will be eleven. And they are all right, because the whole game is man-made. It is up to you.There is no inner necessity to believe in nine or ten digits, except that man has ten fingers, so people started counting on the fingers. That’s why ten became the basic unit all over the world; otherwise there is no necessity.Mathematics is a thought product: you can ask a question and a right answer can be given to you – but except for mathematics everything moves into the mysterious. If it belongs to life, no answer can be given. And whatsoever you say will be destructive because the whole cannot be said. Words are so narrow, tunnel-like; you cannot force the sky into them, it is impossible.Second thing to remember: when you ask something of a master – a master is not a philosopher, he is not a thinker; he knows, he is a seer. When you ask something of a master, don’t look for and don’t wait for his answer, because he is the answer. When you ask something, don’t be attentive toward the answer; be attentive toward the master, because he is the answer. He is not going to give you any answer; his presence is the answer. But there we miss.You go and you ask a question; your whole mind is attentive to the question and you are waiting for the answer – but the master, his whole being, his presence is the answer. If you look at him, if you watch him, you will receive an indication – his silence, the way he looks at you in that moment, the way he walks, the way he behaves, the way he remains silent or talks. The master is the answer, because it is an indication. The master can show you the truth, but cannot say it. And your mind is always obsessed with the answer: “What is he going to say?”If you go to a master, learn to be attentive to his presence; don’t be too head-oriented – and don’t insist, because every answer can be given only when the time is ripe. Don’t insist, because it is not a question of your insistence; a right thing can be given only when you are ready, when you are ripe. So when you are near a master you can ask a question – but then wait. You have asked, then he knows. Even if you have not asked, he knows what is troubling you within. But he cannot give you anything right now – you may not be ready; and if you are not ready and something is given it will not reach you, because only in a certain readiness can certain things penetrate you. When you are ripe you can understand. When you are ready, you are open, receptive. The answer will be given, but not in words; the master will reveal it in many ways. He can do it. He can devise many methods to indicate it, but then you will have to be ready.Just because you have asked a question doesn’t mean that you are ready. You can ask a question – even children can raise questions so mysterious that even a buddha will be unable to answer them. But just because you have asked, just because you are articulate enough to form a question, does not mean that you are ready, because questions come out of many, many sources. Sometimes you are simply curious. A master is not there to fulfill your curiosities, because they are childish. Sometimes you really never meant it. Just by the way you asked, you showed you were not concerned and you are not going to use the answer in any way. Somebody is dead and you simply ask the question, “What is death?” – and by the next moment you have forgotten it.Curiosity is one thing – it is childish and no master is going to waste his breath on your curiosities. When you ask a certain thing it may be just intellectual, philosophic; you are interested, but intellectually – you would like an answer just to become more knowledgeable, but your being will remain unaffected. Then a master is not interested, because he is interested only in your being.When you ask a question in such a way as if your life and death depend on it, then if you don’t receive the answer you will miss. Your whole being will remain hungry for it; you are thirsty, your whole being is ready to receive it, and if the answer is given you will digest it, it will become your blood and your bones and move into the very beat of your heart. Only then will a master be ready to answer you.You ask a question…then the master will try to help you to become ready to receive the answer. Between your question and the master’s answer there may be a great gap. You ask today and he may answer you after twelve years, because you have to be ready to receive it; you have to be open, not closed, and you have to be ready to absorb it to the very depth of your being.Now try to understand this parable:At the death of a parishioner, Master Dogo, accompanied by his disciple Zengen, visited the bereaved family.Without taking time to express a word of sympathy, Zengen went up to the coffin, rapped on it, and asked Dogo: “Is he really dead?”The first thing: when death is there you have to be very respectful because death is no ordinary phenomenon, it is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the world. Nothing is more mysterious than death. Death reaches to the very center of existence, and when a man is dead you are moving on sacred ground: it is the holiest moment possible. No, ordinary curiosities cannot be allowed. They are disrespectful.In the East particularly, death is respected more than life – and the East has lived long to come to this conclusion. In the West life is more respected than death; hence so much tension, so much worry and so much anguish, so much madness.Why? If you respect life more, you will be afraid of death, and then death will look antagonistic, the enemy; and if death is the enemy you will remain tense your whole life, because death can happen any moment. You don’t accept it, you reject it – but you cannot destroy it. Death cannot be destroyed. You can reject it; you can deny it; you can be afraid, scared, but it is there, just at the corner, always with you like a shadow. You will be trembling your whole life – and you are trembling. And in the fear, in all fears if searched deeply, you will find the fear of death.Whenever you are afraid, something has given you an indication of death. If your bank goes bankrupt and you are filled with fear and trembling, anxiety, that too is anxiety about death, because your bank balance was nothing but safety against death. Now you are more open, vulnerable. Now who will protect you if death knocks at the door? If you become ill, if you become old, then who is going to take care of you? The guarantee was there in the bank, and the bank has gone bankrupt.You cling to prestige, power, position, because when you have a position you are so significant that you are more protected by people. When you are not in power, you become so impotent that nobody will bother in any way who you are. When you are in power you have friends, family, followers; when you are not in power, everybody leaves. There was a protection, somebody was there to care; now nobody cares. Whatsoever you are afraid of, if you search deeply you will always find the shadow of death somewhere.You cling to a husband, you are afraid he may leave; or you cling to a wife, afraid she may leave you. What is the fear? Is it really the fear of a divorce, or is it the fear of death? It is the fear of death…because in divorce you become alone. The other gives a protection, a feeling that you are not alone, somebody else is with you. In moments when somebody else will be needed, you will have somebody to look to. But the wife has left, or the husband has left, and now you are left alone, a stranger. Who will protect you? Who will care for you when you are ill?When people are young they do not need a wife or a husband so much, but when they are old their need is more. When you are young it is a sexual relationship. The older you become the more it becomes a life relationship, because now if the other leaves you, death is immediately there. Wherever you are afraid, try to explore, and you will find death hiding somewhere behind. All fear is of death. Death is the only source of fear.In the West people are very scared, worried, anxious, because you have to fight continuously against death. You love life, you respect life – that’s why in the West old people are not respected. Young people are respected, because old people have moved further toward death than you; they are already in its grip. Youth is respected in the West – and youth is a transitory phenomenon, it is already passing from your hands.In the East old men are respected, because in the East death is respected; and because in the East death is respected, there is no fear about death. Life is just a part; death is the culmination. Life is just the process; death is the crescendo. Life is just the moving; death is the reaching. And both are one! So what will you respect more, the way or the goal? The process or the flowering?Death is the flower, life is nothing but the tree. And the tree is there for the flower, the flower is not there for the tree. The tree should be happy and the tree should dance when the flower comes.Death is accepted; not only accepted, welcomed. It is a divine guest. When it knocks at the door, it means the universe is ready to receive you back.In the East we respect death. And this young man Zengen just came in without even expressing a word of sympathy or respect. He simply became curious. Not only that, he was very disrespectful – he tapped on the coffin and asked Dogo: Is he really dead? His question was beautiful, but was not in the right moment. The question is right but the moment he has chosen is wrong. To be curious before death is childish; one has to be respectful, silent. That is the only way to have a rapport with the phenomenon.When somebody dies it is really something very deep happening. If you can just sit there and meditate many things will be revealed to you. Questioning is foolish. When death is there, why not meditate? Questioning may be just a trick to avoid the thing, it may be just a safety measure so as not to look at death directly.I have watched when people go to burn or to cremate somebody – they start talking too much there. At the cremation ground they discuss many philosophical things. In my childhood I loved very much to follow everybody. Whosoever died, I would be there. Even my parents became very much afraid; they would say, “Why do you go? We don’t even know that man. There is no need to go.”I would say, “That is not the point. The man is not the concern. Death…it’s such a beautiful phenomenon, and one of the most mysterious. One should not miss it.” So the moment I heard that somebody had died I would be there, always watching, waiting, witnessing what was happening.And I watched people discussing many things, philosophical problems such as: What is death? And somebody saying: “Nobody dies. The innermost self is immortal.” They would discuss the Upanishads, the Gita, and quote authorities. I started feeling that they are avoiding; just becoming engaged in a discussion, they are avoiding the phenomenon that is happening. They are not looking at the dead man. And the thing is there! Death is there, and you are discussing it! What a fool!You have to be silent. If you can be silent when death is there you will suddenly see many things, because death is not just a person stopping breathing. Many things are happening. When a person dies, his aura starts subsiding. If you are silent you can feel it – an energy force, a vital energy field, subsiding, getting back to the center.When a child is born just the opposite happens. When a child is born the aura starts spreading; it starts near the navel. Just as if you throw a pebble into a silent lake, ripples start – they go on spreading, go on spreading. Breath, when a child is born, is like a pebble in the lake; when the child breathes the navel center is hit. The first pebble has been thrown into the silent lake, and the ripples go on spreading.For your whole life your aura goes on spreading. Nearabout the age of thirty-five your aura is completed, at its peak. Then it starts subsiding. When a person dies it goes back to the navel. When it reaches to the navel, it becomes a concentrated energy, a concentrated light. If you are silent you can feel it, you will feel a pull. If you sit near a dead man you will feel as if a subtle breeze is blowing toward the dead man and you are being pulled. The dead man is contracting his whole life, the whole field that he was.Many things start happening around a dead man. If he loved a person very deeply, that means he has given a part of his life energy to that person, and when a person dies, immediately that part that he had given to another person leaves that person and moves to the dead man. If you die here and your lover lives in Hong Kong, something will leave from your lover immediately – because you have given a part of your life and that part will come back to you. That’s why when a loved one dies you feel that something has left you also, something in you has died also. A deep wound, a deep gap will exist now.Whenever a lover dies, something in the beloved also dies, because they were involved into each other. And if you have loved many, many people – for example, if a person like Dogo dies, or a buddha – from all over the universe energy moves back to the center. It is a universal phenomenon because he is involved in many, many lives, millions of lives, and from everywhere his energy will come back. The vibrations that he has given to many will leave, they will move to the original source, they will become again a concentration near the navel.If you watch you will feel ripples coming back in a reverse order, and when they are totally concentrated in the navel, you can see a tremendous life energy, a tremendous light-force. And then that center leaves the body. When a man “dies,” that is simply a stopping of the breath, and you think he is dead. He is not dead; it takes time. Sometimes, if the person has been involved in millions of lives, it takes many days for him to die – that’s why with sages, with saints, particularly in the East, we never burn their bodies. Only saints are not burned; otherwise everybody is burned, because others’ involvement is not so much. Within minutes the energy gathers, and they are no longer part of this existence.But with saints, the energy takes time. Sometimes it goes on and on – that’s why if you go to Shirdi, to Sai Baba’s town, you will still feel something happening, still the energy goes on coming; he is so much involved that for many people he is still alive. Sai Baba’s tomb is not dead. It is still alive. But the same thing you will not feel near many tombs – they are dead. By “dead” I mean they have accumulated all their involvement, they have disappeared.When I am dead, don’t bury my body, don’t burn it, because I will be involved in you, many of you. And if you can feel, then a sage remains alive for many years, sometimes thousands of years – because life is not only of the body. Life is an energy phenomenon. It depends on the involvement, on how many persons he was involved in. And a person like Buddha is not only involved with persons, he is involved even with trees, birds, animals; his involvement is so deep that if he dies his death will take at least five hundred years.Buddha is reported to have said, “My religion will be a live force for only five hundred years.” And the meaning is here, because he will be a live force for five hundred years. It will take five hundred years for him to get out of the involvement totally.When death happens, be silent. Watch.All over the world, whenever you pay respect to a dead man, you become silent, you remain silent for two minutes – without knowing why. This tradition has been continued all over the world. Why silence?The tradition is meaningful. You may not know why, you may not be aware, and your silence may be filled with inner chattering, or you may do it just like a ritual – that is up to you. But the secret is there.Without taking time to express a word of sympathy, Zengen went up to the coffin, rapped on it, and asked Dogo: “Is he really dead?” His question is right, but the time is not right. He has chosen the wrong opportunity. This is not the moment to talk about it, this is the moment to be with it. And the man who is dead must have been someone very deep; otherwise Dogo would not be going to pay his respects. Dogo is an enlightened man. The disciple who is dead must have been something. And Dogo was there to do something more for him. A master can help you when you are alive; a master can help you when you are dead even more – because in death a deep surrendering happens.In life you are always resisting, fighting, even with your master; not surrendering, or surrendering halfheartedly – which means nothing. But when you are dying, surrender is easier, because death and surrender are the same process. When the whole body is dying, you can surrender easily. To fight is difficult, resistance is difficult. Already your resistance is being broken, your body is moving into a let-go; that is what death is.Dogo was there for something special, and this disciple asked a question. The question is right but the time is not right.“I won’t say,” said Dogo. “Well?” insisted Zengen. “I’m not saying, and that’s final,” said Dogo.First thing: what can be said about death? How can you say anything about death? It is not possible for any word to carry the meaning of death. What does this word “death” mean? In fact it means nothing. What do you mean when you use the word death? It is simply a door beyond which we don’t know what happens. We see a man disappearing inside a door; we can see up to the door, and then the man simply disappears. Your word death can give only the meaning of the door. But what happens really, beyond the door? – because the door is not the thing.The door is to be passed through. Then what happens to one who disappears through the door and we cannot see beyond ? And what is this door? Just a stopping of the breath? Is the breath the whole of life? Don’t you have anything more than the breath? Breath stops…body deteriorates…if you are body and breath alone, then there is no problem. Then death is nothing. It is not a door to anything. It is simply a stopping, not a disappearance. It is just like a clock.The clock was tick-ticking, working, then it stops; you don’t ask where the tick-tick has gone – that would be meaningless! It has gone nowhere. It has not gone at all, it has simply stopped; it was a mechanism and something has gone wrong in the mechanism. You can repair the mechanism, then it will tick-tick again. Is death just like a clock stopping? Just like that?If so, it is not a mystery, it is nothing really. But how can life disappear so easily? Life is not mechanical. Life is awareness. The clock is not aware – you can listen to the tick-tick, the clock has never listened to it. You can listen to your own heartbeat. Who is this listener? If only the heartbeat is life, then who is this listener? If breath is the only life, how can you be aware of your breath? That’s why all Eastern techniques of meditation use breath awareness as a subtle technique – because if you become aware of the breathing, then who is this awareness? It must be something beyond breath because you can look at it and the looker cannot be the object. You can witness it; you can close your eyes and you can see your breath going in and coming out. Who is this seer, the witnessing? It must be a separate force that does not depend on breathing. When the breathing disappears it is the stopping of a clock, but where does this awareness go? Where does this awareness move into?Death is a door, it is not a stopping. Awareness moves but your body remains at the door – just as you have come here and left your shoes at the door. The body is left outside the temple, and your awareness enters the temple. It is the most subtle phenomenon, life is nothing before it. Basically life is just a preparation for death, and only those are wise who learn in their life how to die. If you don’t know how to die you have missed the whole meaning of life: it is a preparation, it is a training, it is a discipline.Life is not the end, it is just a discipline to learn the art of dying. But you are afraid, you are scared, at the very word death you start trembling. That means you have not yet known life, because life never dies. Life cannot die.Somewhere you have become identified with the body, with the mechanism. The mechanism is to die, the mechanism cannot be eternal, because the mechanism depends on many things; it is a conditioned phenomenon. Awareness is unconditional, it doesn’t depend on anything. It can float like a cloud in the sky, it has no roots, it is not caused, it is never born so it can never die.Whenever someone dies you have to be meditative near them, because a temple is just near and it is holy ground. Don’t be childish, don’t bring curiosities, be silent so you can watch and see. Something very, very meaningful is happening – don’t miss the moment. And when death is there, why ask about it? Why not look at it? Why not watch it? Why not move with it a few steps?“I won’t say,” said Dogo. “Well?” insisted Zengen. “I’m not saying, and that’s final,” said Dogo. On their way back to the temple, the furious Zengen turned on Dogo and threatened: “By God, if you don’t answer my question, why I’ll beat you!”This is possible in Zen, that even a disciple can beat the master, because Zen is very true to life and very authentic. A Zen master does not create the phenomenon around him that, “I am holier than you.” He does not say, “I am so superior.” How can one who has achieved say, “I am superior and you are inferior”? The disciple can think that he is superior, but the master cannot claim any superiority, because superiority is only claimed by inferiority. Superiority is only claimed by the ego that is impotent, inferior. Strength is claimed only by weakness: when you are uncertain you claim certainty, when you are ill you claim health, when you don’t know you claim knowledge. Your claims are simply to hide the truth. A master claims nothing. He cannot say, “I am superior.” It is foolish. How can a wise man say, “I am superior”?So a Zen master even allows this – a disciple to hit him – and he can enjoy the whole thing. Nobody else in the world has done that; that’s why Zen masters are rare – you cannot find rarer flowers. The master is so superior, really, that he allows you even to hit him; his superiority is not challenged by it. You cannot challenge him in any way, and you cannot bring him down in any way. He is no longer there. He is an empty house.And he knows that a disciple can only be foolish. Nothing else is expected because a disciple is ignorant; compassion is needed. And in ignorance a disciple is bound to go on doing things, things that are not proper, because how can an improper person do proper things? And if you force proper things on an improper person, he will be crippled, his freedom will be cut. And a master is to help you to be free – so hitting is allowed. In fact it is not irreverence; in fact the disciple also loves the master so much, so intimately, that he can come so close. Even hitting a person is a sort of intimacy – you cannot hit just anybody.Sometimes it happens that even a child hits his father, or a child slaps his mother. No antagonism is meant, it is just that the child accepts the mother so deeply and so intimately that he doesn’t feel that anything is improper. And the child knows he will be forgiven, so there is no fear.A master forgives infinitely, unconditionally.The disciple was very angry because he had asked a very meaningful question – it looked meaningful to him. He couldn’t conceive why Dogo should behave so obstinately and say, “No!” – and not only that, he said, “This is final! And I am not going to say anything more.”When you ask a question you ask because of your ego, and when the answer is not given the ego feels hurt. The disciple was hurt; his ego was disturbed, he couldn’t believe it – and this must have happened in front of many people. They were not alone, there were many others, there must have been – when someone dies many people gather there. And in front of all those people the master said, “No, and this is final! I am not going to say anything.” They all must have thought, “This disciple is just a fool, asking irrelevant questions.” Zengen must have felt angry, he must have been boiling. When he found himself alone with the master going back to the monastery he said:“By God, if you don’t answer my question, why I’ll beat you!” “All right,” said Dogo, “beat away.”Be finished with it! If you are angry, then be finished with it.A master is always ready to bring out all that is in you, even your negativity. Even if you are going to hit him he will allow you to. Who knows – in hitting the master you may become aware of your negativity; you may become aware of your illness, your disease, your madness. Hitting the master may become a sudden enlightenment – who knows. And a master is there to help you in every way. So Dogo said:All right – go ahead – beat away.A man of his word, Zengen slapped his master a good one. Some time later Dogo died, and Zengen, still anxious to have his question answered, went to the master Sekiso, and, after relating what had happened, asked the same question of him. Sekiso, as if conspiring with the dead Dogo, would not answer.All masters are always in a secret conspiracy. If they are masters at all, they are always together – even if they contradict each other, they belong to the same conspiracy; even if sometimes they say that the other is wrong, they are in a conspiracy.It happened that Buddha and Mahavira were contemporaries and they moved in the same province, Bihar. It is known as Bihar because of them: Bihar means their field of movement, they walked all over that part. Sometimes they were in the same village. Once it happened that they were staying in the same roadside inn – half the inn was engaged by Buddha and half by Mahavira – but they never met each other.And continually they refuted each other. Disciples used to move from one master to the other, and it has remained a puzzle – why? Buddha would even laugh, he would joke about Mahavira. He would say, “That fellow! So he claims that he is enlightened? He claims that he is all-knowing? But I have heard that he says it once happened that he knocked at a door to beg for his food and there was no one inside, and I have heard that he claims that he is all-knowing! And even this much he didn’t know, that the house was vacant?”He goes on joking. He says, “Once Mahavira was walking and he stepped on the tail of a dog. Only when the dog jumped and barked did he know that the dog was there, because it was morning and dark. And that fellow says that he is all-knowing?” He goes on joking, he cuts many jokes against Mahavira; they are beautiful.They are in a conspiracy and this has not been understood, neither by Jainas nor by Buddhists – they have missed the whole point. They think they are against each other, and Jainas and Buddhists have remained against each other for these two thousand years.They are not against each other! They are playing roles, and they are trying to help people. They are two different types. Somebody can be helped by Mahavira, and somebody else can be helped by Buddha. The person who can be helped by Buddha cannot be helped by Mahavira – that person has to be taken away from Mahavira. And the person who can be helped by Mahavira cannot be helped by Buddha – that person has to be taken away from Buddha. That’s why they talk against each other; it is a conspiracy. But everybody should be helped, and they are two different types, absolutely different types.How can they be against each other? Nobody who ever became enlightened is against any other enlightened person, cannot be. He may talk as if it is so, because he knows the other will understand. Mahavira is never reported to have said anything about the jokes that Buddha was telling here and there. He kept completely silent. That was his way. By being completely silent, not even refuting, he was saying, “Leave that fool to himself!” – by being completely silent, not saying anything.Every day reports would come, people would come and they would say, “He has said this,” and Mahavira would not even talk about it. And that was fitting, because he was very old, thirty years older than Buddha; it was not good for him to come down and fight with a young man – this is how young fools are! But he was the same as Buddha, against other teachers who were older than him. He was talking about them, talking against them, arguing against them.They are in a conspiracy. They have to be – because you cannot understand. They have to divide paths, because you cannot understand that life exists through opposites. They have to choose opposites. They have to stick to one thing, and then they have to say – for you – “Remember that all others are wrong.” Because if they say everybody is right, you will be more confused. You are already confused enough. If they say, “Yes, I am right. Mahavira is also right, Buddha is also right – everybody is right,” you will immediately leave them; you will think: “This man can’t help, because we are already confused. We don’t know what is right and what is wrong, and we have come to this man to know exactly what is right and what is wrong.”So masters stick to something and they say, “This is right and everything else is wrong,” knowing all along that there are millions of ways to reach the way; knowing all along that there are millions of paths which reach to the final path. But if they say that millions of paths reach, you will be simply confused.This disciple Zengen was in trouble, because his master Dogo died. He never expected that this was going to happen so soon. Disciples always feel in great difficulty when their masters die. When their masters are there, they fool around and waste time. When their masters are dead, then they are in a real fix and difficulty – what to do? So Zengen’s question remained, the problem remained, the puzzle was as it was before. The disciple had not yet come to know what death is, and this Dogo had died.He went to another master, Sekiso, and after relating the whole thing about what had happened, asked the same question of him.Sekiso, as if conspiring with the dead Dogo, would not answer. “By God!” cried Zengen. ”You too?” “I’m not saying,” said Sekiso, “and that’s final.”They are doing something, they are creating a situation. They are saying, “Be silent before death. Don’t ask questions, because when you ask you come to the surface, you become superficial. These questions are not questions to be asked. These questions are to be penetrated, lived, meditated on. You have to move into them. If you want to know death – die! That is the only way to know. If you want to know life – live!”You are alive but not living, and you will die and you will not die…because everything is lukewarm in you. You live? – not exactly; you just drag. Somehow, somehow you pull yourself along.Live as intensely as possible, burn your candle of life from both ends. Burn it so intensely…if it is finished in one second it is okay, but at least you will have known what it is, because only intensity penetrates. And if you can live an intense life you will have a different quality of death, because you will die intensely. As life is, so will the death be. If you live dragging, you will die dragging. You will miss life, and you will miss death also. Make life as intense as possible. Put everything at stake. Why worry? Why be worried about the future? This moment is there. Bring your total existence into it. Live intensely, totally, wholly, and this moment will become a revelation. And if you know life, you will know death.This is the secret key: if you know life, you will know death. If you ask what death is, it means you have not lived – because deep down they are one. What is the secret of life? The secret of life is death. If you love, what is the secret of love? Death. If you meditate, what is the secret of meditation? Death.Whatsoever happens that is beautiful and intense always happens through death. You die, you simply bring yourself totally in it and die to everything else. You become so intense that you are not there, because if you are there then the intensity cannot be total; then two are there. If you love and the lover is there, then love cannot be intense. Love so deeply, so totally, that the lover disappears and you are just an energy moving. Then you will know love, you will know life, you will know death.These three words are very meaningful: love, life, and death. Their secret is the same, and if you understand them there is no need to meditate. Because you don’t understand them, that’s why meditation is needed. Meditation is just a spare wheel. If you really love, it becomes meditation. If you don’t love, then you will have to meditate. If you really live, it becomes meditation. If you don’t live, then you will have to meditate; then something else will have to be added.But this is the problem: if you cannot love deeply, how can you meditate deeply? If you cannot live deeply, how can you meditate deeply? …Because the problem is neither love nor meditation nor death, the problem is how to move to the depth? Deepness is the question.If you move deeply in anything, life will be on the periphery and death will be in the center. Even if you watch a flower totally, forgetting everything, in watching the flower you will die in the flower. You will experience a merging, a melting. Suddenly you will feel you are not, only the flower is.Live each moment as if this is the last moment. And nobody knows – it may be the last.Both the masters were trying to bring Zengen an awareness. Sekiso, when he heard the disciple telling him the whole story, said, “No. I’m not saying…and that’s final.” He repeated the same words Dogo had said. The first time the disciple missed, but not the second time.At that very instant, Zengen experienced an awakening.A satori happened. Suddenly, lightning – he became aware. The first time he missed. It is almost always so. The first time you will miss, because you don’t know what is happening. The first time, your old habits of the mind will not allow you to see. That’s why the second master, Sekiso, simply repeated the words of Dogo – simply repeated. He did not change even a single word. The very line is the same: “I’m not saying,” he said, “and that’s final.” He again created the same situation.It was easy to fight with a Dogo, it was not easy to fight with Sekiso. He was not Zengen’s master. It was easy to hit Dogo, it will not be possible to hit Sekiso. It is enough that he answers, it is his compassion; he is not bound to answer.An intimacy was there between Dogo and this disciple, and sometimes it happens when you are very intimate that you can miss – because you take things for granted. Sometimes a distance is needed; it depends on the person. A few people can learn only when a distance is there, a few people can learn only when there is no distance – there are these two types of people. Those who can learn from a distance, they will miss a master; they will miss their own master, but he prepares them. Many of you are here who have worked in many lives with many other masters. You have missed them, but they have prepared you to reach me. Many of you will miss me, but I will have prepared you to reach somebody else. So nothing is lost, no effort is wasted.Dogo created the situation, Sekiso fulfilled it.At that very instant Zengen experienced an awakening. What happened? Hearing again the same words…is there a certain conspiracy? Why the same words again? Suddenly he became aware: My question is absurd, I am asking something which cannot be answered. It is not the master who is denying me the answer, it is my very question, the nature of it.A silence is needed in the presence of death, of life, of love. If you love a person you sit silently with the person. You would not like to chatter, you would like to just hold their hand and live and be silent in that moment. If you chatter, that means you are avoiding the person – love is not really there. If you love life, chattering will drop, because every moment is so filled with life that there is no way, no space to chatter. Each moment life is flooding you so vitally – where is the time to gossip and chatter? Each moment you live totally, mind becomes silent. Eat, and eat so totally – because life is entering you through food – that mind becomes silent. Drink, and drink totally: life is entering through water, it will quench your thirst; move with it as it touches your thirst, as the thirst disappears. Be silent and watch. How can you chatter when you are drinking a cup of tea? Warm life is flowing within you. Be filled with it. Be respectful.Hence, in Japan, tea ceremonies exist, and every house worth calling a house has a tearoom just like a temple. A very ordinary thing, tea – and they have raised it to a very holy status. When they enter the tearoom, they enter in complete silence, as if it is a temple. They sit silently in the tearoom. Then the kettle starts singing, and everybody listens silently, as you are listening to me here, the same silence. And the kettle goes on singing millions of songs, sounds, omkar – the very mantra of life – and they listen silently. Then the tea is poured. They touch their cups and saucers. They feel grateful that this moment is again given to them. Who knows if it will come again or not? Then they smell the tea, the aroma, and they are filled with gratitude. Then they start sipping. And the taste…and the warmth…and the flow…and the merging of their own energy with the energy of the tea…it becomes a meditation.Everything can become a meditation if you live it totally and intensely. And then your life becomes whole.Suddenly, listening to the same words again, Zengen came to realize, “I was wrong and my master was right. I was wrong because I thought he was not answering, he was not paying attention to my question; he was not caring about me at all, and my inquiry. My ego was hurt. But I was wrong – he was not hitting my ego. I was not at all in the question. The very nature of death is such…” Suddenly he was awakened.This is called satori; it is a special enlightenment. In no other language does there exist a word equivalent to satori. It is a specially Zen thing. It is not samadhi and yet it is samadhi. It is not samadhi because it can happen in very ordinary moments: drinking tea, taking a walk, looking at a flower, listening to the frog jumping in the pond. It can happen in very ordinary moments, so it is not like the samadhi about which Patanjali talks. Patanjali would simply be surprised that a frog jumps into the pond and at the sound of it somebody becomes enlightened. Patanjali would not be able to believe that a dry leaf drops from the tree, zigzags, moves on the wind a little, then falls to the ground and goes fast asleep – and somebody sitting under the tree attains enlightenment? No, Patanjali would not be able to believe it: “Impossible,” he will say, “because samadhi is something exceptional; samadhi comes after much effort, millions of lives. And then it happens in a particular posture, siddhasana. It happens in a particular state of body and mind.”Satori is samadhi and yet not samadhi. It is a glimpse, and a glimpse of the extraordinary in the very ordinary. It is samadhi happening in ordinary moments. A sudden thing, also – it is not gradual, you don’t move in degrees. It is just like water coming to the boiling point, to one hundred degrees – and then the jump, and the water becomes vapor, merges into the sky, and you cannot trace where it has gone. Up to ninety-nine degrees it is boiling and boiling and boiling, but not evaporating. From the ninety-ninth degree it can fall back, it was only hot. But if it passes the hundredth degree, then there is a sudden jump.The situation is the same in the story. With Dogo, Zengen became hot, but couldn’t evaporate. It was not enough, he needed one more situation, or he may have been in need of many more situations. Then with Sekiso – the same situation, and suddenly something is hit. Suddenly the focus changes, the gestalt. Up to this point he had been thinking that it was his question to which Dogo had not replied. He had been egocentric. He had been thinking, “It is I who have been neglected by my master. He was not careful enough about me and my inquiries. He didn’t pay enough attention to me and my inquiry.”Suddenly he realizes: “It was not me who was neglected, or that the master was indifferent, or that he didn’t pay attention. No, it was not me – it is the question itself. It cannot be answered. In the presence of the mysteries of life and death, one has to be silent.” The gestalt changes. He can see the whole thing. Hence, he attains a glimpse.Whenever the gestalt changes you attain a glimpse. That glimpse is satori. It is not final, you will lose it again. You will not become a buddha with satori; that’s why I say it is a samadhi and yet not a samadhi. It is an ocean in a teacup. Ocean, yes, and yet not the ocean – samadhi in a capsule. It gives you a glimpse, an opening…as if you are moving in a dark night, in a forest, lost; you don’t know where you are moving, where the path is, whether you are moving in the right direction or not – and then suddenly there is lightning. In a moment you see everything! Then the light disappears. You cannot read in lightning, because it lasts only a moment. You cannot sit under the sky and start reading in lightning. No, it is not a constant flow.Samadhi is such that you can read in its light. Satori is like lightning – you can see a glimpse of the whole, all that is there, and then it disappears. But you will not be the same again. It is not final enlightenment, but a great step toward it. Now you know. You have had a glimpse, now you can search for more of it. You have tasted it, now buddhas will become meaningful.Now if Zengen meets Dogo again he will not hit him, he will fall at his feet and ask for his forgiveness. Now he will weep millions of tears, because now he will say, “What compassion Dogo had, that he allowed me to hit him; that he said, ‘All right beat away!’” If he meets Dogo again, Zengen will not be the same. He has now tasted something, which has changed him. He has not attained the final – the final will be coming – but he has got the sample.Satori is the sample of Patanjali’s samadhi. And it is beautiful that the sample is possible, because unless you taste it how can you move toward it? Unless you smell it a little, how can you be attracted and pulled toward it? The glimpse will become a magnetic force. You will never be the same and you will know something is there and “whether I find it or not, that is up to me.” But trust will arise. Satori gives trust and starts a movement, a vital movement in you, toward the final enlightenment that is samadhi.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Lieh-Tzu exhibited his skill in archery to Po-Hun Wu-Jen.When the bow was drawn to its full length, a cup of water was placed on his elbow and he began to shoot.As soon as the first arrow was let fly, a second was already on the string, and then a third one followed. In the meantime he stood, unmoving, like a statue.Po-Hun Wu-Jen said: “The technique of shooting is fine, but it is not the technique of non-shooting. Let us go up to a high mountain and stand on a projecting rock, and then you try and shoot.”They climbed up a mountain. Standing on a rock that projected over a precipice ten thousand feet high, Po-Hun Wu-Jen moved backward until one third of his feet were overhanging the edge. He then motioned Lieh-Tzu to come forward.Lieh-Tzu fell down on the ground with perspiration flowing down to his heels.Said Po-Hun Wu-Jen: “The perfect man soars up above the blue sky, or dives down to the yellow springs, or wanders all over the eight limits of the world, yet shows no sign of change in his spirit. But you betray a sign of trepidation, and your eyes are dazed. How can you expect to hit the target?”Action needs skill. But no-action also needs skill. The skill of action is just on the surface; the skill of no-action is at the very core of your being. The skill of action can be learned easily; it can be borrowed; you can be educated in it because it is nothing but technique. It is not your being, it is just an art.But the technique, or the skill, of no-action is not technique at all. You cannot learn it from somebody else, it cannot be taught; it grows as you grow. It grows with your inner growth, it is a flowering. From the outside, nothing can be done to it; something has to evolve from the inside.The skill of action comes from without, goes within; the skill of no-action comes from within, flows without. Their dimensions are totally different, diametrically opposite. So first try to understand this, then we will be able to enter this story.For example, you can be a painter just by learning the art; you can learn all that can be taught in art schools. You can be skillful, and you can paint beautiful pictures, you can even become a renowned figure in the world. Nobody will be able to know that this is just technique, unless you come across a master; but you will always know that this is just technique.Your hands have become skillful, your head has the know-how, but your heart is not flowing. You paint, but you are not a painter. You create a work of art but you are not an artist. You do it, but you are not in it. You do it as you do other things – but you are not a lover. You are not involved in it totally; your inner being remains aloof, indifferent, standing by the side. Your head and your hands, they go on working, but you are not there. The painting will not carry your presence, it will not carry you. It may carry your signature, but not your being.A master will immediately know, because this painting will be dead. Beautiful…you can decorate a corpse also, you can paint a corpse also, you can even put lipstick on the lips and they will look red. But lipstick, howsoever red, cannot have the warmth of flowing blood. Those lips are painted, but there is no life in them.You can create a beautiful painting, but it will not be alive. It can be alive only if you flow in it; that’s the difference between a master when he paints and an ordinary painter. The ordinary painter really always imitates because the painting is not growing within him. It is not something with which he is pregnant. He will imitate others, he will have to look for ideas; he may imitate nature – that makes no difference. He may look at a tree and paint it, but the tree has not grown within him.Look at van Gogh’s trees. They are absolutely different – you cannot find trees like that in the world of nature. They are totally different; they are van Gogh’s creations, he is living through the trees. They are not like these ordinary trees around you, he has not copied them from nature, he has not copied them from anybody else. If he were a god then he would have created those trees in the world. In the painting he is the god, he is the creator. He is not even imitating the creator of the universe; he is simply being himself. His trees are so high they grow and touch the moon and stars.Somebody asked van Gogh, “What type of trees are these? From where did you get the idea?”Van Gogh said: “I don’t go on getting ideas from anywhere – these are my trees! If I were the creator, my trees would touch the stars, because my trees are desires of the earth, dreams of the earth to touch the stars. My trees are the earth trying to reach, to touch the stars – the hands of the earth, dreams and desires of the earth.” These trees are not imitations. These are van Gogh trees.A creator has something to give to the world, something he is pregnant with. Of course, even for a van Gogh technique is needed, because hands are needed. Even van Gogh cannot paint without hands – if you cut off his hands what will he do? He also needs technique, but technique is just a way to communicate. Technique is just the vehicle, the medium. The technique is not the message, the medium is not the message. The medium is simply a vehicle to carry the message. He has a message; every artist is a prophet – has to be! Every artist is a creator – has to be, he has something to share. Of course, technique is needed. If I have to say something to you, words are needed. But if I am saying only words, then there is no message; then this whole thing is just a chattering. Then I am throwing garbage on others. If words carry my silence, if words carry my wordless message to you, only then is something being said.When something is to be said, it has to be said in words, but that which has to be said is not words. When something has to be painted it has to be painted using colors and brush and canvas, and the whole technique is needed – but the technique is not the message. Through the medium the message is given, but the medium in itself is not enough.A technician has the medium, he may have the perfect medium, but he has nothing to deliver, he has no message. His heart is not overflowing. He is doing something with the hand and with the head, because the learning is in the head, and the know-how, the skill, is in the hand. Head and hand cooperate, but the heart remains aloof, untouched. Then painting will be there, but without a heart. There will be no beat in it, there will be no pulse of life in it, no blood will flow in it; very difficult to see – you can see only if you know the difference within yourself.Take another example, which will be easier to understand. You love a person: you kiss, you hold his or her hand in your hand, you embrace, you make love. All these things can be done to a person you don’t love – exactly the same kiss, exactly the same embrace, the same way of holding hands; the same gestures in making love, the same movements – but you don’t love the person. What will be the difference? – because as far as action is concerned there is no difference: you kiss, and you kiss in the same way, as perfectly the same as possible. The medium is there, but the message is not there. You are skillful, but your heart is not there. The kiss is dead. It is not like a bird on the wing, it is like a dead stone.You can make the same movements while making love, but those movements will be more like yoga exercises. They will not be love. You go to a prostitute; she knows the technique – better than your beloved. She has to know, she is professionally skillful – but you will not get love there. If you meet the prostitute on the street the next day, she will not even recognize you. She will not even say hello, because no relationship exists. It was not a contact, the other person was not there. While making love to you, she may have been thinking about her lover. She was not there! She cannot be; prostitutes have to learn the technique of how not to be there – because the whole thing is so ugly.You cannot sell love, you can sell the body. You cannot sell your heart, you can sell your skill. For a prostitute making love is just a professional thing. She is doing it for the money, and she has to learn how not to be there, so she will think of her lover; she will think of a thousand and one things but not about you – the person who is present there – because to think about the person who is there will create a disturbance. She will not be there…absent! She will make movements, she is skillful in that, but she is not involved.This is the point of this anecdote. You can become so perfect that you can deceive the whole world, but how will you deceive yourself? And if you cannot deceive yourself, you cannot deceive an enlightened master. He will see through all the tricks that you have created around you. He will see that you are not there in your technique; if you are an archer you may hit the target perfectly, but that is not the point. Even a prostitute brings you to orgasm, she hits the target as perfectly as possible, sometimes even more perfectly than your own beloved; but that is not the point – because although a person remains incomplete, a technique can easily become complete.A person remains incomplete unless he becomes enlightened. You cannot expect perfection from a person before enlightenment, but you can expect perfection in a skill. You cannot expect perfection in the being, but in the doing it can be expected, there is no problem about it. An archer can hit the target without ever missing it – and may not be in it. He has learned the technique, he has become a mechanism, a robot. It is simply done by the head and the hand.Now, let us try to penetrate this story: the art of archery. In Japan and in China, meditation has been taught through many skills – that is the difference between Indian meditation and Chinese and Buddhist and Japanese meditation. In India, meditation has been taken away from all action in life. It, in itself, is the total thing. That created a difficulty – that’s why in India, religion by and by died. It created a difficulty, and the difficulty is this: if you make meditation the whole thing, then you become a burden on the society. Then you cannot go to the shop, you cannot go to the office, you cannot work in the factory – meditation becomes your whole life, you simply meditate. In India, millions of people simply existed meditating; they became a burden on the society, and the burden was too much. Some way or other, the society had to stop it.Even now, today, almost ten million sannyasins exist in India. Now they are not respected. Only a few…not even ten in those ten million are respected. They have become just beggars. Because of this attitude – that when you do meditation, when religion becomes your life, then there is only religion, then you drop all life and you renounce – Indian meditation has been, in a way, anti-life. You can tolerate a few persons but you cannot tolerate millions, and if the whole country become meditators, then what will you do? And if meditation cannot be available for each and everybody – that means even religion exists only for the few, even in religion class exists, even God is not available to all? No, that cannot be. God is available to all.In India, Buddhism died. Buddhism died in India, the country of its source, because Buddhist monks became a heavy burden. Millions of Buddhist monks – the country could not tolerate them, it was impossible to support them, they had to disappear. Buddhism completely disappeared; the greatest flowering of Indian consciousness and it disappeared, because you cannot exist like a parasite. A few days, okay; a few years, okay. India tolerated it – it is a great tolerating country, it tolerates everything – but then there is a limit. Thousands of monasteries filled with thousands of monks – it became impossible for this poor country to continue to support them. They had to disappear. In China, in Japan, Buddhism survived, because Buddhism took a change, it passed through a mutation – it dropped the idea of renouncing life. Rather, on the contrary, it made life an object of meditation.So whatsoever you do, you can do meditatively – there is no need to leave it. This was a new growth, this is the base of Zen Buddhism: life is not to be denied. A Zen monk goes on working; he will work in the garden, he will work on the farm, and he lives on his own labor. He is not a parasite, he is a lovely person. He need not bother about the society, and he is more free from the society than the one who has renounced. How can you be free from the society if you have renounced it? Then you become a parasite, not free – and a parasite cannot have freedom.This is my message also: be in the society and be a sannyasin. Don’t become a parasite, don’t become dependent on anybody, because every sort of dependence ultimately will make you a slave. It cannot make you a mukta, it cannot make you an absolutely free person.In Japan, in China, they started to use many things, skills, as an object, as a help, as a support to meditation. Archery is one of them – and archery is beautiful, because it is a very subtle skill, and you need much alertness to be skillful in it.Lieh-Tzu exhibited his skill in archery to Po-Hun Wu-Jen.Po-Hun Wu-Jen was an enlightened master. Lieh-Tzu himself became enlightened later on, this story belongs to the days of his seeking. Lieh-Tzu himself became a master in his own right, but this is a story from before he became enlightened.Lieh-Tzu exhibited… The desire to exhibit is a desire of an ignorant mind. Why do you want to exhibit? Why do you want people to know you? What’s the cause of it? And why do you make it so significant in your life, the exhibition, that people should think that you are somebody very significant, important, extraordinary – why? Because you don’t have a self. You have only an ego – a substitute for the self.Ego is not substantial. Self is substantial, but that is not known to you – and a man cannot live without the feeling of “I.” It is difficult to live without the feeling of “I.” Then from what center will you work and function? You need an “I.” Even if it is false it will be helpful. Without an “I” you will simply disintegrate! Who will be the integrator, the agent within you? Who will integrate you? From what center will you function?Unless you know the self, you will have to live with an ego. Ego means a substitute self, a false self; you don’t know the self, so you create a self of your own. It is a mental creation. And for anything that is false, you have to make supports. Exhibition gives you support.If somebody says, “You are a beautiful person,” you start feeling that you are beautiful. If nobody says so, it will be difficult for you to feel that you are beautiful; you will start suspecting, doubting. If you even say to an ugly person continuously “You are beautiful,” the ugliness will drop from his mind, he will start feeling he is beautiful – because the mind depends on others’ opinions, it accumulates opinions, depends on them.The ego depends on what people say about you: the ego feels good if people feel good about you; if they feel bad, the ego feels bad. If they don’t give you any attention, the supports are withdrawn; if many people give you attention, they feed your ego – that’s why so much attention is asked for continuously.Even a small child asks for attention. He may go on playing silently, but a guest comes…and the mother has said to the child that when the guest comes, he has to be silent: “Don’t create any noise, and don’t create any disturbance” – but when the guest comes, the child has to do something because he also wants attention. And he wants more, because he is accumulating an ego – just growing. He needs more food and he has been told to keep silent – that is impossible! He will have to do something. Even if he has to harm himself, he will fall. Harm can be tolerated, but attention must be paid to him. Everybody must pay attention, he must become the center of attention!Once I stayed in a home. The child there must have been told that while I was there he was not to make any trouble, he had to remain quiet and everything. But the child could not remain quiet, he wanted my attention also, so he started creating noise, running here and there, throwing things. The mother was angry and she told him many times, admonished him: “Listen, I am going to beat you if you go on doing this.” But he wouldn’t listen. Then finally she said to the child, “Listen, go to that chair and sit there now!”From the very gesture the child understood, “Now it is too much and she is going to beat me,” so he went to the chair, sat there on the chair, glared at his mother and said, very meaningfully, “Okay! I am sitting, on the outside – but on the inside I am standing.”From childhood to the final, ultimate day of your death, you go on asking for attention. When a person is dying the only idea that is in his mind, almost always, is, “What will people say when I am dead? How many people will come to give me the last goodbye? What will be published in the newspapers? Is any newspaper going to write an editorial?” These are the thoughts. From the very beginning to the last we look at what others say. It must be a deep need.Attention is food for the ego; only a person who has attained to the self drops that need. When you have a center, your own, you need not ask for others’ attention. Then you can live alone. Even in the crowd you will be alone, even in the world you will be alone, you will move in the crowd, but alone.Right now you cannot be alone. Right now if you go to the Himalayas and move into a dense forest, sitting under a tree, you will wait for somebody to pass by, at least somebody who can carry the message to the world that you have become a great hermit. You will wait, you will open your eyes many times to see – has somebody come yet or not?… Because you have heard the stories that when somebody renounces the world, the whole world comes to his feet, and up to now nobody has reached – no newspaper man, no reporters, no cameramen, nobody! You cannot go to the Himalayas. When the need for attention drops you are in the Himalayas wherever you are.Lieh-Tzu exhibited his skill in archery… Why “exhibit”? He was still concerned with the ego, he was still looking for attention, and he showed his skill to Po-Hun Wu-Jen who was an enlightened master, a very old man. The story says he was almost ninety – very, very old – when Lieh-Tzu went to see him. Why to Po-Hun? – because he was a renowned master, and if he says, “Yes, Lieh-Tzu, you are the greatest archer in the world,” it will be such a vital food that one can live on it for ever and ever.When the bow was drawn to its full length, a cup of water was placed on his elbow and he began to shoot.Even a single drop of water would not come out of the full cup placed on his elbow, and he was shooting!As soon as the first arrow was let fly, a second was already on the string, and then a third one followed. In the meantime he stood unmoved like a statue.Great skill – but Po-Hun Wu-Jen was not impressed, because the moment you want to exhibit you have missed. The very effort to exhibit shows that you have not attained to the self, and if you have not attained to the self you can stand like a statue on the outside – in the inside you will be running, following many, many motivations, desires and dreams. Outside, you may be unmoving; inside, all sorts of movements will be going on there together, simultaneously; in many directions you must be running. Outside you can become a statue – that is not the point.It is said of Bokuju: he went to his master and for two years he sat before his master, near him, just like a statue, a marble statue of Buddha. At the beginning of the third year the master came, gave Bokuju a whack with his staff, and told him: “You stupid! We have a thousand and one Buddha statues here, we don’t need any more!” – because his master lived in a temple where there were one thousand and one Buddha statues. He said, “There are enough! What are you doing here?”Statues are not needed, but a different state of being. It is very easy to sit silently on the outside – what is difficult in it? Just a little training is needed. I have seen one man, very much respected in India, who has been standing for ten years – he even sleeps standing. His legs have become so thick and swollen that now he cannot bend his legs. People respect him very much, but when I went to see him he wanted to see me alone, and then he asked: “Tell me how to meditate. My mind is very much disturbed.”Standing ten years like a statue! – he has not sat, he has not slept, but the problem remains the same: how to meditate, how to become silent inside. Unmoving outside, many movements inside. There may be even more than there are with you, because your energy is divided; much energy is needed for body movements. But a man who stands without moving – his whole energy moves inward in the mind, he becomes inside mad. But people respect him – and that has become an exhibition. Ego is fulfilled but the self is nowhere to be found.Po-Hun Wu-Jen said: “The technique of shooting is fine…”You did well, beautiful!“…but it is not the technique of non-shooting.”This may be a little bit difficult because in Zen they say that the technique of shooting is just the beginning. To know how to shoot is just the beginning; but to know how not to shoot, so that the arrow shoots by itself, is to know the end.Try to understand: when you shoot, the ego is there, the doer. And what is the art of non-shooting? The arrow shoots in that too, it reaches the target in that too, but the target is not the point. It may even miss the target – that is not the point. The point is, inside there should be no doer. The source is the point. When you put an arrow on the bow, you should not be there; you should be as if nonexistent, absolutely empty, and the arrow shoots by itself. No doer inside – then there can be no ego. You are so much one with the whole process that there is no division. You are lost in it. The act and the actor are not two – not even the slight distinction of “I am the doer and this is my action.” It takes many years to attain. And if you don’t understand, it is very difficult to attain it; if you understand the thing, you create the possibility.Herrigel, a German seeker, worked for three years with his master in Japan. He was an archer, when he reached Japan he was already an archer, and a perfect one, because a hundred percent of his targets were hit by the arrow; there was no question about it. When he arrived he was already an archer just like Lieh-Tzu. But the master laughed. He said, “Yes, you are skilled in shooting, but what about non-shooting?”Herrigel said, “What is this non-shooting? – never heard of it.”The master said, “Then I will teach you.”Three years passed; he became more and more skillful and the target became nearer and nearer and nearer. He became absolutely perfect, there was nothing lacking. And he was worried because…and this is the problem for the Western mind: the East looks mysterious, illogical, and the East is. He couldn’t understand this master; was he a madman? …because now he was absolutely perfect, the master could not find a single fault, and he goes on saying, “No!” This is the problem: the gulf between the Eastern and the Western approaches toward life. The master goes on saying no, goes on rejecting.Herrigel started getting frustrated. He said, “But where is the fault? Show me the fault and I can learn how to go beyond it.”The master said, “There is no fault. You are faulty. There is no fault, your shooting is perfect – but that is not the point. You are faulty; when you shoot, you are there, you are too much there. The arrow reaches the target, that’s right! – but that is not the point. Why are you there too much? Why the exhibition? Why the ego? Why can’t you simply shoot without being there?”Herrigel, of course, continued arguing, “How can one shoot without being there? Then who will shoot?” – a very rational approach: then who will shoot?And the master would say, “Just look at me.” And Herrigel also felt that his master had a different quality, but that quality is mysterious and you cannot catch it. He felt it many times: that when the master shoots it is really different, as if he becomes the arrow, the bow, as if the master is there no more; he is completely one, undivided.Then he started asking how to do this. The master said, “This is not a technique. You have to understand, and you have to soak yourself into that understanding more and more, and sink into it.”Three years lost, and then Herrigel understood that this was not possible. Either this man is mad, or it is not possible for a Westerner to attain this non-shooting: I have wasted three years, now it is time to go.So he asked the master straight; the master said, “Yes, you can go.”Herrigel asked, “Can you give me a certificate stating that for three years I learned with you?”The master said, “No, because you have not learned anything. You have been three years with me, but you have not learned anything. All that you have learned you could have learned in Germany also. There was no need to come here.”The day he was to leave he just went to say goodbye, and the master was teaching other disciples, and demonstrating. It was just morning, and the sun was rising and there were birds singing; and Herrigel was now unworried because he had decided, and once the decision is taken the worry disappears. He was not worried. For these three years he was tense in the mind – how to attain? How to fulfill the conditions of this madman? But now there was no worry. He had decided, he was leaving, he had booked; by the evening he would leave and all this nightmare would be left behind. He was just waiting for the master so that when he was finished with his disciples he could say goodbye and a thank you and leave.So he was sitting on a bench. For the first time, suddenly he felt something. He looked at the master. The master was pulling the string of the bow and, as if he was not walking toward the master, he suddenly found himself standing and walking from the bench. He reached the master, took the bow from his hand…the arrow left the bow, and the master said, “Good, fine, you have attained! Now I can give you a certificate.”And Herrigel says: “Yes, that day I attained. I now know the difference. That day something happened by itself – I was not the shooter, I was not there at all. I was just sitting on the bench relaxed. There was no tension, no worry, no thinking about it. I was not concerned.”Remember this, because you are also near a madman. It is very difficult to fulfill my conditions. It is almost impossible – but it is possible also. And it will happen only when you have done everything that you can do, and you come to the point to say goodbye, when you come to the point where you would like to leave me and go away. It will come to you only when you come to the point where you think, “Drop all these meditations and everything. The whole thing is nightmarish.” Then there is no worry. But don’t forget to come to me and say goodbye; otherwise you may leave without attaining.Things start happening when you are finished with effort, when the effort has been done totally – of course, Herrigel was total in his effort; that’s why in three years he could finish the whole thing. If you are partial, fragmentary, your effort is not total, then three lives may not be enough. If you are lukewarm in your effort then you will never come to a point when the whole effort becomes useless.Be total in the effort. Learn the whole technique that is possible to do meditation. Do everything that you can do. Don’t withhold anything. Don’t try to escape from anything; do it wholeheartedly. Then there comes a point, a peak, where no more can be done. When you come to the point where no more can be done and you have done all, and I go on saying, “No, this is not enough!” – my “no” is needed to bring you to the total, to the final, to the peak from where no more doing is possible.And you don’t know how much you can do. You have tremendous energy which you are not using; you are using only a fragment. And if you are using only a fragment, then you will never come to the point where Herrigel reached – I call that the Herrigel point.But he did well. He did whatsoever could be done; on his part he was not saving anything. Then the boiling point comes. At that boiling point is the door. The whole effort becomes so useless, so futile: you are not reaching anywhere through it, so you drop it. A sudden relaxation…and the door opens.Now you can meditate without being a meditator. Now you can meditate without even meditating. Now you can meditate without your ego being there. Now you become the meditation – there is no meditator. The actor becomes the action, the meditator becomes meditation; the archer becomes the bow, the arrow – and the target is not there outside somewhere hanging on a tree. The target is you, inside you – the source.This is what Po-Hun Wu-Jen said. He said, “The technique of shooting is fine…” Of course Lieh-Tzu was a good shot, a perfect archer.“…but it is not the technique of non-shooting. Let us go up to a high mountain and stand on a projecting rock, and then you try and shoot.”What is he bringing Lieh-Tzu to? The outside is perfect but the source is still trembling. The action is perfect but the being is still shaking. The fear is there, death is there; he has not known himself yet. He is not a knower; whatsoever he is doing is just from the head and the hand: the third H is still not in it. Remember always to have all the three H’s together – the hand, the heart and the head. You have learned the three R’s, now learn the three H’s. And always remember that the head is so cunning that it can deceive you, it can give you the feeling, “Okay, all the three H’s are there,” because as a skill develops, as you become more and more technically perfect, the head says, “What else is needed?”Head means the West, heart means the East. The head says, “Everything is okay.” Herrigel is the head, the master is the heart – and the master looks mad. And remember: for the head, the heart always looks mad. The head always says, “You keep quiet. Don’t come in, otherwise you will create a mess. Let me tackle the whole thing. I have learned everything, I know the arithmetic, and I know how to deal with this.” And technically the head is always correct. The heart is technically always wrong, because the heart knows no technique, it knows only the feeling, it knows only the poetry of being. It knows no technique, it knows no grammar, it is a poetic phenomenon.“Let us go to a high mountain,” said the old master – very, very old, ninety years old. “…and stand on a projecting rock and then you try and shoot.” Then we will see.They climbed up a mountain. Standing on a rock that projected over a precipice ten thousand feet high…And remember, that is the difference between the head and the heart: ten thousand feet high is the heart, on a projecting rock overlooking a ten thousand foot deep valley…Whenever you move nearer to the heart you will feel dizzy. With the head, everything is on level ground; it is a highway, concrete. With the heart you move into the forest – no highways, ups and downs, everything mysterious, unknown, hidden in a mist; nothing is clear, it is a labyrinth; it is not a highway, it is more like a puzzle. Ten thousand feet high!Somewhere Nietzsche has reported that once it happened that he suddenly found himself ten thousand feet high, ten thousand feet high from time – as if time is a valley, and he found himself ten thousand feet high and away from time itself. The day he reported this in his diary is the day he went mad. The day he reported this in his diary is the day his madness came in.It is a very dizzy point; one can go mad. The nearer you move toward the heart you will feel you are moving nearer to madness. “What am I doing?” Things get dizzy. The known leaves you behind, the unknown enters. All maps become useless, because no maps exist for the heart; all maps exist for the conscious mind. It is a clear-cut thing; in it, you are secure. That’s why love gives you fear, death gives you fear, meditation gives you fear. Whenever you are moving toward the center, fear grips you.They climbed up a mountain. Standing on a rock that projected over a precipice ten thousand feet high, Po-hun Wu-jen moved backward…Not forward; on this projecting rock ten thousand feet high he moved backward.Po-Hun Wu-Jen moved backward until one third of his feet were overhanging the edge…And backward.He then motioned Lieh-Tzu to come forward.It is said that this ninety-year-old man was almost bent; he couldn’t stand erect, he was very, very old. This bent old man, half of his feet overhanging the edge – not even looking that way, backward.He then motioned Lieh-Tzu to come forward. That is where I am standing and calling you to come forward.Lieh-Tzu fell down on the ground…He would not come near him. Wherever he was standing, far away from the projecting precipice, Lieh-Tzu fell down on the ground.The very idea of coming closer to this old madman who is just standing, overhanging death; any moment he will fall and will not be found ever……with perspiration flowing down to his heels.Lieh-Tzu fell down on the ground with perspiration flowing down to his heels. Remember, first perspiration comes to the head. When the fear starts, first you perspire on the head; the heels are the last thing. When fear enters so deep in you that not only is the head perspiring, but the heels are perspiring, then the whole being is filled with fear and trembling. Lieh-Tzu could not stand – he could not stand even the idea of coming nearer to the old master.Said Po-Hun Wu-Jen: “The perfect man soars up above the blue sky, or dives down to the yellow springs, or wanders all over the eight limits of the world, yet shows no sign of change in his spirit.”“Lieh-Tzu, so much? To the very heels? And why have you fallen there on the ground, dazed? Why this change in spirit? Why are you shaking so much? Why this trembling? What is the fear? – because a perfect man has no fear!”Perfection is fearlessness…because a perfect man knows there is no death. Even if this old Po-Hun Wu-Jen falls, he knows he cannot really fall; even if the body shatters into millions of pieces and nobody can find it again, he knows he cannot die. He will remain as he is. Only something on the periphery will disappear; the center remains, remains always as it is.Death is not for the center. The cyclone is only on the periphery, the cyclone never reaches the center. Nothing ever reaches the center. The perfect man is centered, he is rooted in his being. He is fearless. He is not unafraid – no! He is not a brave man – no! He is simply fearless. A brave man is one who has fear, but goes against his fear; and a coward is one who also has fear, but goes with his fear. They don’t differ, the brave and cowards, they don’t differ basically, they both have fears. The brave is one who goes on in spite of the fear, the coward is one who follows his fear. But a perfect man is neither; he is simply fearless. He is neither a coward, nor is he brave. He simply knows that death is a myth, death is a lie – the greatest lie; death does not exist.Remember, for a perfect man death does not exist – only life, or godliness, exists. For you, godliness does not exist, only death exists. The moment you feel deathlessness you have felt the divine. The moment you feel deathlessness you have felt the very source of life.“The perfect man soars up above the blue sky, or dives down to the yellow springs, or wanders all over the eight limits of the world, yet shows no sign of change in his spirit.” Change may happen on the periphery but in his spirit there is no change. Inside he remains unmoving. Inside he remains eternally the same.“But you betray a sign of trepidation, and your eyes are dazed, Lieh-Tzu. How can you expect to hit the target?”Because if you are trembling within, howsoever exactly you hit the target, it cannot be exact because the trembling inside will make your hands tremble. It may be invisible, but it will be there. For all outward purposes you may have hit the target, but for inward purposes you have missed. How can you hit the target?So the basic thing is not to hit the target, the basic thing is to attain a non-trembling being. Then whether you hit the target or not is secondary. That is for children to decide, and child’s play.This is the difference between the art of shooting and the art of non-shooting. It is possible that this master, old master, may miss the target, it is possible; but still, he knows the art of non-shooting. Lieh-Tzu will never miss the target, but still he has missed the real target, he has missed himself.So there are two points: the source from where the arrow moves, and the end where the arrow reaches. Religion is always concerned with the source from where all the arrows move. It is not the point where they reach; the basic thing is from where they move – because if they move from a non-trembling being they will attain the target. They have already attained, because in the source is the end, in the beginning is the end, in the seed is the tree, in the alpha is the omega.So the basic thing is not to be worried about the result; the essential thing is to think, to meditate, about the source. Whether my gesture is a perfect love gesture or not is not the point. Whether love is flowing or not, that is the point. If love is there it will find its own technique, if love is there it will find its own skill. But if love is not there, and you are skilled in the technique, the technique cannot find its love – remember this.The center will always find its periphery, but the periphery cannot find the center. The being will always find its morality, its character, but the character will not find its being. You cannot move from without toward within. There is only one way: energy flows from within toward without. The river cannot move if there is no source, no originating source. Then the whole thing will be false. If you have the source, the river will move, and it will attain to the ocean – there is no problem. Wheresoever it goes, it will reach to the target. If the source is overflowing, you will attain; and if you are simply playing with techniques and toys, you will miss.In the West particularly, technology has become so important that it has entered even in human relationship. Because you know too much about techniques, you are trying to convert everything into technology. That’s why books, thousands of books, are published every year about love – the technique, how to attain orgasm, how to make love. Even love has become a technological problem and orgasm a technological thing, it has to be solved by technicians. If love has also become a technological problem then what is left? Then nothing is left, then the whole life is just a technology. Then you have to know the know-how – but you miss; you miss the real target which is the source.Technique is good as far as it goes, but it is secondary. It is nonessential. The essential is the source and one must first look for the source – and then the technique can come. It is good that you learn the technique, it is good! People come to me and I see they are always concerned with technique. They ask how to meditate. They don’t ask, “What is meditation?” “How?” – they ask how to attain peace. They never ask, “What is peace?” As if they already know.Mulla Nasruddin killed his wife and then there was a case in the court. The judge said to Nasruddin, “Nasruddin, you go on insisting again and again that you are a peace-loving man. What type of peace-loving man are you? You killed your wife!”Nasruddin said, “Yes, I repeat again that I am a peace-loving man. You don’t know: when I killed my wife such peace descended on her face, and for the first time in my house there was peace all over. And I still insist that I am a peace-loving man.”Technique kills. It can give you a peace which belongs to death, not to life. Method is dangerous, because you may forget the source completely and you may become obsessed with the method. Methods are good if you remain alert and you remain conscious that they are not the end, they are only the means. Too much obsession with them is very harmful, because you can forget the source completely.This is the point. This old master, Po-Hun Wu-Jen, showed Lieh-Tzu one of the secrets. Lieh-Tzu himself became an enlightened man, he himself became what this old man was at that moment: backward, moving toward the precipice ten thousand feet high and half his feet hanging over – and a very old body, ninety years old, and still no trembling came to the old man; not a slight change, not even a tremor! Inside he must have been totally fearless. Inside he must have been rooted, grounded in himself, centered. Remember this always, because there is always a possibility of becoming a victim of techniques and methods.The ultimate comes to you only when all techniques have been dropped. The ultimate happens to you only when there is no method, because only then are you open. The ultimate will knock at your door only when you are not there. When you are absent, you are ready, because when you are absent only then is there a space for the ultimate to enter into you. Then you become a womb. If you are there, you are always too much; there is not even a slight gap, space, for the ultimate to enter into you – and the ultimate is vast. You have to be so vastly empty, so infinitely empty – only then is there a possibility of the meeting.That’s why I go on saying you will never be able to meet God, because when God comes you will not be there. And as long as you are, he cannot come. You are the barrier.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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While Tokai was a visitor at a certain temple, a fire started under the kitchen floor.A monk rushed into Tokai’s bedroom, shouting: “A fire, master, a fire!” “Oh?” said Tokai, sitting up. “Where?”“Where?” exclaimed the monk. “Why, under the kitchen floor – get up at once.”“The kitchen, eh?” said the master drowsily. “Well, tell you what, when it reaches the passageway, come back and let me know.”Tokai was snoring again in no time.The whole ignorance of mind consists in not being in the present. Mind is always moving: into the future, or into the past. Mind is never here and now. It cannot be. The very nature of mind is such that it cannot be in the present, because mind has to think, and in the present moment there is no possibility to think. You have to see, you have to listen, you have to be present, but you cannot think.The present moment is so narrow that there is no space to think about. You can be, but thoughts cannot be. How can you think? If you think, it means it is already past, the moment has gone. Or you can think if it has not come yet, it is in the future.For thinking, space is needed, because thinking is like a walk – a walk of the mind, a journey. Space is needed. You can walk into the future, you can walk into the past, but how can you walk in the present? The present is so close, really not even close – the present is you. Past and future are parts of time; the present is you, it is not part of time. It is not a tense: it is not at all a part of time, it doesn’t belong to time. The present is you; past and future are out of you.The mind cannot exist in the present. If you can be here, totally present, mind will disappear. Mind can desire, can dream – dream a thousand and one thoughts. It can move to the very end of the world, it can move to the very beginning of the world, but it cannot be here and now – that is impossible for it. The whole ignorance consists in not knowing this. And then you worry about the past, which is no more – it is absolutely stupid! You cannot do anything about the past. How can you do anything about the past which is no more? Nothing can be done, it has already gone; but you worry about it, and worrying about it, you waste yourself.Or you think about the future, and dream and desire. Have you ever observed? – the future never comes. It cannot come. Whatsoever comes is always the present, and the present is absolutely different from your desires, your dreams. That’s why whatsoever you desire and dream and imagine and plan for and worry about, never happens. But it wastes you. You go on deteriorating. You go on dying. Your energies go on moving in a desert, not reaching any goal, simply dissipating. And then death knocks at your door. And remember: death never knocks in the past, and death never knocks in the future; death knocks in the present.You cannot say to death, “Tomorrow!” Death knocks in the present. Life also knocks in the present. God also knocks in the present. Everything that is always knocks in the present, and everything that is not is always part of past or future.Your mind is a false entity because it never knocks in the present. Let this be the criterion of reality: whatsoever is, is always here and now; whatsoever is not is never a part of the present. Drop all that which never knocks in the now. And if you move in the now, a new dimension opens – the dimension of eternity.Past and future move in a horizontal line: Just like A moves to B, B to C, C to D, in a line. Eternity moves vertically: A moves deeper into the A, higher into the A, not to B; A goes on moving deeper and higher, both ways. It is vertical. The present moment moves vertically, time moves horizontally. Time and present never meet. And you are the present: your whole being moves vertically. The depth is open, the height is open, but you are moving horizontally with the mind. That’s how you miss God.People come to me and they ask how to meet God, how to see, how to realize. That is not the point. The point is: how are you missing him? – because he is here and now, knocking at your door. Otherwise it cannot be! If he is real, he must be here and now. Only unreality is not here and now. He is already at your door – but you are not there. You are never at home. You go on wandering into millions of words, but you are never at home. There you are never found, and God comes to meet you there, reality surrounds you there, but never finds you there. The real question is not how you should meet God; the real question is how you should be at home, so that when God knocks he finds you there. It is not a question of your finding him, it is a question of him finding you.So it is a real meditation. A man of understanding does not bother about God or that type of matter, because he is not a philosopher. He simply tries how to be at home, how to stop worrying and thinking about the future and the past, how to settle here and now, how not to move from this moment. Once you are in this moment, the door opens. This moment is the door!I was staying once with a Catholic priest and his family. It happened one evening that I was sitting with the family: the priest, his wife, and their young child who was playing in the corner of the room with a few blocks, making something. Then suddenly the child said, “Now everybody be quiet, because I have made a church. The church is ready, now be silent.”The father was very happy that the boy understood that in a church one has to be quiet. To encourage him he said, “Why is it one needs to be quiet in a church?” “Because,” said the boy, “the people are asleep.”The people are really asleep, not only in the church, but on the whole earth, everywhere. They are asleep in the church because they come asleep from outside. They go out of the church, they move in sleep – everybody is a sleepwalker, a somnambulist. And this is the nature of sleep: that you are never here and now, because if you are here and now you will be awake!Sleep means you are in the past, sleep means you are in the future. Mind is the sleep, mind is a deep hypnosis – fast asleep. And you try many ways, but nothing seems to help you – because anything done in your sleep will not be of much help, because if you do it in sleep it will not be more than a dream.I have heard that once a man came to a psychoanalyst, a very absentminded psychoanalyst – and everybody is absentminded because mind is absent-mindedness, not at home; that’s what absent-mindedness means. A man went to this very absentminded psychoanalyst and told him. “I am in much trouble and I have knocked at the doors of all types of doctors but nobody could help me, and they say that nothing is wrong. But I am in trouble. I snore so loudly in my sleep that I wake myself up. And this happens so many times in the night: the snoring is so loud that I wake myself up!”Without exactly listening to what this man was saying, the psychoanalyst said, “This is nothing. A simple thing can change the whole matter. You simply sleep in another room.”You understand? – this is exactly what everybody is doing. You go on changing rooms, but sleep continues, snoring continues, because you cannot leave it in another room. It is not something separate from you; it is you, it is your mind, it is your whole accumulated past, your memory, your knowledge – what Hindus call samskaras, all the conditionings that make your mind. You go in another room, they follow you there.You can change your religion: you can become a Christian from a Hindu, you can become a Hindu from a Christian – you change rooms. Nothing will happen out of it. You can go on changing your masters – from one master to another, from one ashram to another: nothing will be of much help. You are changing rooms; and the basic thing is not to change rooms but to change you. The room is not concerned with your snoring; the room is not the cause, you are the cause. This is the first thing to be understood; then you will be able to follow this beautiful story.Your mind, as it is, is asleep. But you cannot feel how it is asleep because you look quite awake, with open eyes. But have you ever seen anything? You look wide awake with your open ears, but have you ever heard anything?You are listening to me and you say “Yes!” But are you listening to me or listening to your mind inside? Your mind is constantly commenting. I am here, talking to you, but you are not there listening to me. Your mind constantly comments, “Yes, it is right, I agree”; “I don’t agree, this is absolutely false”; your mind is standing there, constantly commenting. Through this commentary, this fog of the mind, I cannot penetrate you. Understanding comes when you are not interpreting, when you simply listen.In a small school the teacher found that one boy was not listening. He was very lazy and fidgety, restless. So she asked: “Why? Are you in some difficulty? Are you not able to hear me?”The boy said, “Hearing is okay, listening is the problem.”He made a really subtle distinction. He said, “Hearing is okay, I am hearing you; but listening is the problem” – because listening is more than hearing; listening is hearing with full awareness. Just hearing is okay, sounds are all around you – you hear, but you are not listening. You have to hear, because the sounds will go on knocking at your eardrum; you have to hear. But you are not there to listen, because listening means a deep attention, a rapport – not a constant commentary inside, not saying yes or no, not agreeing, disagreeing, because if you agree and disagree, in that moment how can you listen to me?When you agree, what I said is already past; when you disagree, it is already gone. And in the moment you nod your head inside, say no or yes, you are missing – and this is a constant thing inside you.You cannot listen. And the more knowledge you have the more difficult listening becomes. Listening means innocent attention – you simply listen. There is no need to be in agreement or disagreement. I am not in search of your agreement or disagreement. I am not asking for your vote, I am not seeking your following, I am not in any way trying to convince you.What do you do when a parrot starts screeching in a tree? Do you comment? Yes, then too you say, “Disturbing.” You cannot listen even to a parrot. When the wind is blowing through the trees and there’s the rustling noise, do you listen to it? Sometimes, maybe; it catches you unawares. But then too you comment, “Yes, beautiful!”Now watch: whenever you comment, you fall asleep. The mind has come in, and with the mind the past and future enter. The vertical line is lost – and you become horizontal. The moment mind enters you become horizontal. You miss eternity.Simply listen. There is no need to say yes or no. There is no need to be convinced or unconvinced. Simply listen, and the truth will be revealed to you – or the untruth! If somebody is talking nonsense, if you simply listen the nonsense will be revealed to you – without any commentary from the mind. If somebody is speaking the truth, it will be revealed to you. Truth or untruth is not an agreement or a disagreement of your mind, it is a feeling. When you are in total rapport, you feel, and you simply feel that it is true or it is untrue – and the thing is finished! No worrying about it, no thinking about it! What can thinking do?If you have been brought up in a certain way, if you are a Christian, or a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, and I am saying something which happens to agree with your upbringing, you will say yes. If it doesn’t happen so, you will say no. Are you here, or is only the upbringing here? And upbringing is just accidental.The mind cannot find what is true, the mind cannot find what is untrue. The mind can reason about it, but all reasoning is based on conditioning. If you are a Hindu you reason in one way, if you are a Mohammedan you reason in a different way. And every type of conditioning rationalizes. It is not really reasoning: you rationalize.Mulla Nasruddin became very aged; he attained one hundred years. A reporter came to see him, because he was the oldest citizen around those parts. The reporter said, “Nasruddin, there are a few questions I would like to ask. One is, do you think you will be able to live a hundred years more?”Nasruddin said, “Of course, because a hundred years ago I was not as strong as I am now.” A hundred years before, he was a child, just born, so he said: “A hundred years ago I was not as strong as I am now, and if that small child, helpless, weak, could survive for a hundred years, why shouldn’t I?”This is rationalization. It looks logical, but it misses something. It is a wish-fulfillment. You would like to survive longer, so you create a rationale around it: you believe in the immortality of the soul. You have been brought up in a culture which says that the soul is eternal. If somebody says, “Yes, the soul is eternal,” you nod, you say, “Yes, that’s right.” But that’s not right – or wrong. You say yes because it is a deep-rooted conditioning in you. There are others: half the world believes – Hindus, Buddhists and Jainas believe – that the soul is eternal, and there are many rebirths. And half the world – Christians, Mohammedans, Jews, – believe the soul is not eternal and there is no rebirth, only one life and then the soul dissolves into the ultimate.Half the world believes this, half the world believes that, and they all have their own arguments, they all have their own rationalizations. Whatsoever you want to believe, you will believe, but deep down your desire will be the cause of your belief, not reason. Mind looks rational, but it is not. It is a rationalizing process: whatsoever you want to believe, the mind says yes. And where does that wanting come from? It comes from your upbringing.Listening is a totally different affair, it has a totally different quality to it. When you listen, you cannot be a Hindu, or a Mohammedan, or a Jaina, or a Christian. When you listen you cannot be a theist or an atheist; when you listen you can’t listen through the skin of your “isms” or scriptures – you have to put them all aside; you simply listen.I’m not asking you to agree, don’t be afraid! Simply listen, not bothered by agreement or disagreement, and then a rapport happens.If the truth is there, suddenly you are drawn – your whole being is drawn as if by a magnet. You melt and merge into it, and your heart feels “This is true,” without any reason, without any arguments, without any logic. This is why religions say reason is not the way to the divine. They say it is faith, they say it is trust.What is trust? Is it a belief? No, because belief belongs to the mind. Trust is a rapport. You simply put aside all your defense measures, your armor; you become vulnerable. You listen to something, and you listen so totally that the feeling arises in you as to whether it is true or not. If it is untrue, you feel it. Why does this happen? If it is true, you feel it. Why does this happen?It happens because truth resides in you. When you are totally non-thinking your inner truth can feel wherever truth is – because the same always feels the same: it fits. Suddenly everything fits, everything falls in a pattern and the chaos becomes a cosmos. The words fall in line…and a poetry arises. Then everything simply fits.If you are in rapport, and the truth is there, your inner being simply agrees with it – but it is not an agreement. You feel a tuning. You become one. This is trust. If something is wrong, it simply falls from you – you never pay it a second thought, you never look at it a second time: there is no meaning in it. You never say, “This is untrue”; it simply doesn’t fit – you move! If it fits, it becomes your home. If it doesn’t fit, you move.Through listening comes trust. But listening needs hearing plus attention. And you are fast asleep – how can you be attentive? But even fast asleep a fragment of attention remains floating in you; otherwise there would be no way. You may be in a prison, but possibilities always exist – you can come out. Difficulties may be there, but it is not impossible, because prisoners have been known to escape. A Buddha escapes, a Mahavira escapes, a Jesus escapes – they were also prisoners like you. Prisoners have escaped before – prisoners have always escaped. There remains somewhere a door, a possibility; you simply have to search for it.If it is impossible, if there is no possibility, then there is no problem. The problem arises because the possibility is there – you are a little alert. If you were absolutely unalert, then there would be no problem. If you were in a coma, then there would be no problem. But you are not in a coma; you are asleep – but not totally. A gap, a leakage exists. You have to find within yourself that possibility of being attentive.Sometimes you become attentive. If somebody comes to hit you, the attention comes. If you are in danger, if you are passing through a forest at night and it is dark, you walk with a different quality of attention. You are awake; thinking is not there. You are fully in rapport with the situation, with whatsoever is happening. Even if a leaf creates a sound you are fully alert. You are just like a hare, or a deer – who is always awake. Your ears are bigger, your eyes are wide open, you are feeling what is happening all around because danger is there. In danger your sleep is less, your awareness is more, the gestalt changes. If somebody puts a dagger to your heart and is just going to push it in, in that moment there is no thinking. Past disappears, future disappears: you are here and now.The possibility is there. If you make the effort you will catch the one ray that exists in you, and once you catch the one ray, the sun is not very far; then through the ray you can reach the sun – the ray becomes the path.So remember: find attention, let it become a continuity in you twenty-four hours a day, whatsoever you do. Eat, but try to be attentive: eat with awareness. Walk, but walk with awareness. Love, but love fully aware. Try!It cannot become total just in one day, but even if one ray is caught, you will feel a deep fulfillment – because the quality is the same whether you attain to one ray or the whole sun. Whether you taste a drop of water from the ocean or the whole ocean, the salty taste is the same – and the taste becomes your satori, the glimpse.Here, listening to me, be alert. Whenever you feel that you have gone again into sleep, bring yourself back: just shake a little and bring yourself back. When walking on the street, if you feel you are walking in a sleep, shake a little, give a little shake to the whole body. Be alert. This alertness will remain only for a few moments; again you will lose it, because you have lived in a sleep for so long, it has become such a habit, that you cannot see how you can go against it.I was traveling once from Kolkata to Mumbai in a plane, and one child was creating a great nuisance, running from one corner of the aisle to the other, disturbing everybody – and then the stewardess came with tea and coffee. The boy ran into her, and everything was a mess. Then the mother of the child said, “Now listen, I have told you many times – why don’t you go outside and play there?”Just old habit. She was sitting just by my side and was not aware of what she had said. I listened as she spoke, and she never became alert to what she had said. Only the child made her alert. He said, “What do you mean? If I go out I am finished!”A child is more attentive of course, because he has less habits. A child is more alert because he has less armor around him, he is less imprisoned. That’s why all religions say that when a man becomes a sage he has some quality of a child: the innocence. Then habits drop…because habits are your prison, and sleep is the greatest habit.Now, try to enter in this parable with me.While Tokai was a visitor at a certain temple, a fire started under the kitchen floor.A monk rushed into Tokai’s bedroom, shouting, “A fire, master, a fire!” “Oh?” said Tokai, sitting up. “Where?” “Where?” exclaimed the monk. “Why, under the kitchen floor – get up at once.” “The kitchen, eh?” said the master drowsily. “Well, tell you what, when it reaches the passageway, come back and let me know.”Tokai was snoring again in no time.Tokai was a great Zen master, enlightened, living in total awareness, and whenever you live in total awareness you live moment to moment. You cannot plan, even for the next moment you cannot plan – because who knows, the next moment may never come! And how can you plan it beforehand, because who knows what the situation will be in the next moment? And if you plan too much you may miss it, the freshness of it.Life is such a flux, nothing remains the same, everything moves. Heraclitus has said that you cannot step twice in the same river – how can you plan? By the time you are stepping the second time, much water has flowed, it is not the same river. Planning is possible if the past repeats itself. But the past never repeats itself, repetition never happens – even if you see something repeating itself it is just because you cannot see the whole.Heraclitus also says, every day the sun is new. Of course, you will say, it is the same sun – but it cannot be the same, there is no possibility of its being the same. Much has changed: the whole sky is different, the whole pattern of stars is different, the sun itself has become older. Now scientists say that within four million years the sun will die, its death is coming near – because the sun is an alive phenomenon and it is very old, it has to die.Suns are born, they live – and they die. Four million years for us is very long; for the sun it is just nothing, it is as if the next moment it is going to die. And when the sun dies, the whole solar family will disappear, because the sun is the source. Every day the sun is dying, and becoming older and older and older – it cannot be the same. Every day energy is lost – a vast amount of energy is being thrown in the rays. The sun is less every day, exhausted. It is not the same, it cannot be the same.And when the sun rises, it rises upon a different world, and the onlooker is also not the same. Yesterday you may have been filled with love; then your eyes were different, and the sun of course looked different. You were so filled with love that a certain quality of poetry was around you, and you looked through that poetry – the sun may have looked like a god, as it looked to the seers of the Vedas. They called the sun, “God” – they must have been filled with too much poetry. They were poets, in love with existence; they were not scientists. They were not in search of what matter was, they were in search of what the mood was. They worshipped the sun. They must have been very happy and blissful people, because you can worship only when you feel a blessing; you can worship only when you feel that your whole life is a blessing.Yesterday you may have been a poet, today you may not be a poet at all – because every moment the river is flowing within you. You are also changing. Yesterday things were fitting into each other, today everything is a mess: you are angry, you are depressed, you are sad. How can the sun be the same when the onlooker has changed? Everything changes, so a man of understanding never exactly plans for the future, cannot – but he is more ready than you to meet the future. This is the paradox. You plan, but you are not so ready.In fact, planning means that you feel so inadequate, that’s why you plan – otherwise, why plan? A guest is coming, and you plan what you are going to say to him. What nonsense! When the guest comes can’t you be spontaneous? But you are afraid, you don’t believe in yourself, you have no trust; you plan, you go through a rehearsal. Your life is an acting, it is not the real thing, because a rehearsal is needed only in acting. And remember: when you are going through a rehearsal, whatsoever happens will be an acting, not the real thing. The guest has not arrived and you are planning already what you will say, how you will garland him, how you are going to respond; you are already saying things. The guest, in the mind, has already arrived – you are talking to him. In fact, by the time the guest arrives you will be fed up with him. In fact, by the time the guest arrives he has already been with you too much – you are bored, and whatsoever you say will not be true and authentic. It will not come from you, it will come from the memory. It will not pop up from your existence, it will come from the rehearsal that you have been doing. It will be false – and a meeting will not be possible, because how can a false man meet? And it may be the same with your guest: he was also planning, he also is fed up with you already. He has talked too much and now he would like to be silent, and whatsoever he says will be out of the rehearsal.So wherever two persons meet, there are four persons meeting – at least; more are possible. Two real ones are in the background, two false ones meeting each other and encountering. Everything is false, because it comes out of planning. Even when you love a person you plan, and go through a rehearsal – all the movements that you are going to make, how you are going to kiss, the gestures – and everything becomes false. Why don’t you trust yourself? When the moment comes, why don’t you trust your spontaneity? Why can’t you be real?The mind cannot trust the moment; it is always afraid, that’s why it plans. Planning means fear. It is fear that plans, and by planning you miss everything – everything that is beautiful and true, everything that is divine, you miss. Nobody has ever reached God with a plan, nobody can ever reach.While Tokai was a visitor at a certain temple, a fire started under the kitchen floor.The first thing: fire creates fear, because it is death. And if even fire cannot create fear, nothing can create fear. But even fire cannot create fear when you have encountered death, when you know that death doesn’t exist; otherwise, the moment you hear the word Fire! you are in a panic. No need for there to be a real fire, just somebody coming running here and saying, “Fire!” and you will be in a panic. Somebody may jump out of it, and may kill himself – and there was no fire. Just the word fire can give you panic.You live with words. Somebody says “Lemon” – and juice starts flowing in your mouth. Somebody says, “Fire!” – and you are here no more, you have already escaped. You live with words, not with realities. You live with symbols, not with realities. And all symbols are artifices, they are not real.I have heard, overheard really:An old woman was teaching a younger one how to cook a certain thing. She was explaining, and then she said, “Six glugs of molasses.” The younger woman said, “Six what?” The older woman said: “Six glugs.”The younger woman was puzzled and asked again, “I’ve never heard of it before. What is this ‘glug’?”The older woman said, “My God! You don’t know such a simple thing? Then it’s difficult to teach you cookery!”The younger one said, “Be kind and just tell me what this ‘glug’ is.”The older woman said: “You tip the jug; when it sounds ‘glug’ that is one. Five more like it – six glugs!”But the whole of language is just like that. No word really means anything. The meaning is given by us by mutual contract. That is why three thousand languages exist in the world, but three thousand realities are not there. The whole of language is just like “glug.”You can create your own private language, there is no problem. Lovers always create their private language: they start using words – nobody understands what they are saying, but they understand. Words are symbolic. The meaning is given, the meaning is not really there. When somebody says, “Fire!” there is no fire in the word, there cannot be. When somebody says God, in the word god there is no godliness – cannot be. The word god is not godliness. When somebody says love, the word love is not love.When somebody says, “I love you,” don’t be deceived by the words. But you will be deceived, because nobody looks at reality; people look at words only. When somebody says, “I love you,” you think: Yes, he loves me; or: Yes, she loves me. You are getting into a trap and you will be in difficulty. Just look at the reality of this man or this woman. Don’t listen to the words, listen to the reality. Be in rapport with the reality of this person and understanding will arise as to whether whatsoever he is saying is only words, or whether it carries some content also. And depend on the content, never depend on the word; otherwise sooner or later you will be frustrated. So many lovers are frustrated in the world – ninety percent! The word is the cause. They believed in the word and they didn’t look at the reality.Remain unclouded by the words. Keep your eyes clean from the words. Don’t allow them to settle in your eyes and in your ears; otherwise you will live in a false world. Words are false in themselves; they become meaningful only if some truth exists in the heart from where the words are coming.While Tokai was a visitor at a certain temple, a fire started under the kitchen floor. Fire is fear, fire is death – but not the word fire.A monk rushed into Tokai’s bedroom, shouting: “A fire, master, a fire!”He was excited, death was near.“Oh?” said Tokai, sitting up. “Where?”You cannot excite a master, even if death is there, because excitement belongs to the mind. And you cannot surprise a master, even if death is there, because surprise also belongs to the mind. Why can’t you surprise a master? – because he never expects anything. How can you surprise a man who never expects anything? Because you expect, and then something else happens, that’s why you are surprised. If you are walking on the street and you see a man coming, and suddenly he becomes a horse, you will be surprised, amazed: what has happened? But even this will not surprise a man like Tokai, because he knows life is a flux – everything is possible: a man can even become a horse, a horse can become a man. This is what has been already happening many times: many horses have become men, and many men have become horses. Life moves on!A master remains without any expectation, you cannot surprise him. To him everything is possible, and he is not closed to any possibility. He lives in the moment totally open; whatsoever happens, happens. He has no plan against reality, no protection. He accepts.If you expect something, you cannot accept. If you accept everything, you cannot expect. If you accept and you don’t expect, you cannot be surprised – and you cannot be excited. Excitement is a fever, it is a disease; when you get excited your whole being is feverish, you are hot. You may like it sometimes because there are two types of fever: one that comes out of pleasure and one that comes out of pain. The one that you like you call pleasure, but it is also a fever, excitement; and the one that you dislike you call pain, disease, illness – but both are excitements. And try to observe: they go on changing into each other.You love a woman; you get excited and you feel a certain pleasure, or you interpret it as pleasure. But let that woman remain there and sooner or later the excitement goes. On the contrary, a boredom creeps in, you feel fed up, you would like to escape, you would like to be alone. And if the woman still continues, now the negative enters. You are not only bored, you are in a negative fever now; you feel ill, you feel nauseous.Look: your life is just like a rainbow. It carries all the colors – and you go on moving from one color to another. It carries all the extremes, all the opposites: from pleasure you move to pain, from pain you move to pleasure. If the pain goes on too long, you may even start getting a certain pleasure out of it. If the pleasure lasts too long, you will certainly get pain out of it. Both are states of excitement, both are fevers. A man of understanding is without fever. You cannot excite him, you cannot surprise him. Even if death is there he will coolly ask, “Where?” And this question “Where?” is very beautiful, because a man of enlightenment is always concerned with the here. He is not concerned with there, he is not concerned with then, he is concerned only with now. Now, here, is his reality; then, there, is your reality.“A fire, master, a fire!” “Oh?” said Tokai, sitting up, “Where?” He wants to know: there or here.“Where?” exclaimed the monk.Because he couldn’t believe it, that when there is a fire somebody could ask such a stupid question. One should simply jump out of the window and get out of the house; this is no time for subtle arguments.“Where?” exclaimed the monk. “Why, under the kitchen floor – get up at once.” “The kitchen, eh?” said the master drowsily. “Well, tell you what, when it reaches the passageway, come back and let me know.”When it reaches here, then come and let me know. If it is there, it is none of my concern. The anecdote is very revealing. Anything there is not a concern; only when it is here does it become real.A master cannot plan for the future. Of course he is ready: whatsoever happens, he will respond – but he cannot go through a rehearsal, and he cannot plan…and he cannot move before the reality has come. He will say, “Let the reality come, let the moment knock at my door, and then we will see.” Unburdened with rehearsals, plans, he is always spontaneous – and whatsoever he does with his spontaneity is always right.Remember this criterion always: whatsoever comes out of your spontaneity is right. There exists no other criterion of right and wrong. Whatsoever comes out of the moment, your alive response to it is good. Nothing else is good – there exists no other criterion for good and bad.But you are afraid. Because of your fear you create morality. Because of your fear you create distinctions between right and wrong. But don’t you see that sometimes a situation is different, and the right becomes wrong and the wrong becomes right? But you remain dead. You don’t look at the situation. You simply go on following your right and wrong and the conceptions around it. That’s why you become a misfit. Even trees are wiser than you – they are not misfits. Even animals are better than you – they are not misfits. Even clouds are worthier than you – they are not misfits. The whole of existence fits together; only man is a misfit. Where has he gone wrong?He has gone wrong with his mental distinctions – this is right and that is wrong – and in life such fixed things cannot be useful. Something is wrong this moment, next moment it becomes right. Something is right this moment, next moment it is right no more. What will you do? You will be constantly in a state of fear and worry, an inner tension.The foundational teaching of all those who have known is: be alert and spontaneous, and whatsoever happens out of your spontaneous alertness is right, and whatsoever happens out of your sleep, unconsciousness, is wrong. Whatsoever you do unconsciously is wrong – whatsoever you do with awareness is right. Right and wrong is not a distinction between objects; right and wrong is a distinction between consciousnesses.For example, there exists a Jaina sect in India: terapanth. Mahavira said, “Don’t interfere in anybody’s karma. Let him fulfill it” – a beautiful thing. He says really the exact thing that hippies are now saying in the West: “Do your own thing”. From the other side Mahavira says the same thing: “Don’t interfere with anybody’s thing. Let him do his karma, let him fulfill it. Don’t interfere. Interference is violence; when you interfere with somebody’s karma you are doing a violence, you are throwing that man from his own path. Don’t interfere.” A beautiful thing!But how things can go wrong, even beautiful things! The terapanth, this one sect of the Jainas, concluded that if somebody is dying by the side of the road you simply go on, you don’t touch him, you don’t give him any medicine, you don’t give him water if he is crying, “I am thirsty!” Don’t give him water because – don’t interfere with anybody’s karma. Logical! – because if he is suffering because of his past karmas, then who are you to interfere? He must have accumulated a certain karma to suffer in this life from thirst and die from it. Who are you to give him water? You simply neglect him, you go on.I was talking to one of the leaders of the terapanth monks, and I told him, “And have you ever considered the possibility that it may be your karma to give him water?”You are not interfering with his karma, but you are interfering with your own. If the desire arises to help him, what will you do? The desire shows that it is your karma to give him water. If you resist that desire and go on because of the principle, you are not being spontaneous – so what to do? If you make dead principles heavy on your head, you will always be in trouble, because life does not believe in your principles; life has its own laws. But they are not your principles and your philosophies.Be spontaneous. If you feel like helping, don’t bother about what Mahavira has said. If you feel like helping, help. Do your thing. If you don’t feel like helping, don’t help. Whatsoever Jesus may have said, that by helping people you will help me – don’t bother, because sometimes the help may be dangerous. A man is ready to kill somebody, and he says to you, “Give me water, because I am feeling so thirsty, and I cannot go on this long journey to kill that man” – what will you do?… Because if you give him water, you help him in murder. Decide! – but never decide before the moment because all such decisions will go false. One never knows what type of situation will be there.In old Indian scriptures there is a story: A murderer came to a crossroads where a monk was sitting meditating. He was following a man. He had already hit the man hard but he escaped, the victim escaped, and he was following him. At the crossroads he was puzzled; he asked the monk who was meditating under a tree, “Have you seen a man with blood flowing, passing by here? If so, which direction has he gone?” – because it was a crossroads.What should this monk do? If he tells the truth, that the man has gone to the north, he will become a part of the murder. If he says that he has not gone to the north, he has gone to the south, he will be telling a lie. What should he do? Should he tell the truth, and allow the murder, or should he become a liar and stop it? What should he do?There have been many answers. I have none.Jainas say that even if it is going to be an untruth, let him be untrue, because violence is the greatest sin. They have their own valuation – violence is the greatest sin, untruth comes next. But Hindus say no, untruth comes first, so let him be true; he has to tell the truth and let things happen, whatsoever happens. Gandhi said – Gandhi had his own answer about this – he said, “I cannot choose between these two because both are supreme values, and there is no choice. So I will tell him the truth, and I will stand in his way, and I will tell him, ‘First kill me, and then follow that man.’”It appeals, Gandhi’s answer appeals, seems to be better than both the Hindu’s and the Jaina’s – but look at the whole situation: the man is going to commit one murder and Gandhi is forcing him to commit two. So what about his karma?So what to do? I have no answer. Or my answer is: don’t decide beforehand, let the moment come and let the moment decide, because who knows? – the victim may be a man who is worth murdering. Who knows? – the victim may be a dangerous man, and if he survives he may murder many. Who knows what the situation will be because it will never be the same again – and you cannot know the situation beforehand.Don’t decide. But your mind will feel uneasy without a decision because the mind needs clear-cut answers. Life has none, no clear-cut answers. Only one thing is certain: be spontaneous and alert and aware, and don’t follow any rule. Simply be spontaneous – and whatsoever happens, let it happen. If you feel in that moment like taking the risk of losing truth, lose it. If you feel in that moment that man is not worth it, then let the violence happen, or if you feel, “That man is worth more than me,” stand in between.Millions of possibilities will be there. Don’t fix it beforehand. Just be aware and alert and let things happen. You may not wish to say anything. Why not be silent? Don’t tell any untruth, don’t help the man in violence, don’t force the murderer to commit two murders. Why not be silent? Who is forcing you?But let the moment decide: that is what all the awakened ones have said.But if you listen to ordinary moralists they will tell you that life is dangerous, so go with a decision; otherwise you may do something wrong. And I tell you whatsoever you do through a decision will be wrong, because the whole existence is not following your decisions; the whole existence moves in its own way. You are a part of it – how can you decide for the whole? You have to simply be there and feel the situation and do whatsoever you can do with humbleness, with every possibility of it being wrong.Don’t be such an egoist as to think, “Whatsoever I do will be right.” Then who will do the wrong? Don’t be such an egoist that you think, “I am moral, and the other is immoral.” The other is also you. You are also the other. We are one. The murderer and the victim are not two.But don’t decide. Just be there; feel the whole situation, be in rapport with the whole situation, and let your inner consciousness do whatsoever comes. You should not be the doer, you should be just a witness. A doer has to decide beforehand, a witness need not.That is the whole message of Krishna and the Gita. Krishna says: Just see the whole situation, and don’t follow moralists’ dead rules. See the situation and act as a witness; don’t be a doer. And don’t be bothered what the result will be, nobody can say what the result will be. In fact there is no result, cannot be, because it is an infinity.For example, Hitler was born. If the mother had killed this child all the courts in the world would have found her a murderess. She would have been punished. But now we know better, that it would have been better to kill Hitler than to leave him alive, because he killed millions. So did Hitler’s mother do right in not murdering this child? Was she right or was she wrong? Who is to decide? And how could that poor mother know that this boy was going to murder so many people?Who is to decide? And how to decide?…and it is an infinite sequence. Hitler killed many, but who can decide whether those were the right persons to be killed or not killed? Who will ever decide and who will ever know? Nobody knows. Who knows, perhaps God sends Hitler-like people to kill all those who are wrong, because somehow or other God is involved in everything! He is in the right and he is in the wrong.The man who dropped the atom bomb on Hiroshima – was he right or wrong? Because of his bomb the second world war stopped. Of course, the whole city of one hundred thousand people dropped dead immediately. But if the atom bomb had not been dropped on Hiroshima, the war would have continued, and many more hundreds of thousands of people would have died. And if Japan could have survived only one year more, she could have invented the atom bomb – and then they would have dropped it on New York, on London. Who is to decide, and how to decide, whether the man who dropped the bomb was right or wrong?Life is so entangled, entwined, and every event leads to other events; and whatsoever you do, you will disappear, but whatsoever you did, the consequences will continue forever and forever. They cannot end. Even a small act – you smile at a person, and you have changed the whole quality of existence, because that smile will decide many things.It happened: I was reading Greta Garbo’s biography. She was an ordinary girl, working with a barber, just soaping people’s faces, and she would have remained the same because she was already twenty-two, and then one American film director accidentally came to that barber’s shop – there were twenty shops in that town – and when she was soaping his face he smiled, looking at the girl in the mirror, and said, “How beautiful!” And everything changed.This was the first man to say to Greta Garbo, “How beautiful!” – nobody had ever said it before, and she never thought herself beautiful, because how can you think yourself beautiful if nobody says so?The whole night she could not sleep. The next morning she searched out the director, where he was staying, and she asked, “Do you really think that I am beautiful?”The director may have made the remark casually, who knows! But when a girl comes searching for you and asks, “Really? What you told me, you really meant it?”…so the director said, “Yes, you are beautiful!”Then Greta Garbo said, “Then why not give me some work in a film you are making?” Now things started…and Greta Garbo became one of the most famous actresses.Very small things move around, and they go on moving. It is just like throwing a small pebble in a lake. Such a small pebble, and then ripples go on and on and on – and they will go on to the very end. By the time they reach the shore, long before it, the pebble has settled deep into the bottom, is lost.That pebble will change the whole quality of existence, because it is all one net; it is just like a spider’s web: you touch it anywhere, shake it a little, and the whole web ripples. Everywhere it is felt. You smile at a person – and the whole world is a spider’s web – and the whole existence is changed through that smile.But how to decide? Krishna says you need not be bothered with decision, because it is such a vast thing that you will never be able to make a decision. So don’t think about the result, simply respond to the situation. Be spontaneous, alert; be a witness and not a doer.A monk rushed into Tokai’s bedroom, shouting: “A fire, master, a fire!” “Oh?” said Tokai, sitting up. “Where?” “Where?” exclaimed the monk. “Why, under the kitchen floor – get up at once.” “The kitchen, eh?” said the master drowsily. “Well, tell you what, when it reaches the passageway, come back and let me know.”When it has become already the present, then let me know. It is still in the future – don’t bother me.Tokai was snoring again in no time.This is the quality of an enlightened person: so relaxed that although a fire is burning in the kitchen, the house is catching fire – everybody is excited and running around, nobody knows what is going to happen, everything is a mess – he can relax and go to sleep again. He was snoring in no time.This non-tenseness must come out of, has to come out of, a deep trust that whatsoever happens is good. He is not worried – even if he dies he is not worried; even if the fire comes and burns him he is not worried, because he is no more. The ego is not there; otherwise there will be fear, there will be worry, there will be a future, there will be planning, there will be a desire to escape, to save oneself. He is not worried; he simply falls back into sleep, relaxed.There is no possibility of relaxation if you have a mind and an ego; the ego is the center of the mind. You will be tense, you will remain tense. How to relax? Is there any way to relax? There is no way unless understanding is there. If you understand the nature of the world, the nature of the very existence, then who are you to worry, and why be in a worried state continuously?Nobody asked you about being born, nobody is going to ask you when the time comes for you to be taken away. Then why be worried? Birth happened to you; death will happen to you; who are you to come in between?Things are happening. You feel hunger, you feel love, you feel anger – everything happens to you, you are not a doer. Nature takes care. You eat and nature digests it; you need not bother about it, about how the stomach is functioning, how the food is going to become blood. If you become too tense about it you will have ulcers – and king-size ulcers, not ordinary ones. No need to worry.The whole is moving. The vast, the infinite is moving. You are just a wave in it. Relax, and let things be.Once you know how to let go, you have known all that is worth knowing. If you don’t know how to let go, whatsoever you know is worthless, it is rubbish.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The master Tozan was weighing some flax in the storeroom.A monk came up to him and asked: “What is Buddha?”Tozan said: “This flax weighs five pounds.”Religion is not concerned with philosophical questions and answers. Howsoever profound looking, they are stupid, and a sheer waste of life, time, energy and consciousness, because you can go on asking and answers can be given – but from answers only more questions will come. If in the beginning there was one question, in the end, through many answers, there will be a million questions.Philosophy solves nothing. It promises, but never solves anything – all those promises remain unfulfilled. It goes on promising; but the experience which can solve the riddles of the mind cannot be attained through philosophical speculation.Buddha was absolutely against philosophy – there has never been a man more against philosophy than Buddha. Through his own bitter experience he came to understand that all those profundities of philosophy are just superficial. Even the greatest philosopher remains as ordinary as anyone; no problem has been solved, not even touched. He carries much knowledge, many answers, but he remains the same old man – no new life has happened to him. And the crux, the core of the matter is that mind is a question-raising faculty: it can raise any sort of question, and then it can befool itself by answering them. But you are the questioner, and you are the one who solves them.Ignorance creates questions, and ignorance creates answers – the same mind creating in both ways. How can a questioning mind come to an answer? Deep down, the mind itself is the question.So philosophy tries to answer questions of the mind, and religion looks at the very base. The mind is the question, and unless mind is dropped the answer will not be revealed to you – mind won’t allow it, mind is the barrier, the wall. When there is no mind you are an experiencing being; when the mind is there you are a verbalizing being.In a small school it happened: there was a very stupid child; he never asked any questions and also the teacher neglected him. But one day he was very excited when the teacher was explaining a certain problem of arithmetic, writing some figures on the board. The child was very excited, raising his hand again and again; he wanted to ask something. When the teacher finished with the problem, she washed the figures from the board, and was very happy that for the first time this child was so excited as to ask something, and she said, “I am happy that you are ready to ask something. Go ahead – ask!”The child stood, and he said, “I am very worried, and the question comes again and again to me but I couldn’t gather the courage to ask. Today I have decided to ask: where do these damn figures go when you wash them off?”The question is very philosophical; all questions are like this. Many ask where a buddha goes when he dies; the question is the same. Where is God? – the question is the same. What is truth? – the question is the same. But you cannot feel the stupidity hidden in them, because they look very profound, and they have a long tradition – people have always been asking them, and people whom you think very great have been concerned with them: theorizing, finding answers, creating systems…but the whole effort is useless because only experience can give you the answer, not thinking. And if you go on thinking you will become more and more mad, and the answer will still be far away – farther away than ever.Buddha says: When the mind stops questioning, the answer happens. It is because you are so much concerned with questions that the answer cannot enter you. You are in such trouble, you are so disturbed, so much tense, the reality cannot enter into you – you are shaking so much inside, trembling with fear, with neurosis, with stupid questions and answers, with systems, philosophies, theories; you are so filled up.Mulla Nasruddin was passing through a village in his car. Many crowds were gathered there at many spots, and he was worried – what is the matter? Nobody was on the streets, everybody was gathered somewhere or other. Then he saw a policeman, and he stopped him and asked, “What is the matter? Has something gone wrong? What has happened? I don’t see people anywhere, working, moving, in the shops…they are gathered in many crowds!”The policeman could not believe his ears; he said, “What are you asking? There has been an earthquake just now! Many houses have fallen, many people are dead!” Then the policeman said, “I cannot believe that you couldn’t feel the earthquake!”Nasruddin said, “Because of alcohol I am always shaking so much, my hands are so jittery, that’s why I missed it.”If an earthquake is going on inside you continuously, then a real earthquake will not be capable of entering you. When you are silent and still, then the reality happens. And questioning is a trembling inside. Questioning means doubt, doubt means trembling. Questioning means you don’t trust anything – everything has become a question, and when everything is a question there will be very much anxiety. Have you observed yourself? Everything becomes a question. If you are miserable, it is a question: Why? Even if you are happy, it is a question: Why? You cannot believe yourself being happy.People come to me when meditation goes deeper and they have glimpses, they come to me very disturbed because, they say, something is happening, and they cannot believe that it is happening to them, that bliss can happen – there must be some deception. People have said to me, “Are you hypnotizing me? – because something is happening!” They cannot believe that they can be blissful, somebody must be hypnotizing them. They cannot believe that they can be silent – impossible! “Why? Why am I silent? Somebody is playing a trick!”Trust is not possible for a questioning mind. Immediately experience is there, the mind creates a question: Why? The flower is there – if you trust, you will feel a beauty, a blooming of beauty; but the mind says: Why? Why is this flower called beautiful? What is beauty? – you are going astray. You are in love, the mind asks: Why, what is love?It is reported that Saint Augustine said, “I know what time is, but when people ask me, everything is lost, I cannot answer. I know what love is, but you ask me: What is love? – and I am at a loss, I cannot answer. I know what God is, but you ask, and I am at a loss.” And Augustine is right, because profundities cannot be asked, cannot be questioned. You cannot put a question mark on a mystery. If you put a question mark, the question mark becomes more important; then the question covers the whole mystery. And if you think that when you have solved the question, then you will live the mystery, you will never live it.Questioning is irrelevant in religion. Trust is relevant. Trust means moving into the experience, into the unknown, without asking much – going through it to know it.I tell you about a beautiful morning outside, and you start questioning me about it here, walled in a room, enclosed, and you would like your every question to be answered before you take a step outside. How can I tell you if you have never known what morning is? How can I tell you? Only that can be told through words which you already know. How can I tell you that there is light, beautiful light falling through the trees, and the whole sky is filled with light, the sun has risen, if you have always lived in darkness? If your eyes are accustomed only to the dark, how can I explain to you that the sun has risen?You will ask, “What do you mean? Are you trying to deceive us? We have lived all our lives and we have never known anything like light. First answer our questions, and then, if we are convinced, we can come out with you; otherwise it seems you are leading us astray, astray from our sheltered life.”But how can the light be described if you don’t know about it? But that’s what you are asking: “Convince us about godliness, then we will meditate, then we will pray, then we will search. How can we search before the conviction is there? How can we go on a search when we don’t know where we are going?”This is distrust – and because of this distrust you cannot move into the unknown. The known clings to you, and you cling to the known – and the known is the dead past. It may feel cozy because you have lived in it, but it is dead, it is not alive. The alive is always the unknown, knocking at your door. Move with it. But how can you move without trust? And even doubting persons think that they have trust.Once it happened:Mulla Nasruddin told me that he was thinking of divorcing his wife. I asked, “Why? Why so suddenly?”Nasruddin said, “I doubt her fidelity toward me.”So I told him, “Wait, I will ask your wife.”So I told his wife, “Nasruddin is talking around town and creating a rumor that you are not faithful, and he is thinking of divorce, so what is the matter?”His wife said, “This is too much. Nobody has ever insulted me like that – and I tell you, I have been faithful to him dozens of times!”It is not a question of dozens of times – you also trust, but dozens of times? That trust cannot be very deep, it is just utilitarian. You trust whenever you feel it pays. But whenever the unknown knocks you never trust, because you don’t know whether it is going to pay or not. Faith and trust are not a question of utility – they are not utilities, you cannot use them. If you want to use them, you kill them. They are not utilitarian at all. You can enjoy them, you can be blissful about them – but they don’t pay.They don’t pay in the terms of this world; on the contrary, the whole world will look at you as a fool, because the world thinks someone wise if he doubts, the world thinks someone wise if he questions, the world thinks someone wise only when he moves a step with conviction, and before he is convinced he will not move. This is the cunningness and the cleverness of the world – and the world calls such people wise!They are fools as far as Buddha is concerned, because through their so-called wisdom they are missing the greatest, and the greatest cannot be used. You can merge with it, you cannot use it. It has no utility, it is not a commodity; it is an experience, it is an ecstasy. You cannot sell it, you cannot make a business out of it – rather, on the contrary, you are lost in it completely. You will never be the same again. In fact you can never come back – it is a point of no return: if you go, you go. You cannot go back, there is no going back. It is dangerous.So only very courageous people can enter on the path. Religion is not for cowards. But you will find in churches, temples, mosques – cowards: they have destroyed the whole thing. Religion is only for the very, very courageous, for those who can take the most dangerous step – and the most dangerous step is from the known toward the unknown; the most dangerous step is from the mind to no-mind, from questioning to no-questioning, from doubt to trust.Before we enter this small but beautiful anecdote – it is just like a diamond, very small but very valuable – a few more things are to be understood. One: you will be able to understand it only when you can take a jump, when you can bridge, somehow, the known with the unknown, mind with no-mind. Second thing: religion is not at all a question of thinking; it is not a question of right thinking, that if you think rightly you will become religious – no! Whether you think rightly or wrongly you will remain unreligous. People think that if you think rightly you will become religious; people think that if you think wrongly you will go astray.But I tell you, if you think, you will go astray – rightly or wrongly is not the point. If you don’t think, only then are you on the path. Think and you miss. You have already gone off on a long journey, you are no more here, now; the present is missed – and reality is only in the present.With mind, you go on missing. Mind has a mechanism – it moves in circles, vicious circles. Try to observe your own mind: has it been on a journey, or just moving in circles? Have you been really moving, or just moving in a circle? You repeat the same, again and again. The day before yesterday you were angry, yesterday you were angry, today you have been angry – and there is every possibility that tomorrow you are going to be angry; and do you feel that anger is different? The day before yesterday it was the same, yesterday it was the same, today it is the same – the anger is the same. Situations may differ, excuses may differ, but the anger is the same! Are you moving? Are you going somewhere? Is there any progress? Are you reaching nearer to some goal? You are moving in a circle, reaching nowhere. The circle may be very big, but how can you move if you move in a circle?I overheard once, walking in the afternoon, I heard coming from the inside of a small house a child whining and saying, “Mum, I am fed up with moving in circles.” The mother said, “Either you shut up, or I will nail your other foot to the floor also.”But you are not yet fed up. One foot is nailed to the earth, and like the child you are moving in circles. You are like a broken gramophone record – the same line repeats itself, it goes on repeating. Have you ever listened to a broken gramophone record? Listen! – it is like Maharishi Mahesh Yogi’s transcendental meditation, TM. You repeat one thing, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram, Ram…you go on repeating. You get bored; through boredom you feel sleepy. Sleep is good! After the sleep you feel fresh – but this is not going toward truth at all, it is just getting a good sleep, through a trick. But this TM you are doing continuously; your whole life is a TM, repeating, moving in the same groove again and again and again.Where are you going? Whenever you become aware of this you will think simply: What has been happening? You will feel very strange, shocked, that your whole life has been a misuse. You have not moved a single inch. The sooner the better – if you realize this, the sooner the better, because through this realization something is possible.Why this repetition? Mind is repetitive, it is a broken record; the very nature of it is just like a broken record. You cannot change it. A broken record can be repaired, mind cannot be, because the very nature of the mind is to repeat; repetition is the nature of the mind. At the most you can make bigger circles, and with bigger circles you can feel that there is some freedom; with bigger circles you can deceive yourself that things are not repeating.Somebody’s circle is just twenty-four hours. If you are clever you can make a circle of thirty days; if you are even more clever you can make a circle of one year; if you are even more clever you can make a circle of a whole life – but the circle remains the same. It makes no difference. Bigger or smaller, you move in the same groove, you come back to the same point.Because of this understanding, Hindus have called life a wheel – your life, of course, not a buddha’s life. A buddha is one who has jumped out of the wheel. You cling to the wheel, you feel very secure there – and the wheel moves on; from birth to death it completes a circle. Again birth, again death. The word sansar, the word Hindus use for this world, means the wheel. It moves in the same groove. You come and go, and you do much – to no avail. Where do you miss? You miss in the first step.The nature of the mind is repetition, and the nature of life is no repetition. Life is always new, always. Newness is the nature of life, Tao; nothing is old, cannot be. Life never repeats, it simply becomes every day new, every moment new – and mind is old; hence mind and life never meet. Mind simply repeats, life never repeats – how can mind and life meet? That’s why philosophy never understands life.The whole effort of religion is: how to drop the mind and move into life, how to drop the repetitive mechanism and how to enter the ever-new, evergreen phenomenon of existence. This is the whole point of this beautiful story, Tozan’s Five Pounds.The master Tozan was weighing some flax in the storeroom. A monk came up to him and asked: “What is Buddha?”Tozan said: “This flax weighs five pounds.”Many things: first, a Zen master is not a recluse, he has not renounced life; rather, on the contrary, he has renounced the mind and entered life.There are two types of sannyasins in the world: one type renounces life and enters the life of the mind completely – these are the anti-life people, escaping from the world toward the Himalayas, Tibet. They renounce life to be completely absorbed in the mind – and they are in the majority, because to renounce life is easy; to renounce mind is difficult.What is the difficulty? If you want to escape from here, you can escape! You can leave the wife, the children, the house, the job – really you will feel unburdened, because the wife has become a burden, the children have become a burden, and this whole thing, working every day, earning…you are fed up! You will feel unburdened.And what will you do in the Himalayas? The whole energy will become mind: you will repeat Ram, Ram, Ram, you will read the Upanishads and the Vedas, and you will think profound truths. You will think about where the world came from, where the world is going, who created the world, why he created the world, what is good and what is evil. You will contemplate and think great things! Your whole life energy which was engaged in other things will be freed from them now and will be absorbed in the mind. You will become a mind.And people will pay you respect because you renounced life. You are a great man! Fools will recognize you as a great man: fools can recognize you only if you are the greatest of them and they will pay respect, they will prostrate themselves at your feet – you have done a great miracle!But what has happened? You renounced life just to be the mind. You renounced the whole body just to be the head – and the head was the problem! You saved the disease, and you renounced everything. Now the mind will become a cancerous growth. It will do japa, mantra, austerities – it will do everything, and then it will become a ritual. That’s why religious people move in rituals: ritual means a repetitive phenomenon. Every day in the morning they have to do their prayer: a Mohammedan does five prayers in the day – wherever he is, he is to do the prayer five times; a Hindu goes on doing the same ritual every day for his whole life; Christians have to go to the church every Sunday…just a ritual! Because mind likes repetition, mind creates a ritual.In your ordinary life also, mind creates a ritual. You love, you meet friends, you go to parties…everything is a ritual, has to be done, repeated. You have a program for all the seven days, and the program is fixed – and this has been so always. You have become a robot, not alive. Mind is a robot. If you give too much attention to the mind it will absorb all your energy; it is a cancer, it will grow, it will spread all over.But a Zen master belongs to the other category of sannyasins. He belongs to my category of sannyasins. A Zen master has always been a neo-sannyasin – hence I love to talk about them; I have a deep affinity with them. They renounce mind and they live life; they don’t renounce life and live mind – just the contrary. They simply renounce mind because it is repetitive – and they live life. They may be living the life of a householder; they may have a wife, they may have children; they will work on the farm, they will work in the garden, they will dig holes, they will weigh flax in the storeroom…A Hindu cannot think why an enlightened man should weigh flax – why? Why such an ordinary activity? But a Zen master renounces mind, lives life in its totality. He drops mind and becomes simple existence.So the first thing to remember: if you renounce mind and live life you are a true sannyasin; if you renounce life and live mind you are an untrue sannyasin, you are a pseudo-sannyasin. And remember well, to be pseudo is always easier; to be real is always difficult. To live with a wife and to be happy is really difficult; to live with children and to be blissful is really difficult. To work in a shop, in an office, in a factory and to be ecstatic is the real difficulty.To leave everything and just sit under a tree and feel happy is not difficult – anybody will feel that way. Nothing to do, you can be detached; everything to do, you become attached. But when you do everything and remain unattached, when you move with the crowd, in the world and yet alone, then something real is happening.If you don’t feel anger when you are alone, that is not the point. When you are alone you will not feel anger because anger is a relationship, it needs somebody to be angry toward. Alone, unless you are mad you will not feel anger, it will be inside but it will not find any way to come out. When the other is there, then not to be angry is the point. When you don’t have any money, any things, any house – if you are unattached, what is the difficulty in it? But when you have everything and you remain unattached – a beggar in the palace – then something very deep has been attained.So remember, and always keep it in your heart: truth, love, life, meditation, ecstasy, bliss, all that is true and beautiful and good, always exists as a paradox: in the world, and not of it; with people, yet alone; doing everything, and being inactive; moving and not moving; living an ordinary life, and yet not being identified with it; working as everybody else is working, yet remaining aloof deep down. Being in the world and not of the world, that is the paradox. And when you attain this paradox, the greatest peak happens to you: the peak experience.It is very easy to move into a simple existence either in the world and attached or out of the world and detached – both are simple. But the greater comes only when it is a complex phenomenon. If you move to the Himalayas and are unattached, you are a single note of the music; if you live in the world and are attached, again you are a single note of the music. But when you are in the world and beyond it, and you carry your Himalaya in the heart, you are a harmony not a single note. An accord happens, including all discordant notes, a synthesis of the opposites, a bridge between two banks. And the highest is possible only when life is most complex; only in complexity the highest happens.If you want to be simple you can choose one of the alternatives – but you will miss the complexity. If you cannot be simple in complexity, you will be like an animal, an animal or someone in the Himalayas living a renounced life – they don’t go to a shop, they don’t work in a factory, they don’t have wives, they don’t have children…I have observed many people who have renounced life. I have lived with them, observed them deeply; they become like animals. I don’t see in them something of the supreme happening; rather, on the contrary, they have fallen back. Their life is less tense of course because an animal’s life is less tense, they don’t have worries because no animal has worries. In fact they go on falling, they regress; they become like vegetables – they vegetate. If you go to them you will see that they are simple, no complexity exists – but bring them back to the world and you will find them more complex than you, because when the situation arises they will be in difficulty. Then everything that is suppressed will come out. This is a sort of suppression. Don’t regress, don’t move backward – go ahead.A child is simple, but don’t become a child – become mature. Of course when you become absolutely mature, a childhood happens again, but that is qualitatively different. A sage is again a child, but not childish. A sage has again the flower, the fragrance, the newness of a child, but a deep difference is also there: a child has many repressed things in him and whenever the opportunity is given they will come out . Sex will come out, anger will come out – he will move into the world and become attached and lost. He has those seeds within him. A sage has no seeds, he cannot be lost. He cannot be lost because he is no more. He carries nothing within him.Zen masters have lived a very ordinary life – very otherworldly, but in the world. They are more beautiful persons than any Hindu sannyasin, they are more beautiful persons than any Catholic monk. In fact, nothing like Zen exists on the earth, because they have attained to the highest paradox.The master Tozan was weighing some flax in the storeroom.An enlightened person, a buddha, weighing flax? You would have simply turned away. Why ask any question of this man? – if he knew anything he would not be weighing flax. Because you have a concept of a saint, a sage, as something extraordinary, beyond you, somewhere in the sky sitting on a golden throne, you cannot reach him. He is very different – whatsoever you are, he is just the opposite.A Zen master is not that way. He is in no way extraordinary – and yet he is extraordinary. He lives the very ordinary life just like you, and yet he is not you. He is not somewhere in the sky, he is here, but still beyond you. Weighing flax – but just the same as Buddha under a bodhi tree. In India nobody can conceive of Mahavira weighing flax or Buddha weighing flax – impossible! It would look almost profane. What is Buddha doing in a storeroom? Then what is the difference between you and him? You also weigh flax, he is also weighing flax, so what is the difference?The difference is not outward – and outward differences don’t make any change. You can go and sit under a bodhi tree – nothing will happen. And when the inside changes, why be bothered with the outside? Carry on whatsoever you were doing. Carry on whatsoever is given to you. Carry on whatsoever the whole wills.The master Tozan was weighing some flax in the storeroom.A monk came up to him and asked: “What is Buddha?”In Buddhism that is the greatest question to be asked – just like what is truth? or what is God? – because in Buddhism God is not a concept, Buddha is God; no other god exists. Buddha is the highest reality, the highest peak; nothing is beyond it. The truth, God, the absolute, brahman – whatsoever name you give to it, Buddha is that.So when a monk asks, “What is Buddha?” he is asking what is truth? what is Tao? what is brahman? what is that one among the many? what is the basic reality? what is the very central core of existence? – he is asking all that.Tozan said: “This flax weighs five pounds.”Absurd. Irrelevant. It seems to be completely pointless because the man was asking, “What is Buddha?” And this Tozan seems to be a madman. He is not talking about Buddha at all, he has not answered the question at all – and yet he has answered. This is the paradox. If you start living this paradox your life will become a symphony; it will become a higher and higher synthesis of all the opposites. In you, then, all opposites will dissolve.Tozan said: “This flax weighs five pounds.” One thing he said: that this very ordinary life is Buddha, this very ordinary life is truth, this very ordinary life is brahman, the kingdom of God. There is no other life except this; there is no that, only this exists. Hindus say, “That exists, this is illusion”; Tozan said, “This is true, that is illusion. This very moment is truth, and don’t ask for any extraordinary thing.”Seekers always ask for something extraordinary, because ego feels fulfilled only when something extraordinary is given. You come to a master and you ask questions, and if he says such things you will think he is mad, or joking, or not a man worthy to be asked. You will simply escape. Why? – because he shatters your ego completely. You were asking Buddha, you were desiring Buddha, you would like to be a buddha yourself; hence the question. And this man says: What nonsense you are asking! Not even worth answering! This flax weighs five pounds. This is more important than any buddha. This moment, this flax, is the whole of existence. In this five pounds of flax is centered the whole being of the world – here and now. Don’t go astray; don’t ask philosophical questions. Look at this moment.Tozan did a wonderful thing. Tozan is a buddha. Tozan weighing flax is Buddha weighing flax – and reality is one! Tozan is Buddha, and the flax is also Buddha; and in that moment it weighed five pounds. That was the truth, the facticity of the moment. But if you are filled with philosophy you will think this man is mad and you will go away.This happened to Arthur Koestler, one of the keenest intellects in the West. He missed the whole point completely. When he went to Japan to study Zen he thought: These people are simply mad – or else they are joking, not serious at all. He wrote a book, Against Zen. It looks absurd. It is. He is wrong, and yet right. It is absurd. If you don’t know the language of Zen it is absurd; if you are identified too much with logical thinking, it is absurd. It is illogical – what more illogical thing can you find: somebody asking, “What is Buddha?” and somebody answering, “This flax weighs five pounds”?You ask about the sky and I answer about the earth; you ask about God and I talk about a rock – no meeting. And yet there is a meeting – but very perceptive eyes are needed, not intellectually keen but feeling fully perceptive; not identified with reasoning but waiting to look, watching, witnessing what is happening; not already prejudiced, but open. Koestler is prejudiced…a very keen intellect, can work things out very logically in the tradition of Aristotle, but does not know anything, does not know at all that there exists an absolutely non-Aristotelian world of Zen, where two plus two are not necessarily four; sometimes they are five, sometimes they are three – anything is possible. No possibility is destroyed, all possibilities remain open, infinitely open. And every time two and two meet, something else happens. The world remains open, unknown; you cannot exhaust it.Look: superficially this man is mad, but deeply, you cannot find a saner man than this Tozan. But Koestler will miss, and Koestler is a keen intellect, very logical; only a few people can compete with him in keen intelligence, but he misses. In this world intelligence is a means, in that world intelligence becomes a barrier. Don’t be too wise, otherwise you will miss the real wisdom. Look at this Tozan without any prejudice, without any mind of your own. Simply look at the phenomenon, what is happening?A disciple monk asks, “What is Buddha?” – and a Zen master lives in the moment, he is always here and now, he is always at home – whenever you come you will find him there, he is never absent from there – he remains in this moment. The trees, the sky, the sun, the rocks, the birds, the people – the whole world is concentrated in this moment! This moment is vast. It is not just a tick of your clock; this moment is infinite, because in this moment, everything is. Millions of stars, many new stars being born, many old stars going to die, this whole infinite expanse of time and space meets in this moment. So how to indicate this moment? – and Tozan was weighing flax – how to indicate this moment, how to bring this monk here and now? How to put his philosophic inquiry aside? How to shock him and awaken him to this moment, and in this moment?This is a shock – because he must have been inquiring about Buddha in his mind, thinking: “What is the reality of a buddha? What is truth?” And he must have been expecting some profound answer, something very superb: “This master is enlightened, so he must say something very valuable.” He never expected that this is going to be such an ordinary thing, such an ordinary and absurd answer. He must have been shocked.In that shock you can be awake for a moment, a fraction of a moment. When you are shocked thinking cannot continue. If the answer is anything relevant, thinking can continue, because that is what mind asks for – relevancy. If something is said which is relevant to the question, thinking can continue; if something is said which is absolutely absurd, discontinuous, is not to the point at all, the mind cannot continue. Suddenly the mind is shocked, and the continuity broken. Soon it will start again, because the mind will say: “This is absurd!”Mulla Nasruddin was being analyzed by a psychiatrist. After many months of analysis, many meetings, the psychiatrist said, as Mulla lay on the couch: “This is what I feel, this is what I conclude: you need to fall in love, you need a beautiful feminine object. Love is your need.”Mulla said, “Between me and you, don’t you think love is silly?”The psychiatrist said, “Between me and you? – it would be absurd!”For a moment he must have been shocked, but only for a moment. If you cannot find relevancy, immediately the mind will say: “This is absurd!” If you find relevancy, the continuity continues. If there is something absurd, for a split second there is a discontinuity, the mind is not able to cope with what has been said. But immediately it recovers, it will say it is absurd; continuity restarts.But the shock, and the assertion of the mind that it is absurd, are not simultaneous; there is a gap. In that gap, satori is possible. In that gap, you can be awakened, you can have a glimpse. It would have been wonderful if the opportunity could have been used; wonderful is this man Tozan, incomparable. You cannot find such a man anywhere else. And what a spontaneous answer! Not prefabricated, not in any way ready-made; nobody had said that ever before, and there is no point in saying it now. Nobody has ever said, “This flax weighs five pounds” in answer to a question about buddhahood: “What is Buddha?”Tozan is spontaneous, he’s not answering from the memory; otherwise he knows the scriptures, he was a great scholar before he became enlightened… He knows by heart and has chanted all Buddha’s words, he has discussed philosophy for many years; he knows what the monk is asking, he knows what he is expecting – but he is simply spontaneous, weighing flax.Just try to imagine and see Tozan weighing flax. In that moment what can be more spontaneous to indicate the reality of the moment, the facticity of existence? He simply said, “This flax weighs five pounds” – and finished! He doesn’t say anything about Buddha; there is no need. This is buddhahood. This being spontaneous is buddhahood. This being true to the moment is buddhahood.What he says is just part of it; what he leaves unsaid is the whole. If you awaken in that moment you will see Buddha weighing flax – and the flax weighs five pounds. What is he indicating? He is not saying much, but he is showing much, and by not saying much he is creating a possibility: you may, for a single moment, be aware of the whole existence that is there concentrated in this Tozan.Whenever a buddha happens in the world, the whole existence finds a center there. Then all the rivers fall in him, and all the mountains bow down to him, and all the stars move around him. Whenever there is an enlightened man, the whole existence converges on his being. He becomes the center.Tozan weighing flax in that moment was the buddha: the whole existence converging, flowing into Tozan, and Tozan weighing flax – and the flax weighed five pounds. This moment is so real: if you awaken, if you open your eyes, satori is possible. Tozan is spontaneous; he has no ready-made answers; he responds to the moment.Next time if you come to Tozan the same answer cannot be given, will not be given, because Tozan may not be weighing, or may be weighing something else, or may be even weighing flax, but the flax may not weigh five pounds. Next time the answer will be different. If you come again and again, each time the answer will be different. This is the difference between a scholar and a man of knowledge. A scholar has fixed answers, whenever you come, he has a ready-made answer for you. You ask, and he will give you the answer, and the answer will always be the same – and you will feel he is very consistent. He is.There was once a case against Mulla Nasruddin in the court, and the judge asked his age. He said, “Forty years.”The judge looked surprised and he said, “Nasruddin, four years ago you were here, and I asked that time also what is your age, and you told me forty years. Now this is absolutely inconsistent – how can you still be forty?”Nasruddin said, “I am a man of consistency. Once forty, I remain forty always. When I have answered once, I have answered for ever! You cannot lead me astray. I am forty, and whenever you ask you will get the same answer. I am a man who is always consistent.”A consistent man is dead. If you are dead, only then can you remain forty. Then there is no need to change. A dead man never grows – and you cannot find persons more dead than pundits, scholars, men of information.An enlightened man lives in the moment: you ask, he replies – but he has got no fixed replies. He is the reply. So whatsoever happens in that moment happens; he does not manipulate it, he does not think about it, about what you are asking. You simply ask, and his whole being responds. In this moment it happened that Tozan was weighing flax, and in this moment it happened that the flax weighed five pounds, and when this monk asked, “What is Buddha?” in Tozan’s being five pounds was the reality. He was weighing; in Tozan’s being five pounds was the fact. He simply said: Five pounds of flax.Looks absurd on the surface. If you go deeper, deeper, you find a relevancy which is not a logical relevancy, and you find a consistency which is not that of the mind, but of the being. Understand, try to understand the difference. If next time you come and Tozan is digging a hole in the garden, and you ask, “What is Buddha?” – he will give you the answer. He will say, “Look at this hole,” he will say, “It is ready; now the tree can be planted.” Next time, if you come again, and if he is going for a walk with his walking stick, he may say, “This walking stick.”Whatsoever is in the moment will be the reply, because a buddha lives moment to moment – and if you start living moment to moment, you become a buddha. This is the answer: live moment to moment and you become a buddha. A buddha is one who lives moment to moment, who does not live in the past, who does not live in the future, who lives here now. Buddhahood is a quality of being present here and now – and buddhahood is not a goal, you need not wait, you can become just here and now.Talking, I am a buddha, because only talk is happening. If only listening is happening there at the other end with you, you are a buddha in listening. Try to catch a glimpse of the moment, this moment. This moment Tozan is not weighing flax; Tozan is talking to you. This moment you have not asked, “What is Buddha?” but the question is there whether you ask it or not. The question goes around and around in the mind: What is truth? what is Buddha? what is Tao? Whether you ask it or not it is the question. You are the question.In this moment you can awake. You can look, you can shake the mind a little, create a discontinuity, and suddenly you understand…what Arthur Koestler misses. If you are also too intelligent, you will miss. Don’t be too intelligent, don’t try to be too clever, because there is a wisdom which is attained by those who become fools; there is a wisdom which is attained by those who become like madmen; there is a wisdom which is attained only when you lose your mind.Tozan is beautiful. If you can see, and if you can see that the answer is not absurd, you have seen it, you have understood it. But if the understanding remains intellectual it will not be of much use. I have explained it to you, you have understood it, but if the understanding remains intellectual – you understand with the mind – again you miss. Koestler may be against Zen and you may be for it, but you both miss. It is not a question of being for or against; it is a question of a non-mental understanding. If it arises from your heart, if you feel it, not think it, if it touches your whole being, if it penetrates, is not just a verbal thing, not a philosophy, but becomes an experience, it will transform you.I am talking about these stories just to shock you out of your mind, just to bring you down a little toward the heart – and if you are ready, then still further down toward the navel.The further down you go, the deeper you reach…and, ultimately, depth and height are the same thing.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Gensha complained to his followers one day: “Other masters are always carrying on about the necessity of saving everyone – but suppose you meet up with someone who is deaf, dumb and blind: he couldn’t see your gestures, hear your preaching, or, for that matter, ask questions. Unable to save him, you’d prove yourself a worthless Buddhist.”Troubled by these words, one of Gensha’s disciples went to consult the master Ummon who, like Gensha, was a disciple of Seppo. “Bow please,” said Ummon.The monk, though taken by surprise, obeyed the master’s command – then straightened up in expectation of having his query answered.But instead of an answer, he got a staff thrust at him. He leapt back. “Well,” said Ummon, “you’re not blind. Now approach.”The monk did as he was bidden. “Good,” said Ummon, “you’re not deaf either. Well, understand?” “Understand what, sir?’ said the monk. “Ah, you’re not dumb either,” said Ummon.On hearing these words the monk awoke as from a deep sleep.Jesus used to say to his disciples, and not only once but many times, “If you have eyes – look! If you have ears, then hear me!” They had eyes just like you and they had ears just like you. Then Jesus must have meant something else – not these ears, not these eyes.There is a different way of seeing the world and a different way of hearing – a different way of being. When you have that different quality of seeing, God is seen; when you have that different way of hearing, God is heard; and when you have that different quality of being, you become God yourself. As you are, you are deaf, dumb, blind – almost dead. Deaf to God, dumb to God, blind to God, dead to God.Nietzsche has declared that God is dead. In fact, when you are dead, how can God be alive to you? God is dead because you are dead. You can know God only when you live abundantly, when your life becomes an overflowing, when it is a flood. In that overflowing moment of bliss, life and vitality, for the first time you know what God is, because God is the most luxurious overflowing phenomenon.God is not a necessity in this world. Scientific laws are a necessity – without them the world cannot be. God is not a necessity that way. Without him the world can be, but it will be worthless. Without him you can exist, but your existence will be just a vegetable existence. Without him you can vegetate, you cannot be really alive.God is not a necessity – you can be there, but your being there will not be of any meaning, it will not carry any meaning at all. It will have no poetry, it will have no song, it will have no dance to it. It will not be a mystery. It may be an arithmetic, it may be a business, but it cannot be a love affair.Without God all that is beautiful disappears, because the beautiful comes only as an overflowing – it is a luxury. Watch a tree: if you have not watered it well, if the tree is not getting nourishment from the soil, the tree can exist but flowers will not come. Existence will be there, but futile! It would have been better not to be, because it will be a constant frustration. Flowers come to the tree only when the tree has so much that it can share, and the tree has so much nourishment that it can flower – flowering is a luxury! The tree has so much that it can afford it.And I tell you that God is the most luxurious thing in the world. God is not necessary – you can live without him. You can live very well, but you will miss something, you will feel an emptiness in the heart. You will be more like a wound than like an alive force. You will suffer; there cannot be any ecstasy in your life.But how to find this meaning, this ecstasy? You will need a different way of looking. Right now you are blind. Of course you can see matter, but matter is a necessity. You can see the tree very well but you miss the flowers; and even if you can see the flowers, you miss the fragrance. Your eyes can see only the surface – you miss the center, the very core. Hence Jesus goes on saying that you are a blind man, you are deaf – and you have to be dumb, because if you have not seen him what is there to say? If you have not heard him what is there to convey and communicate? If that poetry has not happened what is there to sing? You may make gestures from your mouth, but nothing will come out of it because nothing is there in the first place.When a man like Jesus speaks he is possessed; something greater than him speaks through him. When a man like Buddha speaks he is not Gautam Siddhartha who was born a son to a king; no, he is no longer that. He is no longer the body you can see and touch, he is not even the mind that you can comprehend and understand. Something of the beyond has entered, something which is not of time and space has come into time and space. A miracle has happened. He is not speaking to you, he is just a vehicle; something else is flowing through him, he is just a medium. He carries to you something from the unknown shore. Only then can you sing – when ecstasy has happened. Otherwise you can go on singing, but it will be superficial. You may make much noise, but noise is not speaking. You may use many words, but they will be empty. You may talk too much, but in fact how can you talk?When it happened to Mohammed, the first day when he came in contact with the divine, he fell on the ground, started shivering and shaking and perspiring – and the morning was as cold as this morning. He was alone, and from the very pores of the soles of his feet he started perspiring; he was afraid. Something unknown had touched him and he was scared to death. He came running home and went to bed. His wife was very afraid. Many blankets were put on him but still he continued shivering and his wife asked, “What has happened? Your eyes look dazed – and why don’t you speak? Why have you gone dumb?”And Mohammed is reported to have said, “For the first time something is there to say. Up to now I have been a dumb man; there was nothing to say, I was making gestures from the mouth. I was talking but only my lips were moving, there was nothing to say. Now there is something I have to say – that’s why I am trembling so much. I am pregnant with the unknown, with the divine. Something is going to take birth.”And this brings suffering, as every mother knows. If you have to give birth to a child you have to pass through many painful days, and when the birth happens there is much suffering. When life enters, it is a struggle.For three days, it is said, Mohammed remained in his bed, absolutely dumb. Then, by and by, just as a small child starts talking, he started talking. And then the Koran was born.You are dumb. You may be saying too many things, but remember – you talk too much just to hide that dumbness. You talk not to communicate, you talk just to hide – to hide the fact that you are dumb. Next time you start talking with someone, watch: why are you talking? Why are you so verbal? What is the need? Suddenly you will become aware that: “If I remain quiet the other will think ‘Are you dumb’”. So you talk just to hide this fact – and you know there is nothing to say, yet you go on talking.I once stayed with a family and I was sitting with the man of the house, my host, when the son came, a small child, and he asked his father if he would answer a few questions. The father said, “I am engaged; you go and ask your mother.”The child said, “But I don’t want to know that much! Because if she starts talking there is no end to it, and I have to do my homework – and I don’t want to know that much!”People go on talking and talking and talking and without knowing why they are talking – for what? What is there to convey? It is just to hide their dumbness. People go on moving from here to there, from this town to that; they go on traveling, and go for holidays to the Himalayas and to Switzerland – why all this traveling, moving? They want to feel they are alive.But movement is not life. Of course life has a very deep movement, but movement is not life. You can go on moving from one town to another, and you can cover the whole earth, but that movement is not life. Life is, of course, a very subtle movement – the movement from one state of consciousness to another.When people get stuck they start moving outwardly. Now the American has become the bona fide traveler; he travels all over the world from this corner to that – because American consciousness is stuck somewhere so badly that if you remain in one place you will feel you have gone dead. So move! Move from one wife to another, move from one job to another, move from one neighborhood to another, move from one town to another – never in the history of man has it happened. In America the average time for a person to stay in a town is three years; people move on within three years – and this is just the average, there are people who are moving every month. They go on changing – dresses, cars, houses, wives, husbands – everything.I have heard that once one Hollywood actress was introducing her child to a new husband. She said, “Now, meet your new father.”The child said, “Hello, I am happy to meet you! Would you like to give me your signature in my visitors’ book?” – because he had met so many new fathers.Everything has to be changed just to feel that you are alive. A hectic search for life. Of course, life is a movement, but not from one place to another; it is a movement from one state to another. It is a deep inward movement from one consciousness to another consciousness, to the higher realms of being. Otherwise you are dead. As you are, you are dead. Hence Jesus goes on saying, “Listen! – if you have ears. See! – if you have eyes.” This has to be understood first, then this story will become easier.Then the second thing: why are you so dead? Why are you so dumb, blind, deaf? There must be something, there must be some investment in it – otherwise so many people, millions of them, could not be in such a state. It must be paying you something, you must be getting something out of it, otherwise how is it possible that Buddhas and Krishnas and Christs go on saying, “Don’t be blind, don’t be deaf, don’t be dumb, don’t be dead! Be alive! Be alert, awake!” – and nobody listens to them? Even if they appeal intellectually, you never listen to them. Even if you feel in certain sublime moments of life that they are right, you never follow them. Even if sometimes you decide to follow, you always postpone it for tomorrow – and then tomorrow never comes. What is the deep investment in it?Just the other night I was talking to a friend. He is a very educated man, cultured – has moved all over the world, has lived in the Soviet Union and the UK and the United States, has been to China, and this and that. Listening to him I felt he is completely dead! And then he asked me, “What solution would you suggest? – because life has so many sufferings and miseries, so many injustices, so many things that hurt you. How to live life so that you don’t feel hurt, so that life cannot create so many wounds in your being – what to do?”So I told him there are two ways: one – which is easier but at a very great cost and that is to become dead, to become as insensitive as possible. …Because if you are insensitive, if you grow a thick skin around you, an armor, then you don’t bother much, nobody can hurt you. Somebody insults you and you have such a thick skin that it never enters. There is injustice, but you simply never become aware of it.This is the mechanism of your deadness. If you are more sensitive, you will be hurt more. Then every small thing will become a pain, a misery, and it will be impossible to live – and one has to live. There are problems, and there are millions of people – there is violence all around, there is misery all around. You pass through the street and beggars are there; you have to be insensitive otherwise it will become a misery, a heavy weight on you. Why these beggars? What have they done to suffer this? And somehow deep down you will feel: “I am also responsible.” You simply pass by the beggar as if you are deaf, dumb, blind – you don’t look.Have you ever looked at a beggar? You may have seen a beggar, but you have never looked at him. You have never encountered him, you have never sat with him, you have never taken his hand in your hand – it would be too much. So open – there is danger. And you have to think about your wife, not about this beggar; you have to think about your children – and you are not concerned! So whenever there is a beggar, watch: your speed increases, you walk faster and don’t look that way. If you really look at a beggar you will feel the whole injustice of life; you will feel the whole misery – and it will be too much. It will be impossible to tolerate it, you will have to do something and what can you do? You feel so helpless; you have your own problems too, and you have to solve them.You see a dying man, what can you do? You see a crippled child, what can you do? Just the other day one sannyasin came to me and he said he was very much disturbed, because on the road when he was passing a truck almost killed a dog. The dog was already not in good shape; two legs must have been crushed before. With only two legs the dog was trying to live, and then this truck again crushed him. The sannyasin took pity, felt compassion, he took the dog in his hands – and then he saw there was a hole in its back and millions of worms. He wanted to help, but how to help? And he became so disturbed that he couldn’t sleep; he had nightmares and continuously the dog was haunting him: “I have not done anything – I have to do something. But what to do?” The idea came to his mind to kill the dog because that was the only thing that could be done now. With so many worms, maggots, the dog could not live. And its life would be misery, so it was better to kill it. But to kill – wouldn’t that be violence? Wouldn’t that be murder? Wouldn’t that be a karma? So what to do? You cannot help. Then the best way is to be insensitive.There are dogs and there are trucks, and things go on happening, you go on your way, you don’t look around. It is dangerous to look, so you never use your eyes one hundred percent – scientists say only two percent. Ninety-eight percent, you close your eyes. Ninety-eight percent, you close your ears – you don’t listen to everything that is happening all around. Ninety-eight percent you don’t live.Have you ever observed how you always feel fear whenever you are in a love relationship, or whenever love stays? Suddenly a fear takes over, because whenever you love a person you surrender to the person. And surrendering to a person is dangerous because the other may hurt you. Your protection is down. You don’t have any armor. Whenever you love you are open and vulnerable, and who knows, how to believe in the other?…because the other is a stranger. You may have known the other for many years but that makes no difference. You don’t even know yourself, how can you know the other? The other is a stranger. And to allow the other to enter into your intimate life means to allow him to hurt you.People have become afraid of love; it is better to go to a prostitute than to have a beloved. It is better to have a wife than to have a beloved, because a wife is an institution. Your wife cannot hurt you more because you never loved her. It was arranged: your father and mother and the astrologer…everybody was involved except you. It is an arrangement, a social arrangement. Not much is involved. You take care of her, you arrange for her food and shelter. She takes care; she arranges the house, the food, she looks after the children – it is an arrangement, a business-like thing. Love is dangerous, it is not a business, it is not a bargain. You give power to the other person in love, complete power over you. The fear… the other is a stranger and who knows? Whenever you trust anybody, fear grips you.People come to me and they say, “We surrender to you,” but I know they cannot. It is almost impossible. They have never loved, how can they surrender? They are speaking without knowing what they are saying. They are almost asleep. They are talking in their sleep, they don’t mean it, because surrender means that if I say, “Go on top of the hill and jump!” you cannot say no. Surrender means total power has been given to the other: how can you give that?Surrender is just like love. That’s why I say only lovers can become sannyasins – because they know a little of how to surrender. Love is the first step toward the divine, surrender is the last. And two steps is the whole journey.But you are afraid. You would like to have your own control on your life – not only that, you would like to control the other’s life also. Hence the continuous quarrel between husbands and wives and lovers, constant quarrel, conflict. What is the conflict? The conflict is: Who will dominate whom? Who will possess whom? It has to be settled first. This is not a surrender but a domination – just the opposite. Whenever you dominate a person there is no fear. Whenever you love a person there is fear, because in love you surrender and you give total power to the other. Now the other can hurt, the other can reject, the other can say no. That’s why you live only two percent, not one hundred percent. Ninety-eight percent you are dead, insensitive. And insensitivity, deadness, is very much respected by the society. The more you are insensitive, the more society will respect you.It is said, it happened in Lokmanya Tilak’s life – one of the great Indian leaders. He lived in Pune, just this town, and before Gandhi took over and dominated the scene he was the topmost man in India – it is said about him that he was a man of discipline, and men of discipline are always dead because discipline is nothing but how to deaden yourself. His wife died, and he was sitting in his office where he published a newspaper, Kesari, – it is still published – when somebody reported, “Your wife has died, come home!” Hearing this, he looked at the clock at the back and he said, “But it is not yet time. I only leave my office at five.”Look at the whole thing. What type of intimacy, what type of love, what type of caring and sharing was there? This man cares about his work, this man cares about time, but not about love. It seems almost impossible that when somebody says your wife is dead, to look at the clock and then to say, “It is not yet time. I leave my office only at five.” And the wonder of wonders is that all his biographers appreciate this incident very much. They say, “This is devotion to the country! This is how a disciplined man should be.” They think this is non-attachment. This is not non-attachment, this is not devotion to anything. This is simply deadness, an insensitivity. And one who is insensitive toward his wife, how can he be sensitive to the whole country? Impossible.Remember, if you cannot love a person you cannot love humanity. That may be a trick. Those who cannot love persons – because it is very dangerous to love a person –always think they love humanity. Where is humanity? Can you find it anywhere? It is just a word. Humanity exists nowhere. Wherever you go you will find a person existing. Life is persons, not humanity. Life is always personified, it exists as an individual. Society, country, humanity, are just words. Where is society? Where is the country, the motherland? You cannot love a mother, and you love a motherland? You must be deceiving somewhere. But the word is good, beautiful: motherland. You need not bother about the motherland, because the motherland is not a person, it is a fiction in your mind. It is your own ego.You can love humanity, you can love the motherland, you can love society, and you are not capable of loving a person – because a person creates difficulties. Society will never create a difficulty because it is just a word. You need not surrender to it. You can dominate the word, the fiction, but you cannot dominate a person. Even with a small child it is impossible, you cannot dominate him because he has his own ego, he has his own mind, he has his own ways. It is almost impossible to dominate life but words can be easily dominated – because you are alone there.People who cannot love a person start loving God. They don’t know what they are doing. To talk to a person, to communicate to a person, is a difficult matter. It needs skill, it needs a very loving heart, it needs a very knowing heart, understanding heart. Only then can you touch a person, because to touch a person is to move in a dangerous arena – life is throbbing there also. And each person is so unique that you cannot be mechanical about it. You have to be very alert and watchful. You have to become more sensitive if you love a person; only then does understanding arise.But to love a god who is somewhere sitting in the sky, it is a monologue. Go to the churches – people are talking to no one. They are as crazy as people you will find in the madhouses, but that madness is accepted by the society and this madness is not accepted, that is the only difference. Go to a madhouse; you will find people talking alone, nobody is there. They talk, and not only do they say something, they answer also. They make it look like a dialogue; it is a monologue. Then go to the churches and the temples; there people are talking to God. That too is a monologue, and if they really go mad they start doing both things: they say something and they answer also, and they feel that God has answered.You cannot do that unless you have learned how to love a person. If you love a person, by and by the person becomes the door to the whole. But one has to start with the person, with the small, with the atomic. You cannot take the jump. The Ganges cannot simply jump into the ocean, it has to start in the Gangotri, just a small stream; then wider and wider and bigger and bigger it goes, and then finally it merges with the ocean.The Ganga, the Ganges of love, also has to start just like a small stream, with persons, then it goes on becoming bigger and bigger. Once you know the beauty of it, the beauty of surrender, the beauty of insecurity, the beauty of being open to all that life gives – bliss and suffering both – then you get bigger and bigger and bigger and expand, and the consciousness finally becomes an ocean. Then you fall into godliness, into existence. But because of fear you create insensitivity – and the society respects it. Society does not want you to be very alive because alive people are rebellious.Look at a small child: if he is really alive he will be rebellious, he will try to have his own way. But if he is a dumb imbecile, an idiot, somehow stuck somewhere and not growing, he will sit in the corner perfectly obedient. You tell him to go, he goes; you tell him to come, he comes. You tell him to sit down, he sits; you tell him to stand, he stands. He is perfectly obedient because he has no personality of his own. The society, the family, the parents, will like this child. They will say, “Look, he is so obedient.”I heard once…Mulla Nasruddin was talking to his son; he had come with a report card from his school. Mulla was expecting that he would receive an A, and he had received a D; in fact he was the last in the class. So Nasruddin said, “Look, you never obey me, whatsoever I say you disobey; now this has resulted. And look at the neighbors’ child – he always receives an A, always stands first in the class.” The child looked at Nasruddin and said, “But that’s a different matter – he has got talented parents.” This child is very alive, but he has his own ways.Obedience has a certain dumbness about it, disobedience a sharp intelligence about it. But obedience is respected because obedience gives less inconvenience. Of course that’s right – disobedience creates inconvenience. You would like a dead child because he will not create any inconvenience. You would not like an alive child – the more alive, the more danger there is.Parents, societies, schools, they all force obedience, they dull you; and then they respect those people. That’s why in life you never see people who stand first in schools, universities; in life they are simply lost. You never find them in life, where they go…they prove themselves very talented in school, but somehow in life they are lost. It seems that the ways of school are different from the ways of life. Somehow life loves lively people – the more lively, the more rebellious: people with their own consciousness, being, and personality; people who have their own ways to fulfill; people who are not dead. Schools prefer just the opposite. The whole society helps you to become dumb, deaf, blind, dead.In the monasteries you will find dead people worshipped as saints. Go to Varanasi: you will find people lying down on beds of thorns, nails – and they are worshipped like gods. And what have they achieved? If you look at their faces you will not find more stupid faces anywhere. A person lying on a bed of nails or thorns has to be stupid. In the first place to choose this way of life one has to be stupid. And then what will he do, what can he do by lying on the nails? He has to make his whole body insensitive. That’s the only way he has to not feel it. By and by he becomes thicker-skinned, then it doesn’t matter. Then he becomes a rock, completely dead. And the whole society worships him: he is a sage, he has attained something. What has he attained? He has attained more deadness than you. Now the nails do not matter because the body has become dead.You may not know, but if you ask physiologists they say there are already many spots in the body which are not alive; they call them dead spots. On your back there are many dead spots. Just give a needle to one of your friends, or your wife or your husband, and tell him to push the needle in your back on many spots. You will feel some spots and some you will not feel. Some spots are already dead, so when the needle is pushed in you don’t feel it. Those people, they have done one thing: they have made their whole body a dead spot. But this is not growing, this is regression. They are becoming more material rather than more divine, because to be divine means to be perfectly sensitive, to be perfectly alive.So I told that man that there is one way, and that is to be dead: that is easier, that is what everyone is doing. People differ in degrees, but in their own ways they are doing that.You return to your home afraid of your wife; you become deaf, you don’t hear what she says. You start reading your newspaper, and you put your newspaper in such a way that you don’t see her. What she says you simply become deaf to, otherwise you feel, “How can I live if I listen to her?” You don’t see that she is crying or weeping. Only when she makes it almost impossible for you, then you look – and that look is so angry.You go to the office, you move through the traffic, everywhere you have to create a certain deadness around you. You think it protects – it does not protect, it only kills. Of course you will suffer less, but less blessings will come to you, less bliss also. When you become dead, suffering is less because you cannot feel it; blissfulness is less because you cannot feel it. A person who is in search of a higher blissfulness has to be ready to suffer.This may look a paradox to you: that a man of the status of a buddha, a man who is awakened, is blissful – absolutely – and also suffers absolutely. Of course he is blissful inside, the flowers go on showering there, but he suffers for everybody all around. He has to, because if you have sensitivity for blessings to become available to you, suffering will also become available to you. One has to choose. If you choose not to suffer, that you don’t want to suffer, then you will not attain to blissfulness either – because they both come by the same door; this is the problem. You can close your door in fear of the enemy, but the friend also comes by the same door. And if you lock it completely and block it completely, so afraid of the enemy, then the friend cannot come either. God has not been coming to you, your doors are closed. You may have closed them against the Devil, but when doors are closed they are closed. And one who needs, feels the hunger, the thirst to meet truth, has to meet the Devil also. You cannot choose one, you have to meet both.If you are alive, death will be a great phenomenon to you. If you live totally you will die totally; if you live two percent you will die two percent. As life, so will be death. If the door is open for God it is open for the Devil also.You have heard many stories but I don’t feel that you have understood: whenever God happens the Devil happens just before him, because whenever the door is open the Devil rushes in first. He is always in a hurry. God is not in a hurry.So with Jesus – before he attained to the final enlightenment the Devil tempted him for forty days. When he was meditating, fasting in his aloneness, when Jesus was disappearing and he was creating a place for Christ to come, the Devil tempted him. Those forty days the Devil was continuously by his side. And he tempted very beautifully and very politically; he is the greatest politician, all other politicians are his disciples. Very diplomatically he said, “Right, so now you have become the prophet, and you know that in the scriptures it is said that whenever God chooses a man, and a man becomes a messiah, a prophet, he becomes infinitely powerful. Now you are powerful. If you want you can jump from this hill and angels will be standing in the valley. And if you are really a messiah, fulfill whatever is said in the scriptures – jump!”The temptation was great and he was quoting scriptures. Devils always quote, because to convince you a scripture has to be brought in. Devils know all the scriptures by heart.Jesus laughed and said, “You are right but in the same scripture it is said that you should not test God.”Then one day when he was feeling very hungry…thirty days of fasting, the Devil always sitting by his side…before God comes, the Devil comes; the moment you open the door he is just standing there, and he is always first in the queue. God always lags behind because he is not in a hurry, remember: God has eternity to work, the Devil has not eternity to work – moments only. If he loses, he loses, and once a man becomes divine, he will not be hurt any more…so he has to find weak moments when Jesus is disappearing and Christ has not entered. That gap is the moment where he can enter. Then the Devil said, “But it is said in the scriptures that when a man is chosen by God he can turn even stones into bread. So why are you suffering? And prove this, because the world will be benefited by this.” This is diplomacy. He said, “The world will be benefited by this.”It seems that’s how the Devil has convinced your Satya Sai Baba. The world will be benefited by this because when you turn stones into bread, people will know that you are the man of God. They will come running, then you can help them. Otherwise who will come and who will listen to you?Jesus said, “You are right. I can turn – but not I, God can turn stones into bread. But whenever he needs to he will tell me, you need not bother. Why are you taking so much trouble?”Whenever you enter into meditation the first man you will find on the gate, the moment you open the door, will be the Devil, because it is in fear of him you have closed the door. And remember…but first I will tell you an anecdote, then you will understand:In a shop they had declared a special discount for Christmas, particularly for ladies’ clothes and dresses, so there was a crowd of ladies. One man had come because his wife was ill, and she forced him to go because this was not a chance to be lost. So he stood, gentlemanly, for one hour, but he couldn’t reach the counter. You know ladies, their way – screaming, shouting at each other, moving from anywhere, no queue; and the man was thinking of a queue, so he stood. When one hour passed and he was nowhere near the counter, then he started shoving and shouting and screaming, and he started forcibly to enter the crowd and reach the counter.One old lady shouted, “What! What are you doing? Be a gentleman!”The man said, “For one hour I have been a gentleman. Now I must behave like a lady! Enough!”Remember, the Devil never behaves like a gentleman, he behaves like a lady. He is always first in the queue. And God is a gentleman. It is difficult for him to be first in the queue and the moment you open the door, the Devil enters. And because of your fear of him, you remain closed. But if the Devil cannot enter, God also cannot. When you become vulnerable, you become vulnerable for both God and the Devil – light and dark, life and death, love and hate – you become available for both opposites.You have chosen not to suffer, so you are closed. You may not be suffering but your life is a boredom, because although you don’t suffer as much as you will suffer if you are open, there is no blessing either. The door is closed – no morning, no sun, no moon enters, no sky enters, no fresh air, everything has gone stale. And in fear you are hiding there. It is not a house where you are living; you have already converted it into a grave. Your cities are graveyards, your houses are graves. Your whole way of life is that of a dead man.Courage is needed to be open – courage to suffer, because blessing only becomes possible then.Now we should try to understand this beautiful anecdote: Deaf, Dumb and Blind.Gensha complained to his followers one day: “Other masters are always carrying on about the necessity of saving everyone – but suppose you meet up with someone who is deaf, dumb and blind? He couldn’t see your gestures, hear your preaching, or, for that matter, ask questions. Unable to save him, you’d prove yourself a worthless Buddhist.”Masters generally don’t complain, but when they complain it means something. This is not only Gensha complaining, it is all the masters complaining. But this is their experience, and wherever you move you find deaf, dumb and blind people, because the whole society is that way. And how to save them? They cannot see, they cannot hear, they cannot feel, they cannot understand any gesture. If you try too much to save them they will escape. They will think: This man is after something, he wants to exploit me, or he must have some scheme. If you don’t do very much for them they feel: This man is not for me because he is not caring enough. And whatsoever is done they cannot understand.This is not Gensha’s complaint, because enlightened persons never complain for themselves. This complaint is general, it is how it happens. A Jesus feels the same way, a Buddha feels the same way. Wherever you go, you have to meet people who are deaf, dumb and blind. You make gestures – they cannot see; or even worse, they see something else. You talk to them – they cannot understand, and even worse, they misunderstand. You say something else, they understand something else again, because meaning cannot be given through words. Only words can be communicated, meaning has to be supplied by the listener.I say a word; I mean one thing. But if ten thousand people are listening there will be ten thousand meanings, because each will listen from his own mind, from his prejudice, from his concept and philosophy and religion. He will listen from his conditioning and his conditioning will supply the meaning. It is very difficult, almost impossible. It is just as if you go to a madhouse and talk to people. How will you feel? That’s what Gensha feels, that’s the complaint.That’s my complaint also. Working with you, I always feel a block comes. Either your eyes are blocked, or your ears are blocked, or your nose is blocked, or your heart is blocked; somewhere or other, something is blocked, a stone-like thing comes. And it is difficult to penetrate because if I do too much to penetrate it, you become afraid – why am I interested so much? If I don’t do too much, you feel neglected. This is how an ignorant mind works. Do this and he will misunderstand, do that and he will misunderstand. One thing is certain: he will misunderstand.Gensha complained to his followers one day: “Other masters are always carrying on about the necessity of saving everyone.” Buddha has said that when you are saved, the only thing to do is save others. When you have attained, the only thing to do is to spread it to others, because everybody is struggling. Everybody is on the path stumbling, everybody is moving knowingly, unknowingly, and you have attained. Help others.And that is a necessity also, an inner necessity of energies, because a man who has become enlightened will have to live a few years, because enlightenment is not a destiny; it is not fixed, it is not caused. When it happens it is not necessarily at the moment when the body dies. There is no necessity for these two happenings to be together. Really, it is almost impossible, because enlightenment is a sudden uncaused phenomenon. You work for it but it never happens through your work. Your work helps to create the situation but it happens through something else – that something else is called grace. It is a gift from existence, it is not a by-product of your efforts; they don’t cause it. Of course they create a situation: I open the door and the light enters. But the light is a gift from the sun. I cannot create light just by opening the door. Opening of the door is not a cause to it. Non-opening of the door was a hindrance but opening of the door is not a cause – I cannot cause. If you open the door and it is night, light will not enter. Opening the door is not creating light, but by closing the door you hinder.So all the efforts that you make toward realization are just to open the door. Light comes when it comes. You have to remain with an open door so whenever it comes, whenever it knocks at your door, it finds you there and the door is open so it can enter. It is always a gift – and it has to be so, because if you can attain the ultimate through your efforts it will be an absurdity. A limited mind making efforts – how can it find the infinite? A finite mind making efforts – all efforts will be finite. How can the infinite happen through finite efforts? The ignorant mind is making efforts – those efforts are made in ignorance; how can they change, transform into enlightenment? No, it is not possible.You make efforts; they are necessary, they prepare you, they open the door – but the happening happens when it happens. You remain available. God knocks many times at your door, the sun rises every day. And remember, nowhere else is it said what I would like to say to you, although it will be a help. It is not said because if you misunderstand it can become a hindrance. There is a day for God and there is a night also. If you open the door in the night, the door will remain open but God will not come. There is a day – if you open the door in the right moment, immediately God comes.And it has to be so, because the whole of existence has opposites. God is also in a rest period when he sleeps. If you open the door then he will not come. There is a moment when he is awake, when he is moving – it has to be so because every energy moves through two opposites, rest and movement, and God is infinite energy! He has movements and he has a rest. That’s why a master is needed.If you do it on your own you may be working hard and nothing is happening, because you are not working at the right moment. You are working in the night; you open the door and only darkness enters. Afraid, you close it again. You open the door and there is nothing but vast emptiness all around. You become afraid, you close it again, and once you see that emptiness, you will never forget it – and you will be so afraid that it will take many years for you to gather courage again to open it. …Because once you see the infinite abyss, when God is asleep, when God is in rest, if you see that moment of infinite negativity and abyss and darkness, you will be scared – so much so that for many years you will not make another attempt.And I feel that many people are afraid of going into meditation – and I know that somewhere in their past life they have made some effort and they had a glimpse of the abyss at the wrong moment. They may not know it but unconsciously it is there, so whenever they come near the door and they put their hand on the knob and it becomes possible to open the door, they become afraid. They come back exactly from that moment, run back – they don’t open it. An unconscious fear grips. It has to be so, because for many lives you have been struggling and striving.Hence the necessity of the master who knows, who has attained, and who knows the right moment. He will tell you to make all the efforts when it is the night of God. And he will not tell you to open the door. He will tell you to prepare in the night, prepare as much as you can, be ready, and when the morning strikes and the first rays have entered he will tell you to open the door. Sudden illumination! Then it is totally different because when the light is there it is totally different.When God is awake then the emptiness is not there. It is a fulfillment; it is perfect fulfillment. Everything is full, more than full, it is ever-flowing perfection. It is the peak, not the abyss. If you open the door in the wrong moment, it is the abyss. You will get dizzy, so dizzy that for many lives together you will never attempt it. But only one who knows, only one who has become one with God, only one who knows when it is the night and when the day, can help, because now they happen in him also – he has a night, he has a day.Hindus had a glimpse of this and they have a beautiful hypothesis: they call it Brahma’s day, God’s day. When the creation is there they call it God’s day – but the creation has a time limit, and the creation dissolves and Brahma’s night, God’s night, starts. Twelve hours of Brahma’s day is the whole creation. Then, tired, the whole existence disappears into nonexistence. Then for twelve hours it is Brahma’s night. For us it is millions and millions of years, for God it is twelve hours – his day.Christians also had a theory, or a hypothesis – because I call all religious theories hypotheses, for nothing is proved, nothing can be proved by the very nature of the thing. They say God created the world in six days, then on the seventh day he rested. That’s why Sunday is a rest day, a holiday. Six days he created, and on the seventh day he rested. They had a glimpse that even God must rest.These are both hypotheses, both beautiful, but you have to find the essence of it. The essence is that every day God also has a night and a day. And every day there is a right moment to enter and a wrong moment; in the wrong moment you will be against the wall, in the right moment you simply enter. Because of this, those who have knocked at the wrong moment say that to attain enlightenment is a gradual thing, you attain it by degrees; and those who have come to the door in the right moment say enlightenment is sudden, it happens in a moment. A master is needed to decide when is the right moment.It is reported that Vivekananda started his disciplehood and then one day he attained the first glimpse. You can call it satori, the Zen word for samadhi, because it is a glimpse, not a permanent thing. It is just as if clouds are not there in the sky – the sky is clear and from a distance of one thousand miles you have a glimpse of Everest in all its glory, but then the sky becomes cloudy and the glimpse is again lost. It is not attainment, you have not reached Everest, you have not reached the top; from thousands of miles you had a glimpse – that is satori. Satori is a glimpse of samadhi. Vivekananda had a satori.In Ramakrishna’s ashram there were many people, many people were working. One man, his name was Kalu, a very simple man, a very innocent man, was also working in his own way – and Ramakrishna accepted every way. He was a rare man; he accepted every technique, every method, and he said everybody has to find his own way, there is no super highway. And this is good, otherwise there would be such a traffic jam! So it is good, you can walk on your own path. Nobody else is there to create any trouble or make it crowded.That Kalu was a very simple man. He had at least one hundred gods – as Hindus are lovers of many gods, one is not enough for them. So they will put in their worship place this god, that god, whatsoever they can find; they will even put calendars there. There is nothing wrong in it; if you love it, it is okay. But Vivekananda was a logician, a very keen intellect. He always argued with this innocent man and he could not answer. Vivekananda said, “Why this nonsense? One is enough, and the scriptures say that he is one, so why these one hundred and one gods?” And they were all sorts of shapes, and Kalu had to work with these gods at least three hours in the morning and three in the evening – the whole day was gone, because with every god he had to work, and however fast he worked it took three hours in the morning and three in the evening. But he was a very, very silent man and Ramakrishna loved him.Vivekananda always argued, “Throw these gods!” When he had a glimpse of satori he felt very powerful. Suddenly the idea came to him that in this power, if he simply sent a telepathic message to Kalu – he was worshipping in his room, this was time for worship – to take all his gods to the Ganges and throw them, it would happen.He simply sent a message. Kalu was really a simple man. He gathered all his gods into a bed sheet and carried them toward the Ganges.From the Ganges Ramakrishna was coming, and he said, “Wait! This is not you who is going to throw them. Go back to your room and put them in their place.” But Kalu said, “Enough! Finished!”Ramakrishna said, “Wait and come with me!”He knocked at Vivekananda’s door. Vivekananda opened the door and Ramakrishna said, “What have you done? This is not good and this is not the right moment for you. So I will take your key of meditation and will keep it with me. When the right moment comes I will give it to you.” And for his whole life Vivekananda tried in millions of ways to attain, but he couldn’t get that glimpse again.Just before he died, three days before, Ramakrishna appeared in a dream and he gave him the key. He said, “Now you can take the key. Now the right moment is here and you can open the door.”And the next day in the morning he had the second glimpse.A master knows when it is the right time. He helps you, prepares you for the right moment, and he will give you the key when the right moment is there; then you simply open the door and the divine enters – because if you open the door and darkness enters it will look like death, not like life. Nothing is wrong in this but you will get scared, and you can get so scared that you may carry that fear for ever and ever.Buddha says that whenever you attain, start helping others, because all your energies that were moving into desire…now that door is finished, that travel is no more, that trip is no more; now let all your energies which were moving in desiring, vasana, become compassion, let them become karuna. And there is only one compassion – how to help the other to attain the ultimate, because there is nothing else to be attained. All else is rubbish. Only the divine is worth attaining. If you attain that you have attained all; if you miss that you have missed all.When one becomes enlightened he lives for a few years before the body completes its circle. Buddha lived on for forty years because the body had got a momentum: from the parents the body had got chromosomes, from his own past karma the body had got a life circle. He was to live eighty years, enlightened or not. If enlightenment became possible or if it happened, then too he had to live eighty years. It happened nearabout when he was forty; he lived forty years more. What to do with the energies now? Now there is no desire, no ambition. And you have infinite energies flowing. What to do with those energies? They can be moved into compassion. Now there is no need for meditation either; you have attained, you are overflowing – now you can share. Now you can share with millions, you can give it to them.So Buddha has made this a part of his basic teaching. He calls the first part dhyana, meditation, and the second part pragya, wisdom attainment. Through meditation you reach to pragya. These are your inward phenomena, two parts: you meditated, now you have attained. Now to balance it with the outer – because a man of enlightenment is always balanced. Outside, when there was no meditation inside, there was desire. Now there is wisdom inside, there should be compassion. The outer energies should become compassion; the inner energies have become wisdom, enlightenment. Enlightenment inside, compassion outside. The perfect man is always balanced. So Buddha says go on and on and help to save people.Gensha complained: how to do it if you come to somebody who is deaf, dumb and blind? – and you almost always come across such people because only they are there. You don’t come across a buddha, and a buddha doesn’t need you. You come across an ignorant person, not knowing what to do, not knowing where to move. How to help him?Troubled by these words, one of Gensha’s disciples went to consult the master Ummon.Ummon was a brother disciple to Gensha – they were disciples to the same teacher, Seppo. So what to do? Gensha has said such a troubling thing to this man: how to help people? He went to Ummon.Ummon is a very famous master. Gensha was a very silent one. But Ummon had thousands of disciples and he had many devices to work with them. And he was a man like Gurdjieff – he would create situations, because only situations can help. If words can’t help because you are dumb, you are deaf – words can’t help. If you are blind, gestures are useless. Then what to do? Only situations can help.If you are blind, I cannot show you the door just by gesture because you can’t see. I cannot tell you about the door because you are deaf and you cannot listen. Really, you cannot even ask the question, “Where is the door?” – because you are dumb. What to do? I have to create a situation.I can take hold of your hand, I can take you by my hand toward the door. No gesture, no word. I have to do something; I have to create a situation in which the dumb, the deaf and the blind can move.Troubled by these words, one of Gensha’s disciples went to consult the master Ummon. Because he knew well that Gensha wouldn’t say much; he was not a man of many words and he never created any situation; he would say things and he would keep quiet. People had to go to other masters to ask what he meant. He was a different type, a silent type of man, like Ramana Maharshi; he would not say much. Ummon was like Gurdjieff. He was also not a man of words, but he would create situations, and he would use words only to create situations.He went to consult the master Ummon who, like Gensha, was a disciple of Seppo.And Seppo was totally different from both. It is said he never spoke. He remained completely silent. So there was no problem for him – he never came across a deaf, dumb and blind man because he never moved. Only people who were in search, only people whose eyes were slightly opening, only people who were deaf but if you spoke loudly they could hear something…so that’s why many people became enlightened near Seppo because only those who were just borderline cases reached him.This Ummon and this Gensha, these two disciples became enlightened with Seppo, a totally silent man – he would simply sit and sit and do nothing. If you wanted to learn you could be with him, if you didn’t want to you could go. He would not say anything. You had to learn, he would not teach. He was not a teacher, but many people learned.The disciple went to Ummon.“Bow please,” said Ummon.He started immediately, because people who are enlightened don’t waste time, they simply jump to the point immediately.“Bow please,” said Ummon.The monk, though taken by surprise…Because this is no way! You don’t order anybody to bow. And there is no need – if somebody wants to bow he will bow, if he wants to pay you respect, he will pay it. If not, then not. What type of man is this Ummon? He says “Bow please” before the monk has asked anything; he has just entered his room, and Ummon says “Bow please.”The monk, though taken by surprise, obeyed the master’s command – then straightened up in expectation of having his query answered.But instead of an answer, he got a staff thrust at him. He leapt back. “well,” said Ummon, “you’re not blind. Now approach.”He said: You can see my staff, so one thing is certain, you are not blind. Now approach.The monk did as he was bidden. “Good,” said Ummon, “so you’re not deaf either.”You can listen: I say approach and you approach.“Well, understand?” “Understand what, sir?” said the monk.What is he saying? He says:“Well, understand?” “Understand what, sir? said the monk.” Ah, you’re not dumb either,” said Ummon. On hearing these words the monk awoke as from a deep sleep.What happened? What is Ummon pointing to? First, he is saying that if it is not a problem to you why be worried? There are people who come to me…A very rich man came, one of the richest in India, and he said, “What about poor people, how will you help poor people?” So I told him, “If you are a poor person, then ask; otherwise let the poor ask. How is it a problem to you? You are not poor, so why create a problem out of it?”Once Mulla Nasruddin’s child asked him – I was present, and the child was working very strenuously, grumbling of course, on his homework, and then suddenly he looked at Nasruddin and said, “Gee Dad, what is this education stuff? Of what use is all this education stuff anyway?”Nasruddin said, “Well, there is nothing like education. It makes you capable of worrying about everybody else in the world except you.”There is nothing like education. All your education simply makes you capable of worrying about situations everywhere in the world, about everyone except you – about all the troubles that are in the world. They have always been there, they will always be there. It is not because you are here that troubles are there. You were not and they were there; you will not be soon and they will remain there. They change their colors but they remain. The very scheme of the universe is such that it seems that through trouble and misery something is growing. It seems to be a step, it seems to be a necessary schooling, a discipline.The first thing Ummon is pointing out is: You are neither blind, nor dumb, nor deaf, so why are you concerned and why are you troubled? You have eyes – why waste time thinking about blind men? Why not look at your master? – because blind men will be there always, your master will not be there always. And you can think and worry about blind and deaf people, how to save them, but the man who can save you will not be there for ever. So you be concerned about yourself.My experience is also that people are concerned about others. Once one man brought to me even exactly the same question. He said, “We can listen to you but what about those who can’t come to listen, what to do? We can read you,” he said, “but what about those who cannot read?”They appear relevant, but they are absolutely irrelevant. Because why are you worried? And if you are worried in such a way then you can never become enlightened, because a person who goes on wasting and dissipating his energy on others never looks at himself. This is a trick of the mind to escape from oneself – you go on thinking about others and you feel very good because you are worrying about others. You are a great social reformer or a revolutionary or a utopian, a great servant of the society – but what are you doing? You are simply avoiding the basic question: it is with you that something has to be done.Forget the whole society, and only then can something be done to you; and when you are saved you can start saving others. But before that, please don’t think – it is impossible. Before you are healed, you cannot heal anyone. Before you are filled with light, you cannot help anyone to enkindle his own heart. Impossible – only a lighted flame can help somebody. First become a lighted flame – this is the first point.And the second point is, Ummon created a situation. He could have said this but he is not saying it; he is creating a situation, because only in a situation are you totally involved. If I say something only intellect is involved. You listen from the head; but your legs, your heart, your kidneys, your liver, your totality is not involved. But when the monk got a staff thrust at him he jumped totally. Then it was total action; then not only the head and the legs, the kidneys, the liver, but the whole of him jumped.That’s the whole point of my meditation techniques: the whole of you has to shake, jump, the whole of you has to dance, the whole of you has to move. If you simply sit with closed eyes only the head is involved. You can go on and on inside the head – and there are many people who go on sitting for years together, just with closed eyes, repeating a mantra. But a mantra moves in the head, your totality is not involved – and your totality is involved in existence. Your head is only as much in God as your liver and kidneys and your feet. You are totally in him, and just the head cannot realize this.Anything intensely active will be helpful. Inactive, you can simply go on rambling inside the mind. And they have no end, the dreams, the thoughts, they have no end. They go on infinitely.Kabir has said: There are two infinities in the world – one is ignorance and another is God. Two things are endless – God is endless, and ignorance. You can go on repeating a mantra, but it will not help unless your whole life becomes a mantra, unless you are completely involved it – no holding back, no division. That’s what Ummon did. The monk got a staff thrust at him. He leapt back. “Well,” said Ummon, “you’re not blind. Now approach.” The monk did as he was bidden. “Good, you’re not deaf either.”What is he pointing at? He is pointing at this: “You can understand, so why waste time?” Then he asks, “Well, understand?” Ummon was finished. The situation was complete. But the disciple was not yet ready, had not yet got the point. He asked, “Understand what, sir?” The whole thing was there now. Ummon had said whatsoever was to be said. And he had created a situation where thoughts were not: when somebody pushes a staff at you, you jump without thought. If you think you cannot jump, by the time you have decided to jump, the staff would have hit you. There is no time.Mind needs time, thinking needs time. When somebody pushes a staff at you, or suddenly you find a snake on a path, you jump! You don’t think about it, you don’t make a logical syllogism, you don’t say: Here is a snake; a snake is dangerous; death is possible; I must jump. You don’t follow Aristotle there. You simply put aside all Aristotle – you jump! You don’t care what Aristotle says, you are illogical. But whenever you are illogical you are total.That’s what Ummon has said. You jump totally. If you can jump totally, why not meditate totally? When a staff is thrust at you, you jump without caring about the world. You don’t ask, “That’s okay, but what about a blind man? If you push a staff, how will it help a blind man?” You don’t ask a question – you simply jump; you simply avoid. In that moment the whole world disappears, only you are the problem. And the problem is there – you have to solve it and come out of it.“Understand?” That’s what Ummon asked. The point is complete. “Understand what sir?” said the monk. He has still not got it.“Ah, you’re not dumb either” You can speak also. On hearing these words the monk awoke as from a deep sleep.A whole situation – nonverbal, illogical, total. As if someone has shaken him out of his sleep. He awoke; for a moment everything became clear. For a moment there was lightning, there was no darkness. Satori happened. Now the taste is there. Now this disciple can follow the taste. Now he has known, he cannot forget it ever. Now the search will be totally different. Before this it was a search for something unknown – and how can you search for an unknown? And how can you put down your total life for it? But now it will be total, now it is not something unknown – a glimpse has been given to him. He has tasted the ocean, maybe out of a teacup but the taste is the same. Now he knows. It was really a small experience – a window opened, but the whole sky was there. Now he can move out of the house, come out under the sky and live in it. Now he knows that the question is individual.Don’t make it social. The question is you, and when I say you I mean you, each individually; not you as a group, not you as a society. When I mean you, I mean simply you, the individual – and the trick of the mind is to make it social. The mind wants to worry about others – then there is no problem. You can postpone your own problem; that’s how you have been wasting your lives for many lives. Don’t waste it any more.I have been pushing these talks, subtler ones than with Ummon, but if you don’t listen to me I may have to find grosser things.Don’t think about others. First solve your problem, then you will have the clarity to help others also. And nobody can help unless he is enlightened himself.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A master was asked by a curious monk: “What is the way?” “It is right before your eyes,” said the master. “Why do I not see it for myself?” asked the monk. “Because you are thinking of yourself,” said the master. “What about you,” said the monk, “do you see it?”The master said: “So long as you see double, saying I don’t, and you do, and so on, your eyes are clouded.” “When there is neither I nor you, can one see it?” said the monk. “When there is neither I nor you, who is the one who wants to see it?” replied the master.Yes, the way is right before your eyes. But your eyes are not right before the way – they are closed, closed in a very subtle manner. They are clouded. Millions of thoughts are closing them, millions of dreams are floating on them; whatsoever you have seen is all there, whatsoever you have thought is all there. And you have lived long – many lives, and you have thought much, and it is all gathered there in your eyes. But because thoughts cannot be seen you see your eyes as clear. The clarity is not there. Millions of layers of thought and dreams are there in your eyes. The way is right before you. All that is, is right before you. But you are not here. You are not in that still moment where eyes are totally empty, unclouded, and you see, and you see that which is.So the first thing to be understood is: how to attain unclouded eyes, how to make eyes empty so that they can reflect truth, how not to be continuously in a mad rush within; how not to be continuously thinking and thinking and thinking, how to relax thought. When thought is not, seeing happens; when thought is, you go on interpreting and you go on missing.Don’t be an interpreter of reality, be a visionary. Don’t think about it, see it!What to do? One thing: Whenever you look, just be the look. Try. It is going to be difficult, difficult just because of old habit. But try. It happens. It has happened to many, why not you? You are no exception. The universal law is as available to you as to a buddha or to anybody. Just make a little effort.You see a flower: then just see, don’t say anything. The river is flowing: sit on the bank and see the river, but don’t say anything. Clouds are moving in the sky: lie down on the ground and see, and don’t say anything. Just don’t verbalize!This is the deepest habit, to verbalize; this is your whole training – to jump immediately to words from reality, to immediately start making words: “beautiful flower,” “lovely sunset.” If it is lovely, let it be lovely! – why bring in this word? If it is beautiful, do you think your word “beautiful” will make it more beautiful? On the contrary, you missed an ecstatic moment. The verbalization came in. Before you could have seen you moved, moved in an inner wandering. If you go too far away in this wandering you become mad.What is a madman? He who never comes to reality, who always wanders in his own world of words – and he has wandered so far that you cannot bring him back. He is not with the reality, but are you with the reality? You are not either. The difference is only of degree. A madman has wandered very far, you never wandered that far – just in the neighborhood – and you come again and again and touch reality and go again.You have a small touch, a small contact somewhere, uprooted, but still one root seems to be there in the reality. But that root is very fragile; any moment it can be broken, any accident – the wife dies, the husband escapes, you become bankrupt in the market – and that fragile root is broken. Then you go on wandering and wandering; then there is no coming back, then you never touch reality. This is the state of the madman, and the normal man is different only in degree.And what is the state of a buddha, an enlightened man, a man of Tao, of understanding, awareness? He is deeply rooted in reality, he never wanders from it – just the opposite of a madman.You are in the middle. From that middle either you can move toward being a madman or you can move toward being a buddha. It is up to you. Don’t give much energy to thoughts, that’s suicidal; you are poisoning yourself. Whenever thinking starts, if it is unnecessary – and ninety-nine percent of it is unnecessary – immediately bring yourself back to reality. Anything will help: even the touch of the chair you are sitting on, or the touch of the bed you are lying on. Feel the touch – it is more real than your thoughts about God, it is more godly than your thoughts about God because it is a real thing.Touch it, feel the touch, be the touch, be here and now. You are eating? – taste the food well, the flavor. Smell it well, chew it well – you are chewing reality! Don’t go wandering in thoughts. You are taking a bath? – enjoy it! The shower is falling on you? – feel it! Become more and more a feeling center rather than a thinking center.And yes, the way is right before your eyes. But feeling is not allowed much. The society brings you up as a thinking being not as a feeling being, because feeling is unpredictable; no one knows where it will lead, and society cannot leave you on your own. It gives you thoughts: all the schools, colleges and universities exist as centers to train you for thinking, to verbalize more. The more words you have, the more talented you are thought of; the more articulate you are with words and words, the more educated you are thought. It will be difficult, because thirty, forty, fifty, sixty years of training…but the sooner you begin the better. Bring yourself back to reality.That is the meaning of all sensitivity groups. In the West they have become a focal point and all those who are interested in consciousness, extension of consciousness, have to be interested in sensitivity groups, in training to be more sensitive. And you need not go anywhere to learn it, the whole of life is sensitivity. Twenty-four hours a day the reality is just before you, around you – it surrounds you; you breathe it in, you eat it. Whatsoever you do you have to do with reality.But the mind moves far away. There exists a gap between your being and your mind – they are not together, the mind is somewhere else. You have to be here in reality because when you eat you have to eat real bread; thinking about bread won’t help. When you take a bath you have to take a real bath; thinking about it is of no use. When you breathe you have to breathe real air; just thinking about it won’t do. Reality surrounds you from everywhere, is bumping you from all sides – wherever you go you encounter it.That is the meaning of: “The way is right in front of your eyes.” It is everywhere because nothing else can be – only the real is.Then what is the problem? Why then do people go on seeking and seeking and seeking and never find it? Where does the problem exist? What is the basic core of the whole trouble? The trouble is, mind can be in thoughts. The possibility for mind being in thoughts is there. The body is in reality, but the mind can be in thoughts – and that is the duality. And all your religions have been in favor of the mind and not in favor of the body. That has been the greatest block that has ever existed in this world. They poison the whole mind of humanity; they are for the mind, not for the reality.If I tell you: When you are eating, eat with taste, and eat so deeply that the eater is forgotten, simply become the process of eating – you will be surprised because no religious man will say a thing like that. Religious people have been teaching: eat without taste – aswad; they have made a great thing out of it, the training for no-taste.In Gandhi’s ashram they had eleven rules. One of them was aswad, no taste – eat, but without taste, kill the taste completely. Drink – but without taste. Make your life as insensitive as possible. Deaden your body completely, so that you become a pure mind…you will become so – but this is how people go toward madness.I teach you just the contrary, just the opposite. I am not against life – and life is the way. I affirm life in its totality. I am not a negator, I am not a denier – and I want you to bring your mind back to reality. Your body is more real than your mind. You can befool the mind, you cannot befool the body. The body is more rooted in the world; the body is more existential than your mind. Your mind is just mental. It thinks, it spins words, it creates systems – and all systems are foolish.Once it happened:Mulla Nasruddin was gambling in a horse race. First race he lost; second, he lost; third – he went on losing, and two ladies just by his side sitting in a box were continuously winning every race.Then at the seventh he could not contain his curiosity. What system were they following? Every race, and it was now the seventh, they had been winners and he had been a loser, and he had been working so hard at it. So he gathered courage, leaned over, and asked the ladies: “You are doing well?”They said, “Yes,” very happily, they were beaming with happiness.So he whispered: “Can you tell me about your system? Just a hint.”One lady said laughingly, “We have a lot of systems! But today we have decided for long tails.”But all systems and all philosophies are just like that – long tails. No system is true to reality because no system can be true to reality. I am not saying that some system can be – no. No system can be true to reality because all systems are fabrications of the mind, verbalizations, your interpretations, your projections – mind working on reality. That’s how a system is born; all systems are false.Reality needs no system. Reality needs a clarity of vision. It needs no philosophy to look at, it is right here and now. Before you started moving into a philosophy it was there; when you will come back it will be there and will have always been there with you – and you were thinking about it. Thinking about it is the way to miss it.If you are a Hindu you will miss, if you are a Christian you will miss, if you are a Mohammedan you will miss; every “ism” is a way to miss. If you have the Koran in your head you will miss, if you have the Gita in your head you will miss; whatsoever scripture you carry – scripture is mind, and reality doesn’t fall in line with the mind, reality does not bother about your mind and your fabrications.Beautiful theories you spin, beautiful arguments you give, logical rationalizations you find. You work hard. You go on refining your theories, polishing them, but they are just like bricks – you go on rubbing, polishing, but they can never become a mirror. I say maybe bricks can become a mirror, but the mind can never become a mirror to reality. The mind is a destroyer. The moment it enters, everything becomes cloudy.Please don’t be a philosopher, and don’t be an addict of any system. It is easy to bring an alcoholic back, it is easy to bring back a person who has gone too deep into drugs; it is difficult to bring a system-addict back. Organizations exist like Alcoholics Anonymous for alcoholics and other organizations for drug addicts, but there exists no organization for people who have become system-addicts – and there cannot be, because whenever there is an organization, it itself is a system.I am not giving you a system. My whole effort is to bring you out of your systematizing mind. If you can become again a child, if you can look at reality without any preconceptions about it, you will attain. It is simple, it is ordinary, nothing is special about it. Reality is nothing special and extraordinary – it is there, it is everywhere. Only your mind is an unreal thing. Mind creates illusion, maya, mind creates dreams – and then you are clouded in them. And you are trying to do the impossible, that which cannot be done: you are trying to find the real through the mind. You lose the real through the mind, you cannot find it through the mind. You have to drop the mind completely.Yes, the way is right before your eyes – but you are not there.First thing: mind won’t help. Try to understand it: mind won’t help, it is the barrier. And the second thing: your over-concern about yourself is the greatest barrier. It has been my constant observation that people who meditate miss because they are concerned too much in themselves. They are too egocentric. They may pretend humbleness and they may even want to know how to be egoless, but they are the most egocentric people; they are only worried about themselves, they are only concerned with themselves.To be worried about others is stupid; to be worried about oneself is even more stupid – because to be worried is stupidity; it makes no difference about whom you are worried. And people who are worried about others, you will feel they are always more healthy.So in the West psychoanalysts help people to think about others and drop thinking about themselves. Psychologists go on teaching people how to be extroverts and not to be introverts, because an introvert becomes ill, an introvert becomes in reality perverted. He thinks continuously about himself, he becomes enclosed. He remains with his frustrations, worries, anxieties, anguish, depressions, anger, jealousy, hate, this and that – and he only worries. Think what type of anguish he lives in, continuously worried about things: Why am I angry? How should I become non-angry? Why do I hate? How should I transcend it? Why am I depressed? How to attain bliss? – he is continuously worried, and through this worry he creates the very same things he is worried about. It becomes a vicious circle.Have you ever observed that whenever you want to go beyond a depression the depression deepens? Whenever you want not to be angry you become more angry. Whenever you are sad and you don’t want to be sad any more, more sadness descends on you – have you not observed it? It happens because of the Law of the Reverse Effect. If you are sad and you want not to be sad, what will you do? You will look at sadness, you will try to suppress it, you will be attentive to it – and attention is food.Psychoanalysts have found a clue. That clue is not very meaningful in the end; it cannot lead you to reality, it can at the most make you normally unhealthy. It can make you adjusted – it is a sort of adjustment to the people around you. They say: Be concerned with others’ worries, help people, serve people.Rotarians, members of Lions Clubs and others, they always say: We serve. Those are the extroverts. But you will feel that people who are in social service, those who are concerned with others and are less concerned with themselves are happier than people who are concerned too much with themselves.Too much concern with oneself is a sort of disease. And then the deeper you move within – you are opening a Pandora’s Box: many things bubble up and there seems to be no end to it. You are surrounded by your own anxieties and you go on playing with your wounds, you go on touching them again and again to see whether they are healed or not. You have become a pervert.What to do? There seem to be only two ways: either be an extrovert – but by being an extrovert you can never become a buddha, because if you are worried about others, this worrying about others may be an escape. It is. You cannot look at your own worries when you are worried about others. Your focus is others, you are in a shadow. But how will your inner being grow this way? You will look more happy, you may look as if you are enjoying life more, but how are you going to grow? How will your inner being come to that point where it becomes light? If you are not concerned with it at all, it is not going to grow. To be an extrovert is good in the sense that you remain healthy – you don’t become a pervert. To be an introvert is dangerous. If you move wrongly, you will become a pervert and the wrong movement is that you become too concerned. Then what to do? Treat yourself as if you also are the other; don’t be too concerned.And you are the other. Your body is other, why not my own body also? Your mind is other, why not my own mind? The question is only distance: your body is five feet away from me, my body is a little closer, that’s all. Your mind is there, my mind is here – the difference is of distance. But my mind is as other as your mind, and my body is as far away from me as your body. And if this whole world is not a concern to me, why make myself a concern? Why not leave both and be neither extrovert nor introvert? – this is my message.If you cannot follow this then it is better to follow the psychoanalysts. Be an extrovert, be unconcerned; you will not grow but at least you will not suffer so much as an introvert suffers. But don’t be an introvert and don’t play with your wounds. Don’t be concerned too much. Don’t be so selfish and don’t be so self-centered. Look at yourself from a distance; the distance is there, you only have to try it once and you will feel it. You are also the other.When your body is ill it is as if somebody else’s body is ill: do whatsoever is needed but don’t be too concerned, because too much concern is a greater illness than the body’s illness. If you have a fever go to the doctor, take the medicine, take care of the body, and that’s all. Why be concerned too much? Why create another fever – which no doctor can treat? This fever in the body can be treated, but if you become too concerned another fever is created. That fever is deeper, no doctor can help with it.And this is the problem: the body may become well soon, but the other fever may continue; and the other fever may go on continuing, and you may feel that the body is still ill. This happens every day: the disease disappears from the body but not from the mind and the mind carries it on. It has happened many times.Once somebody was telling me about his friend who is a drunkard – he walks on crutches, he cannot walk without them. For many years he has been walking on crutches – an accident some twenty years before. Then one day he had taken too much drink; he forgot the crutches and went out for a walk. After one hour he came running back in a panic; he said, “Where are my crutches? I cannot walk without them! I must have taken too much.” But if while you are drunk you can walk, why not when you are not drunk?All over the world many cases are reported about paralysis. Somebody is paralyzed and then the house catches fire and everybody runs out, and the man who was paralyzed and who couldn’t get out of his bed – and everything was done in the bed – he also runs out, because he forgets. The house is on fire, he forgets completely that he is paralyzed. In that forgetfulness he is not paralyzed. And outside the house the family looks at him and says, “What are you doing? How can you run?” – and he falls down; remembering comes back.You may be creating many diseases, not because the body is ill but because the mind carries the seed. So once a disease happens the mind carries the seed and goes on projecting it again and again and again. Many diseases, ninety percent, have their origin in the mind.Too much concern about yourself is the greatest disease possible. You cannot be happy, you cannot enjoy yourself. How can you enjoy? So many problems inside! Problems and problems and problems and nothing else! – and there seems to be no solution. What to do? You go crazy. Everybody, inside, is crazy.I have heard – it happened in Washington – one man suddenly climbed up a pole, a flagpole. A crowd gathered, policemen came, and the man shouted as loudly as he could, uttered profane words, then came down.Immediately he was caught by the police and they asked the person, “What are you doing here?”The man said, “Don’t disturb me. If now and then I don’t do such a crazy thing I will go mad, I will go nuts. I tell you, don’t stop me. Now and then if I do such a thing then everything runs smoothly. And I was not thinking that anybody will be able to know, because where so much craziness is going on all around, who will bother?”Now and then you also need to become mad – that’s how anger happens: anger is a temporary madness. If you don’t allow a leakage now and then you will gather so much you will explode, you will go nuts. But if you are continuously concerned with this you are already nuts.This has been my observation, that people who meditate, pray, seek and search for the truth are more prone to neurosis than other people. And the reason is: they are concerned with themselves too much, too egocentric, just continuously thinking of this and that, this block, that block, this anger, that sadness, headache, backache, stomach, legs…they are continuously moving inside. They are never okay, they cannot be, because the body is a vast phenomenon and many things go on.And if nothing is happening then too they are worried: why is nothing happening? And immediately they have to create something because that has become their constant business, occupation; otherwise they feel lost. What to do? Nothing is happening! How is it possible that nothing is happening to me? They feel their ego only when something is happening – maybe it is depression, sadness, anger, an illness, but if something is they are okay, they can feel themselves.Have you seen children? They pinch themselves to feel that they are. That child remains in you – you would like to pinch and see whether you are or not.It is said about Mark Twain that once at a dinner party he was suddenly in a panic and he said, “Sorry, I will have to leave, and you will have to call a doctor. It seems my right leg has become paralyzed.”The lady sitting by his side started laughing and said, “Don’t be worried, you have been pinching my leg.”Then Mark Twain said, “Once twenty years ago a doctor said to me, ‘Some day or other your right side will get paralyzed,’ so since then I have been pinching myself; I always feel, twenty or thirty times a day, whether it has gone. Just now I was pinching and”…he was pinching somebody else’s leg.But why go on pinching? Why be concerned with paralysis? It is more of a disease if you have to pinch your leg thirty times counted a day for twenty years. This is worse than paralysis! Paralysis happens once; this is happening thirty times a day for twenty years. They say a brave man dies once and cowards die millions of times – because they go on pinching and feeling whether they are dead yet or not.Your diseases help you to retain your ego. You feel that something is happening – of course not bliss, not ecstasy, but sadness and “Nobody is as sad as I am,” and “Nobody is as blocked as I am,” and “Nobody has such a migraine as I have got.” You feel superior there, everybody else is inferior.If you are concerned too much with yourself remember, you will not attain. This over-concern will enclose you, and the way is right before your eyes. You have to open your eyes, not close them.Now try to understand this parable.A master was asked by a curious monk: “What is the way?”The first thing is to understand that the monk is curious, not a seeker. If you are a seeker you inquire in a different way. You inquire with your being, you put yourself at stake, you become a gambler. If you are simply curious it is just like an itch; you feel a subtle itch in the mind but it is nothing, you are not really concerned with it, not sincere about it – whatsoever the answer you will not bother. It will not change you. And a curious man is a superficial man. You cannot ask such questions out of curiosity, you have to ask them out of a very authentic search. And when you go to a master you feel you have to ask something; otherwise you will be thought foolish.Many people come to me and I know from where they are asking. Sometimes they are simply curious: because they have come, now they have to ask; otherwise they will be thought foolish. And by asking they prove they are foolish, because if the question has not really arisen in you, if the question has not become a deep inquiry, if the question does not put everything at stake, if the question is not a problem of life and death to decide, if you are not ready to be transformed by the answer, you are foolish if you ask. And if you are not questioning it from the heart, it is difficult to give any answer, and even if an answer is given you will misunderstand it.The monk was a curious monk, that’s why in this parable he does not awake. Otherwise…we have been studying many parables; when the search is true, in the end, satori happens, a certain enlightenment comes. Suddenly a disciple becomes alert, as if someone has shaken him out of his sleep. A clarity comes. Maybe only for a split second, but clouds disperse and the vast sky is seen. The clouds will come again – that’s not the problem, but now you know what real sky is and you will carry this seed within you. Rightly taken care of, this seed will become a tree, and thousands will be able to find rest and shelter under you. But if you are curious, nothing will happen. If you are curious, the question has not come out of the heart. It is an intellectual itch – and in mind, seeds cannot be sown.Jesus has a parable – he was continuously talking about it. A farmer went to sow seeds. He just threw them here and there. Some fell on the road; they never sprouted because the road was hard and the seeds could not penetrate the soil, they could not move in the deeper, darker realm of the soil…because only there does birth happen, only in the deep dark does God start working. The work is secret work, it is hidden.Some fell by the side of the road; they sprouted, but animals destroyed them. Only some fell on the right soil; they not only sprouted, they grew to their full height, they flowered, they came to fulfillment, and one seed came to be millions of seeds.If you ask from curiosity, you are asking from the road. The head is just a road – it has to be, it has such a constant traffic. It has to be very hard, almost concrete. Even on your roads the traffic is not so much as in your head. So many thoughts going here and there at fast speed! We have not yet been able to invent a faster vehicle than thought – our fastest vehicles are nothing before thought. Your astronauts may reach the moon, but they cannot reach it with the speed of thought, they will take time; you can simply immediately reach the moon in thought. For thought, it is as if space does not exist: one moment you can be here, next moment in London and the next in New York, and hop around the world many times within a second. So much traffic…the road is almost concrete; throw something there, it will never sprout.Curiosity comes from the head. It is like asking a master something just as if you have encountered him in the market and you ask him. I know such people. I was traveling so much it was a problem to avoid such people. Even on the platform – I am going to catch a train and they will accompany me and they will ask, “What about God? Does God exist or not?” These people are curious and they are foolish! Never ask a question out of curiosity, because it is useless, wasting your time and others.”If somebody has asked a question to this master right from the heart, the end would have been different. The man would have flowered into satori, there would have been a fulfillment. But there is no end like that because the very beginning was wrong. A master gives you an answer out of compassion, knowing well that you are curious – but maybe, who knows, even accidents happen; sometimes curious people also become authentically interested, nobody knows.A master was asked by a curious monk: “What is the way?” “It is right before your eyes,” said the master.This is absurd because if it is really right before the eyes then why do people seek, why do people inquire? And why can’t they see for themselves?A few things to be understood. One: the closer a thing, the more difficult it is to see it – the closest almost impossible, because eyes need a certain space, perspective, to see. I can see you, but if I go on coming closer and closer and closer everything will be blurred; your face will be blurred, lines will lose their shape. And if I go on coming and coming and just put my eyes on your face, nothing will be seen – your face will become a wall. But still I can see a little because a little distance will be there.Not even that much distance exists between you and the real. It is just touching your eyes. It is just touching your skin – not only that, it is penetrating the skin. It is moving in your blood. It is beating in your heartbeat. It is you. The way is not only in front of your eyes, the way is you. You are one with it. The traveler is not different from the way, not in reality; they are one.So how to see it? No perspective, no space…? Unless you attain to a clear intelligence, to a clarity of understanding, you will not be able to see it. Unless you become so intensely aware, you will not be able to see it. The distance is not there, so ordinary ways of looking at will not do; you need an extraordinary awareness, to be so extraordinarily alert that nothing is asleep in you. Suddenly the door opens. The way is there – you are the way. But you miss because it is there already. It has always been there – before you were born. You were born on the way, in the way, for the way, of the way – because the way is the reality.Remember, this way doesn’t go to a goal; this way is the goal. In fact there is no traveling, just staying alert, just being still, silent, not doing anything. Just becoming a clarity, an awareness, a silent cool understanding.“It is right before your eyes,” said the master. “Why do I not see it for myself?” asked the monk.When you are curious, every answer will create another question, because curiosity can never be satisfied. Inquiry can be satisfied, inquiry can come to an end, to a conclusion; never curiosity, because you bring again the same curious mind to the answer, again a new question comes out of it. You can satisfy one who is really in inquiry, you cannot satisfy one who is simply asking, “Why do I not see it for myself?”Another thing: a curious person deep down is not concerned with reality, is concerned only with himself. He says, “Why do I not see it for myself? Why can you see it and why can’t I see it? I cannot believe you, I cannot trust, and if it is right in front of my eyes then why can’t I see it?”“Because you are thinking of yourself,” said the master.The way is there, and you are thinking about yourself: “Why can’t I see?” Nobody can see who is filled so much with the ego. Put it aside, because the ego means your whole past, all that you have experienced, all that you have been conditioned for, all that you have known, studied, collected, gathered – information, scripture, knowledge – all that is your ego, the whole lot, and if you are concerned with it, you cannot see it.“What about you?” said the monk.Whatsoever a master says, every answer can become a satori – if the person is right. Just the first thing, when he said, “It is right before your eyes” would have become an enlightenment if the right person had been there. He missed; the next answer would have become the understanding.“Why do I not see it for myself?” he asked. “Because you are thinking of yourself.” But no. Curiosity cannot be satisfied, it never comes to an end. Suddenly, whenever you touch somebody’s “I,” he suddenly jumps on you. He said: “And what about you…do you see it?”Ego always feels: If I cannot see it, how can anybody else see it? The ego can never feel that anybody else can be egoless: impossible. And if you can feel this your ego has already started dying. If you can feel that somebody can be egoless, already the grip is loosening. The ego won’t allow you to feel that anybody has ever been without an ego. And because of your ego you go on projecting egos on others.Many books have been written about Jesus – more than about anybody else – and many books try to prove that Jesus must have been a very deep egoist because he goes on saying, “I am the son of God; I and my father are one.” He is saying: I am God. Many psychoanalysts have tried to explain that he was neurotic. How can you say you are God? You must be an egoist.And that’s how Jews felt when Jesus was alive. They also felt: this man is just mad with his ego! What is he saying – that he is God, or the only son of God? Claiming so much for himself! And they mocked. They mocked, they laughed.And when they crucified Jesus their behavior with him is simply incomprehensible. They put a crown of thorns on his head and said, “You, King of the Jews, son of God, you and your father are one – remember us when we also come to your Kingdom of God.” They forced him to carry his cross. He was weak, the cross was very heavy – they had made it very heavy knowingly, and they forced him just like an ordinary criminal to carry his own cross. And he was feeling thirsty, because it was a hill where he was crucified; the hill is known as Golgotha. It was uphill, he was carrying his big heavy cross; he was perspiring, feeling thirsty, and people were mocking all around and making jokes about him, and they said, “Look – the King of the Jews! Look! The man who claims that he is the son of God.”Many had gathered there just to enjoy it – it was a sort of amusement, a merriment. The whole town had gathered there just to throw stones at this man. Why were they taking such a revenge? – because they felt that this man had hurt their egos. He claims that he is God himself. They couldn’t understand that this man had no ego at all; hence the claim. The claim was not coming from the ego, the claim was simply a reality. When your ego drops you are also a god.But one can claim from the ego. All our claims are from the ego, so we cannot see how a person can claim without the ego. Krishna in the Gita says to Arjuna, “Come to my feet. Leave all, and surrender to me.” Hindus are not so bold, and they are very mannerly; they have not written that this man is an egoist. But in the West many have felt the same as with Jesus: What manner of man is this who says, “Come to my feet!” Our egos cannot feel that when Krishna is saying to Arjuna, “Come to my feet,” there is no one inside. It is coming to nobody’s feet. But egos cannot see this. You can see only that which you are, you cannot see that which you are not.Immediately the monk said, “And what about you?” He feels hurt because the master has said, “Because you are thinking of yourself, that’s why you are missing the way – and it is right in front of you.” Now this man is reacting. He would like to hurt the master also. He says, “What about you…Do you see it?”He wanted, he expected – because of his own ego – that this man would say, “Yes, I see it,” and then everything would have been easy. He could have said, “Then you are also concerned with your I; how can you see it? You also assert your ego – how can you see it? We are just the same.” And he would have gone away happy, because the account would have been closed with this man.But you cannot close your account with a master. He never fulfills your expectation. He is simply unpredictable. You cannot get him caught in your trap because his ways always change. Your mind cannot give you the answer which he is going to give.The master said: “So long as you see double, saying I don’t, and you do, and so on, your eyes are clouded.”The master has not said anything about himself. If there had been an Arjuna there the master would have said, “Yes, I know it – and please, don’t you go around and around, come to my feet.” But this man was no Arjuna – just a curious man, not really interested. It was just a problem, not a question. He is not going to change himself in any way. At the most he will have a little more information, he will become a little more knowledgeable.That’s why the master says, “So long as you see double, saying I don’t, and you do, and so on, your eyes are clouded” – because the monk’s eyes are clouded by “I” and “you.” They are one phenomenon, try to understand this. “I” and “you” are two aspects of the same coin: this side “I”, that side “you.” If “I” drops, “you” drop. If “I” is there no more, “you” are there no more, because when the coin drops both the aspects drop together. I – that is one pole, thou – that is another pole; they both drop or they both remain. If you are, then all around you is a crowd, a milling crowd of “I’s,” “you’s”; if you are not, the whole crowd has disappeared as if it was just a nightmare – it was – and simply silence exists, in which there is no division, not even this one of I and thou.That’s why Zen people never talk about God, because, they say, “if we talk about God we will have to say thou.” Buddha never talked about God, and he said, “Don’t pray, because your prayer will continue the division, the duality, the dual vision – I and thou.”At the very peak also you will carry the same disease, in subtle ways: you will say I, you will say thou. Howsoever lovingly you say it, the division exists, and with the division the love is not possible. That is the difference between Jewish thinking and Jesus’ way of thinking.Martin Buber has written a book, I and Thou. He is one of the most profound Jewish thinkers – but he remains a thinker. He may talk about mysticism, but that talk is also one of a thinker and philosopher, because at the very end he retains the old division, I and thou. Now the thou is not here, in this world, but God has become the thou, but the old division persists.Jews, Mohammedans have always denied that you can become one with God. Just because of that fear that the I may claim that it has become God. They have retained the division. They say that you can come closer and closer and closer, but you will remain you and he will remain he. You will remain an I and he has to be addressed as thou.And that is the trouble that Jesus created, because he said, “I and my father in heaven are one.” He dropped the division of I and thou. That has been the trouble with Mohammedans in India – they couldn’t understand the Upanishads, they couldn’t understand the Hindu teaching that you are the same as him. Drop the I and he is no more a thou. In fact, suddenly the poles disappear and the energy is one. Here I disappear, there you disappear, and the energy is one.Sometimes in deep love glimpses happen when neither you are an I nor is your lover or beloved a thou – but sometimes only, it is very rare, when two energies simply meet and you cannot find the division, where they are divided. They mingle and meet and merge and become one; you cannot feel where the boundary is, suddenly the boundary has disappeared. That’s why love creates fear.Deep love creates deep fear. It looks like death because the I disappears, the you disappears – and it is a sort of death. And when you die, only then do you enter into the divine. But then the divine is no longer a god, you cannot address him; hence no prayer exists in Buddhism. So Christians can’t believe what type of religion Buddhism is: no prayer?“How can you pray?” Buddha said. “Because the prayer can be possible only with a division – I praying, thou listening – how can you pray?”In Buddhism only meditation exists. Try to understand the difference: prayer continues with the old division of I and thou, meditation drops the division. Prayer has to lead finally to meditation. Prayer cannot be the final thing. It is beautiful, but it is not the ultimate. The ultimate can only be this: when both have disappeared and only oneness exists. Tremendous…vast! You become afraid of it! All the cozy divisions of I and thou disappear. All relationship disappears – that is the fear; that’s what Buber is afraid of. He’s afraid that if there is no I and no thou, the whole phenomenon will be so tremendous and so terrible and fear-creating…because no relationship is possible.Relationship gives you a home; relationship gives you a feeling of coziness; relationship gives you something which does not look like a tremendum, which is not fear-creating. Meditation has to be the ultimate, because prayer can never lead to the nondual – and this is what the master is saying. He says, “So long as you see double, saying I don’t, and you do, and so on, your eyes are clouded.”Division is the clouding. Through division is the mist in the eyes, through division is the dust in the eyes, through division your eyes are murky, cloudy, distorted. Drop the division and the way is there.But a curious mind goes on and on and on. The monk could have become enlightened at that moment, because enlightenment is nothing but a clarity, an understanding. Such profound truths – and the seeds go on missing, because the man is just a highway, the man is not a right soil. He said again:“When there is neither I nor you, can one see it?”Look: avoid this tendency of being curious. He is not listening at all, he has not understood a single word, he has not felt anything – he goes on and on, and on the same surface, at the same level, not even an inch deeper. His questioning is not an inquiry now, rather a reaction: whatsoever the master says, he reacts. Whenever this happens it means that when the master is speaking he is thinking at that moment also, preparing the next question. He is not listening.“When there is neither I nor you, can one see it?” He will again be expecting. Whenever you ask a question of someone you already have an expected answer. If it fits with your expected answer, then the man is right; if it doesn’t fit, then this man is talking nonsense.Never come to me with your expected answers, because if you already have the answer then there is no need to ask. And this is the difference – if you ask a question without any expected answer, you will be able to hear the answer; if you have a subtle expectation that this is going to be the answer, if your mind has already given you an answer, you will not be able to listen. You will simply be listening either to be confirmed that your answer is right, or to be confirmed that this man is wrong – but in either case you are right.Never ask a question with the feeling that you are right. If you are right there is no need to ask. Always ask the question from the position of a man who is ignorant, knowing well that “I don’t know,” so how can you expect, how can you create an answer? Knowing perfectly that “I don’t know,” ask – and you are a right soil, and the seeds will fall in it, and a large crop will be possible.Asked the man again, “When there is neither I nor you, can one see it?” He’s trying to put this master in a corner, as mind always tries – because now he must say yes. If he says yes then the curious mind can ask again, “Then who will see it if there is neither I nor you?” And if you say, “Yes, then the way can be seen,” then the question will arise automatically, “Then who will see it? When I am not there and you are not there, then who will see it?”But you cannot put an enlightened man into a corner. You can put another mind into a corner, then you can play a game of chess, but a man who has no mind – you cannot put him in a corner and you cannot defeat him, because he is not there. His victory is absolute. With him, either you are defeated or you escape. His victory is absolute because he is no longer there – who can be defeated? Who can be forced into a corner?This is a beautiful corner. This man must have been a professor or a logician or a pundit. He has really brought the master to a corner within three questions – if a man were there he would have been put in a corner. But because a master is not, how can you force him into a corner? He is the whole sky. How can you force the whole sky into a corner? All corners exist in him, but you cannot force him into a corner.The master said, “When there is neither I nor you, who is the one who wants to see it?”Really, when you see…you see only when you are not. When you are not, there is no question of trying to see, wanting to see, desiring to see. Who will desire? When you are not, who bothers about the way? The way has already happened. Who bothers about God? – it is already the case!Here you disappear and there everything is ready, everything that you ever sought, everything that you were seeking, every inquiry fulfilled. Here you dissolve and all answers disappear and all queries dissolve. Suddenly the truth is there.Your dissolution is the truth. Your “not being there” is the way. Your absence is the presence of God.Enough for today.

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And The Flowers Showered 01-11Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

And The Flowers Showered 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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A monk asked Nansen: “Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?”Nansen said: “Yes there is.” “What is it?” asked the monk.Nansen replied: “It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.”The “teachings” of the awakened ones are not teachings at all because they cannot be taught – so how to call them teachings? A teaching is that which can be taught. But nobody can teach you the truth. It is impossible. You can learn it, but it cannot be taught. It has to be learned. You can absorb it, you can imbibe it, you can live with a master and allow it to happen but it cannot be taught. It is a very indirect process.Teaching is direct: something is said. Learning is indirect: something is indicated, not said – rather, something is shown. A finger is raised toward the sun, but the finger is not the point; you have to leave the finger and look at the sun, or at the moon. A master teaches but the teaching is just like the finger: you have to leave it and look where it indicates – the dimension, the direction, the beyond.A teacher teaches, a master lives – you can learn from his life, the way he moves, the way he looks at you, the way he touches you, the way he is. You can imbibe it, you can allow it to happen, you can remain available, you can remain open and vulnerable. There is no way to say it directly, that’s why those who are very intellectual miss it – because they know only one way of learning and that is direct. They ask, What is truth? – and they expect an answer.This is what happened when Pontius Pilate asked Jesus, “What is truth?” and Jesus remained silent – not even a flicker, as if the question had not been asked, as if there was no Pontius Pilate standing before him and asking. Jesus remained the same as he was before the question was raised, nothing changed. Pontius Pilate must have thought this man a little mad, because he had asked a direct question: “What is truth?” and this man remained silent as if he had not heard.Pontius Pilate was a viceroy, a well-educated, cultured, cultivated man; Jesus was a son of a carpenter, uneducated, uncultivated. It was as if two poles were meeting, two opposite poles. Pontius Pilate knew all philosophy – he had learned it, he knew all the scriptures. This man Jesus was absolutely uneducated, in fact he knew nothing – or, he knew only nothing. Standing before Pontius Pilate, totally silent, he replied – but the reply was indirect: he raised a finger. That total silence was the finger raised toward truth. But Pontius Pilate missed. He thought, This man is crazy. Either he is deaf, cannot hear, or he does not know, is ignorant – that’s why he is silent. But silence can be a finger raised toward truth – that is incomprehensible to the intellectual Pontius Pilate.He missed. The greatest opportunity! He may be still wandering somewhere in search of “What is truth?” On that day truth was standing before him. Could he be silent for a moment? Could he be in the presence of Jesus, not asking? just looking, watching, waiting? Could he imbibe Jesus a little? Could he allow Jesus to work upon him? The opportunity was there – and Jesus indicated it. But Pontius Pilate missed.Intellect will always miss the teaching of the awakened ones, because intellect believes in the direct way, and you cannot hit truth in such a direct way. It is a very subtle phenomenon, delicate, the most delicate possible; you have to move very cautiously, you have to move very indirectly. You have to feel it – it comes through the heart, it never comes through the head. Teaching comes through the head, learning happens through the heart.Remember my emphasis. It is not the master who teaches, it is the disciple who learns. It is up to you – to learn or not to learn; it is not up to me to teach or not to teach. A master, because of the way he is, goes on teaching. His every moment, his every breath is a teaching, his whole being is a teaching, a message. The message is not different from the master. If it is different then the master is simply a teacher, not a master; then he is repeating words of others. Then he is not awakened himself, then he has a borrowed knowledge; inside he remains as ignorant as the student. There is no difference in their being, they differ in their knowledge.A teacher and a student are on the same level as far as their being is concerned; as far as their knowledge is concerned they are different: the teacher knows more, the student knows less. Some day the student will know more, he himself will become a teacher, he can even come to know more than the teacher – because it is the horizontal line of accumulation. If you accumulate more knowledge, information, you can become a teacher, but not a master.A master is truth. He does not know about truth, he has become it, so he cannot help himself. It is not a question of to teach or not to teach, it is not a choice. Even if he is fast asleep, he goes on teaching. Buddha fast asleep – you simply sit near him, you can learn much; you can even become enlightened, because the way he sleeps is totally different. The quality differs because the being differs. Buddha eating – you just watch, and he is giving a message. The message is not separate, that’s why I say he cannot help himself. He is the message.You cannot ask the question, “What is truth?” Anyway, he will not answer you directly. He may laugh or he may offer you a cup of tea, or he may hold your hand and sit silently, or he may take you for a morning walk into the woods, or he may say, “Look! This mountain is beautiful!” But whatsoever he is doing is an indirect way of indicating, indicating toward his being.All that is beautiful, true, good, is like happiness – I say “like happiness” because you may be able to understand that. You have known a little of happiness. Maybe you have lived very miserably, as people live. But sometimes, even in spite of yourself, moments happen when happiness enters you – you are filled with an unknown silence, an unknown bliss; suddenly those moments come. You cannot find a man who has not had a few moments of happiness in his life.But have you observed one thing? – whenever they come they come indirectly. Suddenly they happen, unexpectedly they happen. You were not waiting for them, you were doing something else, and suddenly you become aware. If you are waiting for them, expecting them, they never come; if you are directly in search, you will miss.Somebody says, “When I go swimming in the river I feel much happiness.” You are also in search of it; you say, “Then I will come also,” and you follow. You are seeking happiness – you are not concerned with swimming directly, you are concerned directly with happiness. Swimming is just a means. You swim for hours; you are tired, you wait, you expect – and you are frustrated. Nothing is happening, the bliss is not there, and you tell your friend: “You deceived me. I have been swimming for hours, feel completely tired, and not a single moment of happiness has happened.”No, it cannot happen. When you are lost in swimming so completely that there is nobody, the boat is empty, there is nobody in the house, the host is silent, swimming is so deep that the swimmer is lost in it and you simply swim, you play with the river, and the rays of the sun and the morning breeze, and you are simply lost in it…and there is happiness! Swimming by the bank, swimming all over the river, spreading all over existence, jumping from one ray to another ray of light – every breeze brings it. But if you expect you miss, because expectation leads you into the future and happiness is in the present. It is not a result of any activity; it is a consequence, it is a byproduct. You are so deeply involved, it happens.It is a consequence, remember, it is not a result; a result can be expected. If you put two plus two, then four, the result, can be expected; it is already there in the two plus two, it will come out. The result can be expected if things are mechanical, mathematical. But a consequence is not a mechanical thing, it is an organic phenomenon. It happens only when you are not expecting. The guest comes to your door and knocks when you were not thinking about the guest at all. It always comes like a stranger, it always surprises you. You suddenly feel something has happened – and if you start thinking about what is happening, you will immediately miss. If you say, “How wonderful! How beautiful!” it is already gone; the mind is back. Again you are in the same misery, thrown back.One has to learn deeply that all that is beautiful is indirect. You cannot make an attack upon it, you cannot be aggressive with it; you cannot snatch from existence. If you are violent and aggressive, you will not find it.Move toward it like a drunkard, not knowing where, not knowing why, like a drunkard – lost completely, you move toward it.All meditations are subtle ways to make you drunk, subtle ways to make you drunkards of the unknown, drunkards of the divine. Then you are no longer there with your conscious mind functioning, then you are not there expecting, then you are not there planning for the future. You are not. And when you are not, suddenly flowers start showering on you, flowers of bliss. Just like Subhuti, empty…you are surprised! You were never expecting, you never knew! You never felt that you ever deserved it; that’s how it is felt – like a grace, because it is not something you have brought on, it is something which has happened.So one thing: truth cannot be taught, bliss cannot be given to you, ecstasy cannot be purchased in the market. But your mind continuously thinks in terms of getting, purchasing, collecting, finding; your mind never thinks in terms of happening because you cannot control happening – everything else you can control.I have heard…Once a man became suddenly rich. Of course, when it happened he collected all those things he had always been desiring – a very big house, a big car, swimming pool, this and that. And then he sent his daughter to college. He had always wanted to be educated but he could not be; now he wanted to fulfill all his desires, and whatsoever he couldn’t do he wanted his children to do. But after a few days the dean of the college wrote a letter to him, and in the letter wrote: “To be frank, we cannot admit your girl to the college because she has no capacity to learn.”The father said, “Just capacity? Don’t bother! I will purchase the best capacity available in the market for her.”How can you purchase capacity? But a man who has become suddenly rich thinks only in terms of purchasing. You think in terms of power – power to purchase, power to get something. Remember, truth cannot be got through power; it comes when you are humble. You have nothing to purchase it with, it cannot be purchased. And it is good that it cannot be purchased; otherwise no one would be able to give the cost. It is good that it happens; otherwise how would you purchase it? All that you have is rubbish. Because it cannot be purchased, that’s why sometimes it can happen. It is a gift. It is a sharing of the divine with you – but the divine can share only when you allow. Hence I say you can learn it but it cannot be taught.In fact in the spiritual world there are only disciples, not masters. Masters are there but they are inactive, passive forces. They cannot do anything, they are just there like a flower: if nobody comes, the flower will go on spreading its fragrance into emptiness. It cannot help itself. The whole thing is decided by the disciple: how to learn? How to learn from a flower? And a flower shows something but doesn’t say it. It cannot be said. How can the flower say what beauty is? – the flower is beauty. You have to gain, attain, eyes to see, a nose to smell, ears to hear the subtle sound that comes to the flower when the breeze passes by. And you need a heart to feel the throbbing of the flower, because it throbs also – everything alive throbs, the whole existence throbs.You may not have observed this because it is impossible before you go into deep meditation; you cannot observe the fact that the whole universe breathes. And just as you expand and shrink the whole existence shrinks and expands. Just as you inhale and the chest fills, and then you exhale and the air goes out and the chest shrinks, the same rhythm exists in existence. The whole existence breathes, expands, inhales, exhales – and if you can find the rhythm of existence and become one with the rhythm, you have attained.The whole art of ecstasy, meditation, samadhi, is: How to become one with the rhythm of the universe. When it exhales, you exhale. When it inhales, you inhale. You live in it, are not separate, are one with it. Difficult, because the universe is vast.A master is the whole universe in miniature. If you can learn how to inhale with the master and how to exhale with the master, if you can learn simply that, you will learn all.At the moment when Pontius Pilate asked, “What is truth?” if he had known anything, even the ABC of disciplehood, the next thing would have been to just close his eyes and inhale and exhale with Jesus…just inhale and exhale with Jesus. The way he inhales, you inhale, and in the same rhythm; the way he exhales, you exhale, and in the same rhythm – and suddenly there is oneness: the disciple has disappeared, the master has disappeared. In that oneness you know what truth is because in that oneness you taste the master.And now you have the key – and this has not been given either, remember, it has been learned by you. It has not been given to you; it cannot be given, it is so subtle. And with this key now every lock can be opened. It is a master key, no ordinary key – it doesn’t open one lock, it opens all locks. Now you have the key, and once you have the key you use it with the universe.Kabir has said, “Now I am in much difficulty. God and my guru, the whole existence and my master, are standing before me; now to whom do I bow first? To whose feet now do I go first? I am in deep trouble!” And then he says, “Forgive me, God. I will have to go to my master’s feet first, because he has shown you to me. I come to you through him. So even if you are standing before me, excuse me, I have to touch my master’s feet first.”Beautiful…this has to be so, because the master becomes the door to the unknown, he becomes the key to the whole existence. He is the truth.Learn how to be in the presence of the master, how to breathe with him, how to silently allow him to move in you, how to silently merge into him, because the master is nothing but God who has knocked at your door. It is the whole universe concentrated. Don’t ask questions, live with him.Now try to penetrate this story – small, but very significant.A monk asked Nansen: “Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?”All that has been preached is not the teaching; the real teaching has never been preached, it cannot be told.Buddha said to Mahakashyap, “To all others I have told that which can be told, and to you I give that which cannot be told, cannot be said.” Now for two thousand years followers of Buddha have been asking again and again and again: What was given to Mahakashyap? What was given to Mahakashyap, what was the teaching that Buddha never told to anybody, that even Buddha said cannot be told because words will not be able to carry it?Words are so narrow, the vastness of truth cannot be forced into them – and they are so superficial, how can they carry the depth? It is just like this: How can a wave on the ocean carry the depth of the ocean? It cannot. By the very nature of things it is impossible because if a wave exists it has to exist on the surface. The wave cannot go to the depth because if it goes to the depth it is a wave no more. The wave exists only in touch with the winds – it has to be on the surface, it cannot go to the depth. And the depth cannot come to the wave because the moment it comes to the surface it becomes itself the wave, it is no more the depth.This is the problem. The truth is the center and the words exist on the surface, on the periphery – where people meet, where the wind and the ocean meet, where the question and the answer meet, where the master and disciple meet; just there on the surface words exist. Truth cannot come to the surface, it is the very depth, and the words cannot go to the truth, they are the very surface.So what to do? All that can be said will be just so-so; it will not be true, it will not be untrue, it will be just in the middle – and very dangerous, because if the disciple has not been in tune with the master he will misunderstand. If he has been in tune with the master, only then will he understand because then there exists a rapport.Understanding is not a question of keen intelligence; understanding is a question of deep rapport. Understanding is not a question of reason, intellect, logic. Understanding is a question of deep sympathy, or even of deep empathy; hence the central significance of trust, faith. Understanding happens through faith, because in faith you trust, in trust you become sympathetic, in trust rapport is possible – because you are not defensive, you leave the doors open.This monk asked Nansen: “Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?” Yes, there is a teaching; in fact all the teaching is there, which no master has ever preached before. Then why do masters go on preaching? Why is it Buddha went on talking for forty years? Why do I go on talking, whether you listen or not? Why do they talk? If that which is to be learned cannot be said, then why do they go on talking?Talking is just a bait. Through talking you are caught, you cannot understand anything else. Talking is just giving sweets to children. Then they start coming to you, blissfully unaware that talking is not the point; blissfully unaware they come for the sweets, they come for the toys. They are happy with the toys. But the master knows that once they start coming, by and by the toys can be taken away, and by and by they will start loving the master without the toys – and once that happens, words can be dropped.Whenever a disciple is ready, words can be dropped. They are just a way to bring you closer because you cannot understand anything except words. If somebody speaks, you understand; if somebody is silent you cannot understand. What will you understand? Silence is just a wall for you, you cannot find your way in it. And silence carries a deep fear also, because it is deathlike. Words are lifelike, silence is deathlike. If somebody is silent you start feeling afraid and scared – if somebody goes on being silent you will try to escape from there because it is too much, the silence becomes so heavy for you.Why? – because you cannot be silent, and if you cannot be silent you cannot understand silence. You are a chattering; inside a monkey is sitting, continuously chattering. Somebody has defined man as nothing but a monkey with metaphysics, with some philosophy, that’s all. And that philosophy is nothing but a better way of chattering, more systematic, more logical, but still chattering.A master has to talk to bring you nearer. The nearer you come, the more he will drop it. Once you are in the grip of his silence there is no need to talk. Once you know what silence is, once you have become silent, a new rapport exists. Now things can be said without any saying, messages can be given without ever giving them – without him giving them you can receive them. Now the phenomenon of discipleship has happened.One of the most beautiful phenomena in the world is that of being a disciple, because now you know what rapport is. Now you breathe, inhale, exhale with the master; now you lose your boundaries and become one with him. Now something of his heart starts flowing toward you; now something of him comes into you.A monk asked Nansen: “Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?” Nansen is one of the most famous Zen masters. Many stories are told about him; one I have been telling you many times. I will repeat it again, because stories like that are to be repeated again and again, so that you can imbibe them. They are a sort of nourishment. Every day you have to take nourishment; you won’t say, “Yesterday morning I took breakfast so now there is no need.” Every day you have to eat; you don’t say, “Yesterday I took food, now what is the need?”These stories – they are a nourishment. There exists a special word in India, it cannot be translated. In English the word reading exists, in India we have two words for it: one means reading, the other means the reading of the same thing again and again. You read the same thing again and again and again – it is like a part. Every day you read the Gita in the morning; then it is not a reading, because you have read it many times. Now it is a sort of nourishment. You don’t read it, you eat it every day.It is also a great experiment, because every day you will come to new shades of meaning, every day new nuances. The same book, the same words, but every day you feel some new depth has opened unto you. Every day you feel you are reading something new, because the Gita, or books like that, have a depth. If you read them once you will move on the surface; if you read them twice, a little deeper; thrice – you go on. A thousand times, and then you will understand that you can never exhaust these books, it is impossible. The more you become alert, aware, the more your consciousness grows deeper – that is the meaning.I will repeat this story of Nansen. A professor came to him, a professor of philosophy… Philosophy is a disease, and it is like a cancer: no medicine exists for it, yet you have to go through surgery, a great operation is needed. And philosophy has a similar type of growth, a canceric growth: once it is in you it goes on growing by itself, and it takes all your energies. It is a parasite. You go on becoming weaker and weaker and it becomes stronger and stronger and stronger. Every word creates another word – and it can go on infinitely.A philosopher came to Nansen. Nansen lived on a small hill, and when the philosopher came uphill he was tired and perspiring. The moment he entered the hut of Nansen he said, “What is truth?”Nansen said, “Truth can wait a little. There is no hurry. Right now you need a cup of tea, you are so tired!” Nansen went in and prepared a cup of tea.This can happen only with a Zen master. In India you cannot think of Shankaracharya preparing tea for you. For you – and Shankaracharya preparing tea? Impossible! Or think of Mahavira preparing tea for you…absurd!But with a Zen master this can happen. They have a totally different attitude, they love life. They are not anti-life; they affirm life, they are not against it – and they are ordinary people, and they say that to be ordinary is the most extraordinary thing. They live a really simple life. When I say a really simple life I mean not an imposed simplicity. In India you can find such impostors all over – simplicity is imposed. They may be naked, completely naked, but they are not simple; their nakedness is very complex. Their nakedness is not the nakedness of a child; they have cultivated it, and how can a cultivated thing be simple? They have disciplined themselves for it, and how can a disciplined thing be simple? It is very complex.Your clothes are not so complex as the nakedness of a Jaina Digambara monk. He has struggled for it for many years. They have five steps – you have to fulfill each step by and by, and then you attain to nakedness. It is an achievement, and how can an achievement be simple? If you work for it for many years, if you make every effort to achieve it, how can it be simple? A simple thing can be achieved here and now, immediately, there is no need to work for it.Nakedness when simple is a majestic phenomenon; you simply drop clothes. It happened to Mahavira – it was simple. When he left his house he had clothes on; then, passing by a rosebush, his shawl got caught in the thorns, so he thought: It is evening time and the rosebush is going to sleep, it will be disturbing to remove it. So he tore off half of the shawl that was entangled in the thorns and left it there. It was evening time and the gesture was beautiful. It was not for nakedness he did it, it was for that rosebush. And the next day in the morning, with the half-shawl left, half naked, a beggar asked him for something – and he had nothing else to give. How to say no when you still have something left to give – that half-shawl? So he gave it to the beggar. This nakedness is something superb, simple, ordinary; it happened, it was not practiced. But a Jaina monk practices it.Zen monks are very simple people. They live an ordinary life as everybody else. They don’t make differences, because all differences are basically egoistic. And this game you can play in many ways, but the game remains the same: higher than you. The game remains the same: I have more money, I am higher than you; I have more education, I am higher than you; I am more pious, I am higher than you; I am more religious, I am higher than you; I have renounced more, I am higher than you.Nansen went in, prepared tea, came out, gave the cup into the professor’s hand, poured tea from his kettle. The cup was full. Up to that moment the professor waited because up to that moment everything was rational: a tired man comes and you feel compassion for him and you prepare tea. Of course it is as it should be. Then you fill the cup – that too is okay. But then something irrational happened.Nansen went on pouring, the cup was overflowing. Then the professor became a little surprised: What is this man doing? Is he mad? But still he waited – he was a well-disciplined man, he could tolerate little things like that. Maybe a little crazy…but then the saucer was also completely full, and Nansen went on pouring.Now this was too much. Now something had to be done and said, and the professor shrieked, “Stop!” – because now the tea was overflowing on the floor. “What are you doing? Now this cup cannot contain any more tea. Can’t you see a simple thing like this? Are you mad?”Nansen started laughing and said, “That’s what I was also thinking: Are you mad? – because you can see that the cup is full and it will not contain a single drop more, but you cannot see that your head is full and it cannot contain a single drop of truth more. Your cup is full in the head, your saucer is full and everything is flowing on the floor – look! Your philosophy is all over my hut and you can’t see it? But you are a reasonable man; at least you could see the tea. Now see the other thing.”This Nansen helped many people in different ways to awake, created many sorts of situations for people to awake.A monk asked Nansen: “Is there a teaching no master ever preached before?”Nansen said: “Yes there is.” “What is it?” asked the monk.Nansen replied: “It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.”Now, if no master has ever said it how can Nansen say it? The questioner is foolish, asking a stupid question. If nobody has said it, how can Nansen say it? If buddhas have kept silent about it, if buddhas have not uttered a single word, could not utter, then how can Nansen? But Nansen would like to help even this stupid man.And there are only stupid men all around, because unless you become enlightened you remain stupid. So stupidity is not a condemnation, it is just a state, a fact. A man who is not enlightened will remain stupid – there is no other way. And if he feels himself wise, then he is more stupid. If he feels that he is stupid, then wisdom has started – then he has started awakening. If you feel you are ignorant, then you are not stupid; if you feel you know you are perfectly stupid – not only stupid but grounded in it so much that there seems no possibility for you to come out of it.Nansen would like to help this stupid man, because there are no others; that’s why he speaks, he answers. But he has to use all negatives; he says nothing positive. He uses three negatives. He says: “It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.”You cannot say the truth but you can say what it is not. You cannot say what it is but you can indicate it negatively. Via negativa: saying what it is not. This is all that masters have done. If you insist that they say something, they will say something negative. If you can understand their silence, you understand the affirmative. If you cannot understand their silence but insist on words, they will say something negative.Understand this: words can do a negative job; silence can do a positive job. Silence is the most positive thing and language is the most negative. When you speak you are moving in the negative world; when you remain silent you are moving into the positive. What is truth? Ask the Upanishads, ask the Koran, the Bible, the Gita; they all say what it is not. What is God? They all say what he is not.Three things he denies: one – it is not things, the world; it is not that which you see, it is not that which is all around you. It is not that which can be seen by the mind, which the mind can comprehend – it is not objects. And second: it is not the mind, it is not the subject; neither this world around you nor this mind within you. No, these two things are not the teaching, are not the truth.But the third thing only buddhas have denied, only very perfect masters have denied, and that third thing is: …it is not Buddha.And what is Buddha?The world of things is the first boundary around you, then the world of mind, thoughts: things the first boundary, thoughts the second boundary – of course closer, nearer you. You can draw three concentric circles: first circle, the world of things; second circle, the world of thoughts; and then remains the third – and Buddha has denied that also – the self, the witnessing, the soul, the consciousness, the buddha. Only Buddha denies that.All others have known that: Jesus knows it, Krishna knows it, but they don’t deny it because that would be too much for you to understand. So they say two things: they say this world is illusory, and the mind that looks at this world is also illusory. Mind and world are one phenomenon, two aspects of the same coin. The mind creates the dream; the dream is illusory, and the mind, the source, is also illusory. But they say that the third – witnessing, you in your deep consciousness where you are only a witness, not a thinker, where no thought exists, no thing exists, only you exist – they don’t deny that. Buddha has denied that also.He says, “No world, no mind, no soul.” That is the highest teaching – because if things are not, how can thoughts be? If thoughts are not, how can you witness them? If the world is illusory then the mind that looks at the world can’t be real. The mind is illusory. Then the witness that looks at the mind – how can it be real? Buddha goes to the deepest core of existence. He says, All that you are is unreal; your things, your thoughts and you – all is unreal.But these are three negatives. Buddha’s path is the negative path, his assertions are negative. That’s why Hindus called him a nastika, they called him an atheist, an absolute nihilist. But he is not. When all these three things are denied, that which remains is truth. When things disappear, thoughts disappear, and the witnessing disappears – these three things that you know – when all these three disappear, that which remains is truth. And that which remains liberates, that which remains is nirvana, is enlightenment.Buddha is very, very deep; nobody has gone deeper than that in words. Many people have reached in being but Buddha has tried to be perfect in words also. He never asserts a single positive. If you ask about any positive he simply remains silent. He never says God is, he never says the soul is; in fact he never uses the word is. You ask and he will use the word not. No is his answer for everything. And if you can understand, if you can feel a rapport, you will see that he is right.When you deny everything, that doesn’t mean you have destroyed everything. That only means you have destroyed the world that you had created. The real remains because the real cannot be denied. But you cannot assert it. You can know it but you cannot state it. When you deny all these three, when you transcend all these three, you become a buddha. You are enlightened.Buddha says you are awakened only when these three sleeps are broken. One sleep is the sleep with things: many people are asleep there, that is the grossest sleep. Millions of people, ninety-eight percent of the people are asleep there – the first and grossest sleep, the sleep with things. One goes on thinking about his bank balance, one goes on thinking about the house, about clothes, about this and that – and one lives in that. There are people who only study catalogues for things…I have heard one story…One religious man was staying overnight in a family. In the morning, as was his habit, he wanted the Bible to read a little and to pray a little. The small child of the house was passing through the room so he asked the kid, he said, “Bring that book” – because he thought the child may not understand what book the Bible was, so he said, “Bring that book which your mother reads every day.” The child brought the Whole Earth Catalogue, because that was the book the mother read every day.Ninety-eight percent of people are asleep in things. Try to find out where you are asleep, because the work has to start there. If you are asleep with things, then you have to start from there. Drop that sleep with things.Why do people go on thinking about things? I used to stay in a house in Calcutta. The woman there must have had at least one thousand saris, and every day it was a problem… When I was there her husband and I would be sitting in the car and her husband would go on honking and she would say, “I am coming!” – and it was difficult for her to decide which sari to wear. So I asked, “Why is this a problem every day?”So she took me and showed me, and she said, “You would also be puzzled. I have got one thousand saris and it is difficult to decide which one to choose, which will suit the occasion.”Have you seen people?… From the very morning they start cleaning their car, as if that is their Bible and their god. “Things” is the first sleep, the grossest. If you are attached too much to things and continuously thinking of things, you are asleep there. You have to come out of that. You have to look at what type of attachments you have, where you cling, and for what. What are you going to get there?You may increase your things, you may accumulate a vast empire, but when you die you will go without things. Death will bring you out of your sleep. Before death brings you out, it is better to bring yourself out; then there will be no pain in death. Death is so painful because this first sleep has to be broken; you are to be snatched away from things.Then there is the second sleep, the sleep of the mind. There are people who are not concerned with things – only one percent of people – who are not concerned with things but who are concerned with the mind. They don’t bother about what type of clothes they use – artists, novelists, poets, painters; they are not worried about things in general, they live in the mind. They can go hungry, they can go naked, they can live in a slum, but they go on working in the mind. The novel they are writing…and they go on thinking, I may not be immortal but my novel that I am going to write is going to be immortal; the painting that I am doing is going to be immortal. But when you cannot be immortal, how can your painting be immortal? When you are to perish, when you are to die, everything that you create will die, because how is it possible that from death something immortal can be born?Then there are people who go on thinking of philosophy, thoughts, oblivious of things, not worried much about them. It happened once: Immanuel Kant was coming to his class. He was a perfect timekeeper, never missed a single appointment, would never be late; at exactly the right time he would enter. He never cared about his clothes, about his house, or food, or anything – never worried about it, never got married; just a servant would do, because that was not much of a problem and the servant can do the food and take care of the house. He never needed a wife or someone who was intimate, a friend – no; a servant was okay as far as the world of things was concerned. The servant was really the master, because he would purchase everything, he would take care of the money and the house and everything.Immanuel Kant lived like a stranger in that house. It is said that he never looked at the house, he never knew how many rooms the house had, what type of furniture; even if you were to show him something which had been in his room for thirty years he would not be able to recognize it. But he was concerned much with thoughts – he lived in the world of thoughts, and many stories are told, beautiful stories, because a man who lives in the world of thoughts is always absentminded in the world of things, because you cannot live in two worlds.He was going to his class; the road was muddy and one of his shoes got stuck, so he left it there, went to the class with one shoe. Somebody asked, “Where is your other shoe?”He said, “It got stuck just on the way. It is raining and it was muddy.”But the man who had asked said, “Then you could have got it back.”Immanuel Kant said, “There was a series of thoughts in my mind and I didn’t like to interfere with it. If I had got concerned with the shoe, the track would have been lost, and such beautiful thoughts were there that who cares whether you come to the class with one shoe or two!” The whole college laughed, but he was not concerned.Once it happened: he came back after his evening walk…he used to have a walking-stick, and he was so absorbed in his thought that he did everything that was done every day, but forgot something. He was so absentminded that he put the walking-stick on the bed where he used to put himself, and he himself stood in the corner of the room where he used to put the walking-stick…he got a little mixed-up!After two hours the servant became aware that the light was on – so what was the matter? He looked through the window, and Immanuel Kant was standing with closed eyes in the corner and the walking-stick was fast asleep on the pillow. A man who is asleep too much in the mind will be absentminded in the world. Philosophers, poets, men of literature, painters, musicians – they are all fast asleep there.And then there is a third sleep: monks, those who have renounced the world, and not only the world but also the mind, who have been meditating for many years and they have stopped the thought process. Now no thoughts move in their inner sky, now no things are there; they are not concerned with things, not concerned with thoughts. But a subtle ego, the “I” – now they call it atman, the soul, the self, the Self with a capital “S” – is their sleep; they are asleep there.Buddha says sleep has to be broken on these three layers, and when all these sleeps are broken, nobody is awake, only awakening is there; nobody is enlightened, only enlightenment is there – just the phenomenon of awareness, without any center…An enlightened person cannot say “I”; even if he has to use it he never says it, even if he has to use it he cannot mean it. It is just a verbal thing, has to be followed because of the society and the language game. It is just a rule of the language; otherwise he has no “I” feeling.The world of things disappears – then what happens? When the world of things disappears, your attachment to things falls, your obsession with things falls. Things don’t disappear; on the contrary, things for the first time appear as they are. Then you are not clinging, obsessed; then you are not coloring them in your own desires, in your own hopes and frustrations – no. Then the world is not a screen for your desires to be projected on. When your desires drop, the world is there, but it is a totally new world. It is so fresh, it is so colorful, it is so beautiful! But a mind attached to things cannot see it because eyes are closed with attachment. A totally new world arises.When the mind disappears, thoughts disappear. It is not that you become mindless; on the contrary you become mindful. Buddha uses these words “right mindfulness” millions of times. When the mind disappears and thoughts disappear you become mindful. You do things – you move, you work, you eat, you sleep, but you are always mindful. The mind is not there, but mindfulness is there. What is mindfulness? It is awareness. It is perfect awareness.And when the self disappears, the ego, the atman, what happens? It is not that you are lost, and no more. No! On the contrary, for the first time you are. But now you are not separate from existence. Now you are no longer an island; you have become the whole continent, you are one with the existence.But those are the positive things – they cannot be said. Hence, Nansen said, “Yes, there is a teaching which no master has ever preached, because it cannot be preached, and that teaching is:“It is not mind, it is not Buddha, it is not things.”That teaching is emptiness, that teaching is absolute nothingness. And when you are not, suddenly the whole existence starts flowering on you. The whole ecstasy of existence converges on you – when you are not.When you are not, the whole existence feels ecstatic and celebrates; flowers shower on you. They have not showered yet because you are, and they will not shower until you dissolve. When you are empty, no more, when you are a nothingness, shunyata, suddenly they start showering. They have showered on Buddha, on Subhuti, on Nansen; they can shower on you – they are waiting. They are knocking at the door. They are ready. Just the moment you become empty, they start falling on you.Just remember it: the final liberation is not your liberation, the final liberation is from you. Enlightenment is not yours, cannot be. When you are not, it is there. Drop yourself in your totality: the world of things, the world of thoughts, the world of the self; all three layers, drop. Drop this trinity; drop this trimurti, drop these three faces, because if you are there, then the one cannot be. If you are three, how can the one be?Let all three disappear – God, the Holy Ghost and the Son; Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh – all the three, let them drop! Let them disappear. Nobody remains – and then everything is there.When nothing happens, the all happens.You are nothing…the all starts showering on you.Enough for today.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Bodhidharma’s “Outline of Practice”:Many roads lead to the path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice. To enter by reason means to realize the essence through instruction and to believe that all living things share the same true nature, which isn’t apparent because it’s shrouded by sensation and delusion. Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved, even by scriptures, are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason. Without moving, without effort, they enter, we say, by reason.To enter by practice refers to four all-inclusive practices: suffering injustice, adapting to conditions, seeking nothing and practicing the dharma.First, suffering injustice. When those who search for the path encounter adversity, they should think to themselves, “In countless ages gone by, I’ve turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I’m punished by my past. Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice.” The sutras say, “When you meet with adversity, don’t be upset. Because it makes sense.” With such understanding, you’re in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice, you enter the path.Second, adapting to conditions. As mortals, we’re ruled by conditions, not by ourselves. All the suffering and joy we experience depend on conditions. If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it’s the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past. When conditions change, it ends. Why delight in its existence? But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes. Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the path.Third, seeking nothing. People of this world are deluded. They’re always longing for something, always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the season. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring. Calamity forever alternates with prosperity. To dwell in the three realms is to dwell in a burning house. To have a body is to suffer. Does anybody with a body know peace?Fourth, practicing the dharma. The dharma is the truth that all natures are pure. By this truth, all appearances are empty. Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist. The sutras say, “the dharma includes no being because it’s free from the impurity of being. And the dharma includes no self, because it’s free from the impurity of self.” Those wise enough to believe and understand this truth are bound to practice according to the dharma. Since the embodiment of the dharma contains nothing worth begrudging, they give their body, life and property in charity, without regret, without the vanity of giver, gift or recipient, and without bias or attachment. And they take up transforming others to eliminate impurity but without becoming attached to form. Thus, through their own practice, they’re able to help others and glorify the way of enlightenment. And as with charity, they also practice the other virtues. But while practicing the six virtues to eliminate delusion, they practice nothing at all. This is what’s meant by practicing the dharma. Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.” When you seek nothing, you’re on the path.I have a very soft corner in my heart for Bodhidharma. That makes it a very special occasion to speak about him. Perhaps he is the only man whom I have loved so deeply that speaking on him I will be almost speaking on myself. That also creates a great complexity, because he never wrote anything in his life. No enlightened being has ever written. Bodhidharma is not an exception, but by tradition these three books that we are going to discuss are attributed to Bodhidharma.The scholars reason that because there is no contrary evidence – and for almost one thousand years, these books have been attributed to Bodhidharma – there is no reason why we should not accept them. I am not a scholar, and there are certainly fragments which must have been spoken by Bodhidharma, but these are not books written by him. These are notes by his disciples. It was an ancient tradition that when a disciple takes notes from the master he does not put his own name on those notes, because nothing of it belongs to him; it has come from the master.But knowing Bodhidharma as intimately as I know him…. There are so many fallacies which are possible only if somebody else was taking notes and his own mind entered into it; he has interpreted Bodhidharma – and with not much understanding.Before we enter into these sutras, a few things about Bodhidharma will be good to know. That will give you the flavor of the man and a way to understand what belongs to him in these books and what does not belong to him. It is going to be a very strange commentary.Bodhidharma was born fourteen centuries ago as a son of a king in the south of India. There was a big empire, the empire of Pallavas. He was the third son of his father, but seeing everything – he was a man of tremendous intelligence – he renounced the kingdom. He was not against the world, but he was not ready to waste his time in mundane affairs, in trivia. His whole concern was to know his self-nature, because without knowing it you have to accept death as the end.All true seekers in fact, have been fighting against death. Bertrand Russell has made a statement that if there were no death, there would be no religion. There is some truth in it. I will not agree totally, because religion is a vast continent. It is not only death, it is also the search for bliss, it is also the search for truth, it is also the search for the meaning of life; it is many more things. But certainly Bertrand Russell is right: if there were no death, very few, very rare people would be interested in religion. Death is the great incentive.Bodhidharma renounced the kingdom saying to his father, “If you cannot save me from death, then please don’t prevent me. Let me go in search of something that is beyond death.” Those were beautiful days, particularly in the East. The father thought for a moment and he said, “I will not prevent you, because I cannot prevent your death. You go on your search with all my blessings. It is sad for me but that is my problem; it is my attachment. I was hoping for you to be the successor, to be the emperor of the great Pallavas empire, but you have chosen something higher than that. I am your father so how can I prevent you?“And you have put in such a simple way a question which I had never expected. You say, ‘If you can prevent my death then I will not leave the palace, but if you cannot prevent my death, then please don’t prevent me either.’” You can see Bodhidharma’s caliber as a great intelligence.And the second thing that I would like you to remember is that although he was a follower of Gautam Buddha, in some instances he shows higher flights than Gautam Buddha himself. For example, Gautam Buddha was afraid to initiate a woman into his commune of sannyasins but Bodhidharma got initiated by a woman who was enlightened. Her name was Pragyatara. Perhaps people would have forgotten her name; it is only because of Bodhidharma that her name still remains, but only the name – we don’t know anything else about her. It was she who ordered Bodhidharma to go to China. Buddhism had reached China six hundred years before Bodhidharma. It was something magical; it had never happened anywhere, at any time – Buddha’s message immediately caught hold of the whole Chinese people.The situation was that China had lived under the influence of Confucius and was tired of it. Because Confucius is just a moralist, a puritan, he does not know anything about the inner mysteries of life. In fact, he denies that there is anything inner. Everything is outer; refine it, polish it, culture it, make it as beautiful as possible.There were people like Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, contemporaries of Confucius, but they were mystics not masters. They could not create a counter movement against Confucius in the hearts of the Chinese people. So there was a vacuum. Nobody can live without a soul, and once you start thinking that there is no soul, your life starts losing all meaning. The soul is your very integrating concept; without it you are cut away from existence and eternal life. Just like a branch cut off from a tree is bound to die – it has lost the source of nourishment – the very idea that there is no soul inside you, no consciousness, cuts you away from existence. One starts shrinking, one starts feeling suffocated.But Confucius was a very great rationalist. These mystics, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, Lieh Tzu, knew that what Confucius was doing was wrong, but they were not masters. They remained in their monasteries with their few disciples.When Buddhism reached China, it immediately entered to the very soul of the people…as if they had been thirsty for centuries, and Buddhism had come as a rain cloud. It quenched their thirst so immensely that something unimaginable happened.Christianity has converted many people, but that conversion is not worth calling religious. It converts the poor, the hungry, the beggars, the orphans, not by any spiritual impact on them but just by giving them food, clothes, shelter, education. But these have nothing to do with spirituality. Mohammedanism has converted a tremendous amount of people, but on the point of the sword: either you be a Mohammedan, or you cannot live. The choice is yours.The conversion that happened in China is the only religious conversion in the whole history of mankind. Buddhism simply explained itself, and the beauty of the message was understood by the people. They were thirsty for it, they were waiting for something like it. The whole country, which was the biggest country in the world, turned to Buddhism. When Bodhidharma reached there six hundred years later, there were already thirty thousand Buddhist temples, monasteries, and two million Buddhist monks in China. And two million Buddhist monks is not a small number; it was five percent of the whole population of China.Pragyatara, Bodhidharma’s master, told him to go to China because the people who had reached there before him had made a great impact, although none of them were enlightened. They were great scholars, very disciplined people, very loving and peaceful and compassionate, but none of them were enlightened. And now China needed another Gautam Buddha. The ground was ready.Bodhidharma was the first enlightened man to reach China. The point I want to make clear is that while Gautam Buddha was afraid to initiate women into his commune, Bodhidharma was courageous enough to be initiated by a woman on the path of Gautam Buddha. There were other enlightened people, but he chose a woman for a certain purpose. And the purpose was to show that a woman can be enlightened. Not only that, her disciples can be enlightened. Bodhidharma’s name stands out amongst all the Buddhist enlightened people second only to Gautam Buddha.There are many legends about the man; they all have some significance. The first legend is: When he reached China – it took him three years – the Chinese emperor Wu came to receive him. His fame had reached ahead of him. Emperor Wu had done great service to the philosophy of Gautam Buddha. Thousands of scholars were translating Buddhist scriptures from Pali into Chinese and the emperor was the patron of all that great work of translation. He had made thousands of temples and monasteries, and he was feeding thousands of monks. He had put his whole treasure at the service of Gautam Buddha, and naturally the Buddhist monks who had reached before Bodhidharma had been telling him that he was earning great virtue, that he will be born as a god in heaven.Naturally, his first question to Bodhidharma was, “I have made so many monasteries, I am feeding thousands of scholars, I have opened a whole university for the studies of Gautam Buddha, I have put my whole empire and its treasures in the service of Gautam Buddha. What is going to be my reward?”He was a little embarrassed seeing Bodhidharma, not thinking that the man would be like this. He looked very ferocious. He had very big eyes, but he had a very soft heart – just a lotus flower in his heart. But his face was almost as dangerous as you can conceive. Just the sunglasses were missing; otherwise he was a Mafia guy!With great fear, emperor Wu asked the question, and Bodhidharma said, “Nothing, no reward. On the contrary, be ready to fall into the seventh hell.”The emperor said, “But I have not done anything wrong – why the seventh hell? I have been doing everything that the Buddhist monks have been telling me.”Bodhidharma said, “Unless you start hearing your own voice, nobody can help you, Buddhist or non-Buddhist. And you have not yet heard your inner voice. If you had heard it, you would not have asked such a stupid question.“On the path of Gautam Buddha there is no reward because the very desire for reward comes from a greedy mind. The whole teaching of Gautam Buddha is desirelessness and if you are doing all these so-called virtuous acts, making temples and monasteries and feeding thousands of monks, with a desire in your mind, you are preparing your way towards hell. If you are doing these things out of joy, to share your joy with the whole empire, and there is not even a slight desire anywhere for any reward, the very act is a reward unto itself. Otherwise you have missed the whole point.”Emperor Wu said, “My mind is so full of thoughts. I have been trying to create some peace of mind, but I have failed and because of these thoughts and their noise, I cannot hear what you are calling the inner voice. I don’t know anything about it.”Bodhidharma said, “Then, four o’clock in the morning, come alone without any bodyguards to the temple in the mountains where I am going to stay. And I will put your mind at peace, forever.”The emperor thought this man really outlandish, outrageous. He had met many monks; they were so polite, but this one does not even bother that he is an emperor of a great country. And to go to him in the darkness of early morning at four o’clock, alone…. And this man seems to be dangerous – he always used to carry a big staff with him.The emperor could not sleep the whole night, “To go or not to go? Because that man can do anything. He seems to be absolutely unreliable.” And on the other hand, he felt deep down in his heart the sincerity of the man, that he is not a hypocrite. He does not care a bit that you are an emperor and he is just a beggar. He behaves as an emperor, and in front of him you are just a beggar. And the way he has said, “I will put your mind at peace forever.”“Strange, because I have been asking,” the emperor thought, “of many, many wise people who have come from India, and they all gave me methods, techniques, which I have been practicing, but nothing is happening – and this strange fellow, who looks almost mad, or drunk, and has a strange face with such big eyes that he creates fear…. But he seems to be sincere too – he is a wild phenomenon. And it is worth to risk. What can he do – at the most he can kill me.” Finally, he could not resist the temptation because the man had promised, “I will put your mind at peace forever.”Emperor Wu reached the temple at four o’clock, early in the morning in darkness, alone, and Bodhidharma was standing there with his staff, just on the steps, and he said, “I knew you would be coming, although the whole night you debated whether to go or not to go. What kind of an emperor are you – so cowardly, being afraid of a poor monk, a poor beggar who has nothing in the world except this staff. And with this staff I am going to put your mind to silence.”The emperor thought, “My God, who has ever heard that with a staff you can put somebody’s mind to silence! You can finish him, hit him hard on the head – then the whole man is silent, not the mind. But now it is too late to go back.”And Bodhidharma said, “Sit down here in the courtyard of the temple.” There was not a single man around. “Close your eyes, I am sitting in front of you with my staff. Your work is to catch hold of the mind. Just close your eyes and go inside looking for it – where it is. The moment you catch hold of it, just tell me, ‘Here it is.’ And my staff will do the remaining thing.”It was the strangest experience any seeker of truth or peace or silence could have ever had – but now there was no other way. Emperor Wu sat there with closed eyes, knowing perfectly well that Bodhidharma seems to mean everything he says. He looked all around – there was no mind. That staff did its work. For the first time he was in such a situation. The choice…if you find the mind, one never knows what this man is going to do with his staff. And in that silent mountainous place, in the presence of Bodhidharma, who has a charisma of his own…. There have been many enlightened people, but Bodhidharma stands aloof, alone, like an Everest. His every act is unique and original. His every gesture has his own signature; it is not borrowed.He tried hard to look for the mind, and for the first time he could not find the mind. It is a small strategy. Mind exists only because you never look for it; it exists only because you are never aware of it. When you are looking for it you are aware of it, and awareness surely kills it completely. Hours passed and the sun was rising in the silent mountains with a cool breeze. Bodhidharma could see on the face of emperor Wu such peace, such silence, such stillness as if he was a statue. He shook him and asked him, “It has been a long time. Have you found the mind?”Emperor Wu said, “Without using your staff, you have pacified my mind completely. I don’t have any mind and I have heard the inner voice about which you talked. Now I know whatever you said was right. You have transformed me without doing anything. Now I know that each act has to be a reward unto itself; otherwise, don’t do it. Who is there to give you the reward? This is a childish idea. Who is there to give you the punishment? Your action is punishment and your action is your reward. You are the master of your destiny.”Bodhidharma said, “You are a rare disciple. I love you, I respect you, not as an emperor but as a man who has the courage just in a single sitting to bring so much awareness, so much light, that all darkness of the mind disappears.”Wu tried to persuade him to come to the palace. He said, “That is not my place; you can see I am wild, I do things I myself don’t know beforehand. I live moment to moment spontaneously, I am very unpredictable. I may create unnecessary trouble for you, your court, your people; I am not meant for palaces, just let me live in my wildness.”He lived on this mountain whose name was Tai…. The second legend is that Bodhidharma was the first man who created tea – the name ‘tea’ comes from the name Tai, because it was created on the mountain Tai. And all the words for tea in any language, are derived from the same source, tai. In English it is tea, in Hindi it is chai. That Chinese word tai can also be pronounced as cha. The Marathi word is exactly cha.The way Bodhidharma created tea cannot be historical but is significant. He was meditating almost all the time, and sometimes in the night he would start falling asleep. So, just not to fall asleep, just to teach a lesson to his eyes, he took out all his eyebrow hairs and threw them in the temple ground. The story is that out of those eyebrows, the tea bushes grew. Those were the first tea bushes. That’s why when you drink tea, you cannot sleep. And in Buddhism it became a routine that for meditation, tea is immensely helpful. So the whole Buddhist world drinks tea as part of meditation, because it keeps you alert and awake.Although there were two million Buddhist monks in China, Bodhidharma could find only four worthy to be accepted as his disciples. He was really very choosy. It took him almost nine years to find his first disciple, Hui Ko.For nine years – and that is a historical fact, because there are ancientmost references almost contemporary to Bodhidharma which all mention that fact, although others may not be mentioned – for nine years, after sending Wu back to the palace, he sat before the temple wall, facing the wall. He made it a great meditation. He would just simply go on looking at the wall. Now, looking at the wall for a long time, you cannot think. Slowly, slowly, just like the wall, your mind screen also becomes empty.And there was a second reason. He declared, “Unless somebody who deserves to be my disciple comes, I will not look at the audience.”People used to come and they would sit behind him. It was a strange situation. Nobody had spoken in this way; he would speak to the wall. People would be sitting behind him but he would not face the audience, because he said, “The audience hurts me more, because it is just like a wall. Nobody understands, and to look at human beings in such an ignorant state hurts deeply. But to look at the wall, there is no question; a wall, after all is a wall. It cannot hear, so there is no need to be hurt. I will turn to face the audience only if somebody proves by his action that he is ready to be my disciple.”Nine years passed. People could not find what to do – what action would satisfy him. They could not figure it out. Then came this young man, Hui Ko. He cut off one of his hands with the sword, and threw the hand before Bodhidharma and said, “This is the beginning. Either you turn, or my head will be falling before you. I am going to cut my head too.”Bodhidharma turned and said, “You are really a man worth need to cut the head, we have to use it.” This man, Hui Ko, was his first disciple.Finally when he left China, or intended to leave China, he called his four disciples – three more he had gathered after Hui Ko. He asked them, “In simple words, in small sentences, telegraphic, tell me the essence of my teachings. I intend to leave tomorrow morning to go back to the Himalayas, and I want to choose from you four, one as my successor.”The first man said, “Your teaching is of going beyond mind, of being absolutely silent, and then everything starts happening of its own accord.”Bodhidharma said, “You are not wrong, but you don’t satisfy me. You just have my skin.”The second one said, “To know that I am not, and only existence is, is your fundamental teaching.”Bodhidharma said, “A little better, but not up to my standard. You have my bones; sit down.”And the third one said, “Nothing can be said about it. No word is capable of saying anything about it.”Bodhidharma said, “Good, but you have said already something about it. You have contradicted yourself. Just sit down; you have my marrow.”And the fourth was his first disciple, Hui Ko, who simply fell at Bodhidharma’s feet, without saying a word, tears rolling down from his eyes. Bodhidharma said, “You have said it. You are going to be my successor.”But in the night Bodhidharma was poisoned by some disciple as a revenge, because he had not been chosen as the successor. So they buried him, and the strangest legend is that after three years he was found by a government official, walking out of China towards the Himalayas with his staff in his hand and one of his sandals hanging from the staff – and he was barefoot.The official had known him, had been to him many times, had fallen in love with the man, although he was a little eccentric. He asked, “What is the meaning of this staff, and one sandal hanging from it?” Bodhidharma said, “Soon you will know. If you meet my people just tell them that I’m going into the Himalayas forever.”The official reached immediately, as fast as he could, the monastery on the mountain where Bodhidharma had been living. And there he heard that he had been poisoned and he had died…and there was the tomb. The official had not heard about it, because he was posted on the boundary lines of the empire. He said, “My God, but I have seen him, and I cannot be deceived because I have seen him many times before. He was the same man, those same ferocious eyes, the same fiery and wild outlook, and on top of it, he was carrying on his staff one sandal.”The disciples could not contain their curiosity, and they opened the tomb. All that they could find there was only one sandal. And then the official understood why he had said, “You will find out the meaning of it; soon you will know.”We have heard so much about Jesus’ resurrection. But nobody has talked much of the resurrection of Bodhidharma. Perhaps he was only in a coma when they buried him, and then he came to his senses, slipped out of the tomb, left one sandal there and put another sandal on his staff, and according to the plan, he left.He wanted to die in the eternal snows of the Himalayas. He wanted that there should be no tomb, no temple, no statue of him. He did not want to leave any footprints behind him to be worshipped; those who love him should enter into their own being – “I am not going to be worshipped.” And he disappeared almost in thin air. Nobody heard anything about him – what happened, where he died. He must be buried in the eternal snows of the Himalayas somewhere.This is the man, and there are these three small collections which we are taking as one whole book. These are not his writings, because they don’t show any quality of the man. They are notes of scholarly disciples; hence they are bound to have fundamental and essential faults, misunderstandings, misinterpretations. They are not people of no-mind. Their minds are taking the notes; their minds are choosing the words.Bodhidharma was not a man of words, he was a man of action. There is no possibility of him writing a book. A man who never wanted to be worshipped, a man who never wanted to leave any footprints behind him to be followed, is not going to write a book either, because that is leaving footprints to be followed.But I have chosen to speak on them because these three small collections are the only writings which for centuries have been believed to be Bodhidharma’s. They contain here and there, in spite of the people who were taking the notes, something of Bodhidharma – something has entered. The task is difficult for any scholar to make a distinction as to which part is Bodhidharma’s and which part is the note taker’s. It is not a problem for me.I know from my own experience what can be unpolluted Bodhidharma, and what can be only the mind of a scholar interpreting him. So these are not ordinary commentaries. In a way this is the first effort about Bodhidharma to sort out the wheat from the chaff.The first statement:Many roads lead to the path.This cannot be said by Bodhidharma. He cannot even say that even a single path leads to the truth; his whole approach was that you are the truth, you are not to go anywhere. You have to stop going, so that you can remain at home where the truth is. It is not a question of following a path; on the contrary it is a question of not following any path, not going anywhere, so you can be here – so that you can be now, just within yourself. Every path leads astray, that was Bodhidharma’s approach. This is a scholarly way.Many roads lead to the path, but basically there are only two: reason and practice.It is not possible for Bodhidharma to say that. Certainly not that reason can lead you to the ultimate reality of your being. Reason is part of the mind. And even more wrong is the path of practice. That means it should be based on belief and you have to practice and discipline yourself according to it. You will become an imitator, but you will not be able to come to your original face.No practice is needed. You are really where you need to be. It is just that you go on and on, round and round, but never settle down into your own being. That settling down into your being has neither many paths nor two paths.To enter by reason, means to realize the essence through instruction…That means the information comes from somebody else.…and to believe that all living things share the same true nature…Bodhidharma cannot use the word believe. He is the last person to use the word believe, because belief only creates blind people. Belief never becomes your eyes; it never brings light to you but only prejudices, opinions, ideologies. But they are not the experience and Bodhidharma is fundamentally interested only in experience.…which is not apparent because it is shrouded by sensation and delusion.These are ordinary statements, far below the outlandish caliber of Bodhidharma.Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls…Perhaps this small fragment:Those who turn from delusion back to reality, who meditate on walls, the absence of self and other, the oneness of mortal and sage, and who remain unmoved, even by scriptures, are in complete and unspoken agreement with reason.Just the last part of the statement has to be changed. Instead of “with reason” it should be “with existence.”This piece I can say with absolute guarantee comes from Bodhidharma. Try to understand it. Those who meditate on walls means those who start dropping thoughts, dropping mind, whose screen of the mind becomes just like a wall – no movement, pure stillness. They come to understand the absence of self, that there is no ego within you, that there is nobody who can say, “I am.”“Existence is, I am not.”No-selfness is one of the fundamentals of Gautam Buddha. And Bodhidharma will certainly agree with it because it is the very foundation of the whole revolution that Gautam Buddha created. …the oneness of mortal and sage… That even Gautam Buddha cannot say – only Bodhidharma, a single man in the whole world, in the whole history – that the ordinary man and the sage are not different. They only have different personalities, facades, but in the innermost part of their subjectivity they are just the same. The sinner and the saint are the same. The sinner is suffering unnecessarily from guilt and the saint is suffering unnecessarily from the ego, that “I am holier than thou.” But both are basically the same – no-self, just a pure nothingness. …and who remain unmoved, even by scriptures… Whatever the scriptures may say cannot change these people, these meditators, who have come to know the nothingness, who have come to know the selflessness, who have come to know pure consciousness without any contamination by ego. Even if all the scriptures say this is not right, they are not going to be moved by it. No scriptures can disturb them. …are in complete and unspoken agreement with existence, NOT with reason. That small part of the statement is not from Bodhidharma. That is added by the person who is writing the book.Without moving, without effort, they enter, we say, by reason.Again, the statement certainly seems to be from Bodhidharma. without moving, because there is nowhere to go. To find yourself you have to be in a state of unmoving silence. Without moving, and of course without any effort because the effort will bring movement. You simply have to be effortless and unmoving and just silent, as if you are not. They enter into the very heart of existence.To enter by practice refers to four all-inclusive practices.I don’t think these statements are coming from Bodhidharma, although they are coming from Buddhist scriptures. So we will have a little look into them.…suffering injustice. That is coming from Buddhist scriptures. The first thing Bodhidharma cannot say but Gautam Buddha can say. And it is a very complex statement: suffering injustice, adapting to conditions… It can help a person to be contented but it takes away all rebelliousness from him. …suffering injustice has to be looked at from both sides. One side is to suffer injustice just as part of the law of karma: your past life’s evil acts have created it; it is just a punishment – suffer it without complaining, without revolting. It will certainly create a superficial contentment but it will destroy something very beautiful – your individuality. It will destroy the rebel in you; it is a kind of suicide of the rebel.This has certainly been taught by Gautam Buddha, and hence I have always been saying that in India’s poverty, two thousand years of slavery, Gautam Buddha has some hand. When you teach people to suffer injustice without complaining against it, and to adapt to any conditions that you find happening around you, for example slavery – adapt to it…. Gautam Buddha’s influence was great. It went deep into India’s very heart and that was the cause of its poverty, its long slavery. No country has lived for two thousand years in slavery, and even today when so-called freedom has come, the Indian mind is still psychologically a slave.For example when Rabindranath Tagore got the Nobel prize for his book of songs, Gitanjali, “Offering of Songs,” the book had already been in existence for twenty years in Bengali and in Hindi. Nobody even bothered about it. But when it got the Nobel prize, when it was translated into English, immediately Rabindranath Tagore became a world figure. He lived in Calcutta and the Calcutta University wanted to confer on him an honorary doctorate, but he refused. In his refusal he wrote, “You are not conferring the doctorate on me, you are conferring the doctorate on the Nobel prize. Your minds are so enslaved. My book has been in existence for twenty years and the translation is not so beautiful as my original.” The translation is a faraway echo, and it is true the original has a beauty which the translation cannot have.Poetry cannot be translated from one language to another; only prose can be translated, because every language has its own nuances and in poetry those nuances play such a major role that you cannot take them easily into another language.Gautam Buddha is certainly responsible for India’s slavery, poverty, by giving such a teaching of adapting to the conditions, that whatsoever the conditions are – it is our fate. And even suffering injustice you are not supposed to complain. This kills the very rebel in your being and without a rebel you are almost dead. Your rebelliousness is your very life stream.I cannot think that a man like Bodhidharma, so outrageous in his statements, can make these two things significant practices. Yet the third thing certainly comes from him:…seeking nothing and practicing the dharma. You have to understand the word dharma. It has not been translated but it can be translated very easily. Dharma means self-nature. For example, to be hot is the dharma of fire; to be cold is the dharma of ice, the self-nature. What is the self-nature of man? No-selfness, silence, and suddenly an upsurge of compassion. This can be said by Bodhidharma, it must have been said. And before it, is a condition: seeking nothing. Every seeking is going to take you away from yourself, so non-seeking is one of the essentials of Bodhidharma’s teaching.Don’t go anywhere. Pull all your energy inwards. Close all your petals and just be in. And you will experience what dharma is, what self-nature is. Then practice it. Then act as if you are nobody. Then act with great compassion. Then let your whole life be simply a presence, but not a person because there is no self inside you.First, suffering injustice. When those who search for the path encounter adversity, they should think to themselves, “In countless ages gone by, I have turned from the essential to the trivial and wandered through all manner of existence, often angry without cause and guilty of numberless transgressions. Now, though I do no wrong, I am punished by my past.These words are from the person who is writing the notes.Neither gods nor men can foresee when an evil deed will bear its fruit. I accept it with an open heart and without complaint of injustice.”These words certainly are not from Bodhidharma.The sutras say, “When you meet with adversity, don’t be upset. Because it makes sense.” With such understanding you are in harmony with reason. And by suffering injustice, you enter the path.No signature of Bodhidharma on these words.Second, adapting to conditions. As mortals, we are ruled by conditions, not by ourselves.Again, it is not from Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma cannot say that we are ruled by conditions and not by ourselves. In the first place, we are not. We are only pure nothingness, and who can rule the pure nothingness? As a person you can be ruled, but as a presence you cannot be ruled. And making conditions more important than yourself is again supporting the vested interests, the exploiters, the parasites. Bodhidharma is one of the greatest rebellious souls of the world.If we should be blessed by some great reward, such as fame or fortune, it is the fruit of a seed planted by us in the past.Again, it is not Bodhidharma. Bodhidharma does not believe in the past or in the future; his trust is only in the present. And whatever you do, the consequence of it will immediately follow the action just like the shadow follows you. That which brings rewards is virtue and that which brings suffering is sin. He is a simple man; he is not a complicated philosopher and he is not in any way in support of the vested interests.When conditions change, it ends. Why delight in its existence? But while success and failure depend on conditions, the mind neither waxes nor wanes. Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the path.Perhaps, I say perhaps these words can be Bodhidharma’s. Neither by success nor by failure should you be affected. They are not more than dreams, they come and go. You should remain in your witnessing self.Those who remain unmoved by the wind of joy silently follow the path.Third, seeking nothing. People of this world are deluded. They are always longing for something, always, in a word, seeking. But the wise wake up. They choose reason over custom. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the season. All phenomena are empty. They contain nothing worth desiring. Calamity forever alternates with prosperity. To dwell in the three realms is to dwell in a burning house. To have a body is to suffer. Does anybody with a body know peace?In this passage a few things certainly give the flavor of Bodhidharma, but a few things look not of the same quality. For example, …seeking nothing is Bodhidharma. …the wise wake up. This is Bodhidharma. They choose reason over custom. I would like to change the word reason to meditation. They choose meditation over custom. They choose their own intelligence over custom and tradition.This certainly cannot be from Bodhidharma. They fix their minds on the sublime and let their bodies change with the season. The man who is saying that the sinner and the saint are the same, the ordinary man and the sage are not different, cannot make this statement – because for him the mundane and the sublime are not different, they cannot be different.Yes, this statement can be confirmed as Bodhidharma’s: All phenomena are empty. Whatever happens outside you in life is just empty, as empty as dreams; it is made of the same stuff. …the wise wake up and see the whole of life as a long series of dreams – sometimes good, sometimes bad, sometimes sweet, sometimes nightmarish, but they are all dreams. The awakened one neither dreams in his sleep nor is deluded by the dreams of the outside world while he is awake. They contain nothing worth desiring.Calamity forever alternates with prosperity. To dwell in the three realms is to dwell in a burning house. The three realms are of the body, of the mind and of the heart. To dwell in the fourth, the turiya, is to be at peace with existence.Fourth, practicing the dharma. The dharma is the truth that all natures are pure. By this truth all appearances are empty. Defilement and attachment, subject and object don’t exist.This can be said to be purely Bodhidharma.The sutras say, “The dharma includes no being because it is free from the impurity of being. And the dharma includes no self, because it is free from the impurity of self.” Those wise enough to believe and understand this truth are bound to practice according to the dharma.These are additions by the people who are taking notes.Since the embodiment of the dharma contains nothing worth begrudging, they give their body, life and property in charity, without regret, without the vanity of giver, gift or recipient, and without bias or attachment. And they take up transforming others to eliminate impurity but without becoming attached to form. Thus, through their own practice, they are able to help others and glorify the way of enlightenment. And as with charity, they also practice the other virtues. But while practicing the six virtues to eliminate delusion, they practice nothing at all.All the statements above this sentence cannot be authentically said to be from Bodhidharma. But this sentence, …they practice nothing at all.The people who are practicing all these things recorded before, are practicing nothing, because if the world is only a dream land, then whether you are a thief or a great man of charity, makes no difference. In a dream, if you are a thief or a man of charity, will it make any difference when you wake up? Will you feel good that you were such a great man of charity? Or will you feel ashamed that in the dream you were a thief? Both were dreams, soap bubbles; they don’t mean anything.Knowing Bodhidharma, I can say exactly what are his words. …they practice nothing at all – the people who are practicing the above mentioned things….This is what is meant by practicing the dharma.Bodhidharma is saying: Knowing this – that whatever you are practicing is nothing at all – this knowing, this understanding is called practicing the dharma.Those who understand this detach themselves from all that exists and stop imagining or seeking anything. The sutras say, “To seek is to suffer. To seek nothing is bliss.”This is pure Bodhidharma.When you seek nothing, you are on the path.So it is going to be a continuous effort to draw lines, between what exactly are Bodhidharma’s statements and what are statements by the writers of these books, these notes. But I can say it with authority, because this is my own understanding and experience too: I agree with Bodhidharma on each and every point. In other words, Bodhidharma agrees with me on each and every point.Scholars have been talking about these books. I am not a scholar. I am a Bodhidharma. I will recognize what is my statement and what is not my statement. Get it?

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Bodhidharma’s “Bloodstream Sermon”:Everything that appears in the three realms leads back to the mind. Hence, buddhas of the past and future teach mind to mind without bothering about definitions.But if they don’t define it, what do they mean by mind?You ask. That’s your mind. I answer. That’s my mind. If I had no mind, how could I answer? If you had no mind, how could you ask? That which asks is your mind. “Through endless kalpas without beginning, whatever you do, wherever you are, that’s your real mind, that’s your real buddha. This mind is the buddha, says the same thing. Beyond this mind you’ll never find another buddha. To search for enlightenment or nirvana beyond this mind is impossible. The reality of your own self-nature, the absence of cause and effect, is what’s meant by mind. Your mind is nirvana. You might think you can find a buddha or enlightenment somewhere beyond the mind, but such a place doesn’t exist.Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space. Space has a name but no form. It’s not something you can pick up or put down. And you certainly can’t grab it. Beyond this mind, you’ll never see a buddha. The buddha is a product of your mind. Why look for a buddha beyond this mind?Buddhas of the past and future only talk about this mind. The mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the mind. Beyond the mind there’s no buddha. And beyond the buddha there’s no mind. If you think there’s a buddha beyond the mind, where is he? There’s no buddha beyond the mind, so why envision one? You can’t know your real mind as long as you deceive yourself. As long as you’re enthralled by a lifeless form, you’re not free. If you don’t believe me, deceiving yourself doesn’t help. It’s not the buddha’s fault. People, though, are deluded. They’re unaware that their own mind is the buddha. Otherwise, they wouldn’t look for a buddha outside the mind.Buddhas don’t save buddhas. If you use your mind to look for a buddha, you won’t see the buddha. As long as you look for a buddha somewhere else, you’ll never see that your own mind is the buddha. And don’t use a buddha to worship a buddha. And don’t use the mind to invoke a buddha. Buddhas don’t recite sutras. Buddhas don’t keep precepts. And buddhas don’t break precepts. Buddhas don’t keep or break anything. Buddhas don’t do good or evil.To find a buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a buddha. If you don’t see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings and keeping precepts are all useless. Invoking buddhas results in good karma. Reciting sutras results in a good memory. Keeping precepts results in a good rebirth. And making offerings results in future blessings. But no buddha.The realization of enlightenment, or buddhahood, is difficult. And it is also not difficult. It is difficult if you start looking for it. It is not difficult if you simply sit down, settling within yourself in calmness, quietness, being just purely aware.Then you are the buddha, then you are the enlightenment. It is not that you become enlightened, it is not your becoming. It is your very being, it is you in your simplest, spontaneous nature. Enlightenment is your self-nature.Once somebody attains to enlightenment, the greatest difficulty is to convey it to those who are living in darkness and who have never seen any light. It is almost like talking about light to blind people. One enlightened master has been reported to have said, “My whole effort of conveying my experience is just like selling glasses to blind people.”Hence, many of those who have attained have remained silent, and those very few who have spoken, know that their words cannot carry their enlightenment, its beauty, its joy, its fragrance; that the moment the experience is translated into words, something essential dies. Only a corpse reaches to the other person.But out of compassion, hoping against hope, a few enlightened people down the ages have made every effort to convey to you that life is not all that you think it is. It is much more, infinitely much more.But no enlightened man has ever written a single word, for the simple reason that the spoken word has a certain warmth, and the written word is absolutely cold. The spoken word has the presence of the master, but the written word has no presence of the master. The spoken word is not just a word; there are so many other things which may be indirectly conveyed to you. The presence of the master, the blissfulness of the master, the grace of the master, his inviting eyes, his heart calling you, invoking you for a journey, for a pilgrimage to your own being…all this is absent in the written word.Hence, no enlightened man has ever written anything. But disciples have taken notes. All the literature that exists in the name of enlightened people is nothing but disciples’ notes. The problem becomes more and more complicated because the disciple is writing something which he does not understand. He loves the master, he has fallen into a deep love affair, but he does not understand the mystery of the master. He is under his magical influence, but he does not know his secret. Unless he knows his own secret he will never know the secret of the master, because they are not two things.The disciple thinks, has been thinking for ages, that the words of the master should not be lost; they are so precious, they are pure gold. At least something for the future generations should be collected. But his understanding is very small, and he writes according to his understanding. First, much is lost when the master speaks; then much is lost when the disciple hears; then much is lost when the disciple writes. And the disciple writes in one language, and then it goes on being translated into other languages. It becomes a faraway echo of the original.For example, Bodhidharma spoke in Chinese, which was not his mother tongue. He was born in India. He learned Chinese. Even in your own mother tongue, to give expression to the experiences of your innermost life sources, silences of your heart, and blissfulness of your being, is difficult – even in your mother tongue. But to speak in a language which he has just learned, and Chinese is not a simple language…. If one really wants to be a scholar it needs at least thirty years, because it has no alphabet, it is a pictorial language. It is a very primitive sort of language.The alphabet brings language to a very simple phenomenon. But a non-alphabetical language, like Chinese or Japanese, is very difficult for one who is not born in those lands. You have to remember thousands of pictures. Those languages are pictorial. Each thing has a certain symbolic picture and unless you remember thousands of symbolic pictures, it is impossible to speak, it is impossible to write. Bodhidharma had only three years while he was moving towards China to learn as quickly as possible before he reached there. In three years he did almost thirty years’ work.Naturally, what he has said is far from his experience. And the difficulty is again multiplied because these sutras are translated from Chinese into English. For example, I will just give you one word which is very central to these sutras, the word mind.Anybody reading these sutras is going to understand exactly the opposite of what Bodhidharma must have meant, and the reason is the word mind.In English there is only one word for your thinking process, and that is mind. And in the English language there is no word which can denote something beyond the thinking process. The whole philosophy of Gautam Buddha and Bodhidharma is how to go beyond the thinking process. In Sanskrit, in Pali, there are different words: manus, which is the root of the English word mind, exactly means thinking process; then chitta means consciousness beyond the thinking process.Those who are very alert, and those who have not only been just scholars but have also experienced something about meditation – wherever in these sutras you find the word mind, a meditator would put just its opposite, no-mind. English has no word for no-mind, so it is just an arbitrary creation. Everywhere in these sutras, where mind is mentioned, please read no-mind. Otherwise you will go absolutely on a wrong track.The sutras:Everything that appears in the three realms leads back to the no-mind.The translator says, “to the mind.” Mind is something to be transcended, mind is a disease; meditation is an effort to go beyond it. Hence, I will read everywhere instead of ‘mind’, ‘no-mind’, to correct the translation. The translation is done by somebody who understands language but who does not understand meditation.Everything that appears in the three realms… Which are the three realms? The body, the mind, the heart…leads to the fourth, turiya, which can be translated only as no-mind; leads to a silence where there is no ripple of thought, where time disappears, space disappears and just a pure consciousness, not conscious of any thing, but conscious of itself…a self-luminous awareness remains. Everything leads to this self-luminous awareness.The people who understand meditation have always translated the word chitta as no-mind.Hence, buddhas of the past and future teach mind to mind, without bothering about definitions.This is so ridiculous, but scholars are really doing something that they are not prepared for. The right thing would be to say, “Buddhas of the past and future, teach no-mind to no-mind, from silence to silence, from presence to presence. And naturally, in that transfer from silence to silence, in that transmission from being to being, there is no place for definitions.”Definitions are part of the mind. The moment you transcend mind, you transcend all definitions. Now the disciple’s mind comes in:But if they don’t define it, what do they mean by mind?This is so stupid, it is unbelievably ridiculous. The disciple himself who has taken these notes is puzzled. He asks, But if they don’t define it, what do they mean by mind? And he answers to satisfy himself:You ask. That’s your mind. I answer. That’s my mind.It is true about the disciple, but not true about the enlightened being, who does not express himself through the words. Even if he uses the words, that is only a device to create moments of silence.The real transfer happens in the gaps. Nothing is said, and nothing is heard, and yet the message takes a quantum leap from one being to another being. This is the beauty and the miracle and the magic that happens between the master and the disciple.The disciple quotes Bodhidharma as saying:If I had no mind, how could I answer? If you had no mind, how could you ask? That which asks is your mind. Through endless kalpas, through endless ages, without beginning, whatever you do, wherever you are, that is your real mind, that is your real buddha.He is getting really confused. But anybody will be in the same position, not knowing that meditation is a transcendence, a freedom from mind. It is a beyond space, where no functioning of the mind can ever reach.And that is your true nature, that is your enlightenment, that is your buddhahood. And out of that silence, whatever you do is enlightened. Out of that silence, whatever grows is a lotus of paradise. Out of that silence you cannot do anything wrong. In fact, out of that silence the very idea, the distinction between wrong and right, good and bad, disappears. Whatever you do out of that silence is simply existential, the way it should be. It is not your effort, it is not your thought-out, pre-planned act; it is simply your spontaneous outpouring. This mind is the buddha. Let me correct it.This no-mind is the buddha. beyond this no-mind, you will never find another buddha. To search for enlightenment or nirvana, beyond this no-mind, is impossible. The reality of your own self-nature, the absence of cause and effect, is what is meant by no-mind. Your no-mind is nirvana.But remember wherever I am saying no-mind, in the sutra itself is written mind. I disagree with it totally, and Bodhidharma would disagree with it, and Buddha would disagree with it, and anybody who has even a little glimpse of meditation will disagree with it.You might think you can find a buddha or enlightenment somewhere beyond no-mind, but such a place doesn’t exist.Trying to find a buddha or enlightenment is like trying to grab space. Space has a name but no form. It’s not something you can pick up or put down. And you certainly can’t grab it. Beyond this no-mind you’ll never see a buddha. The buddha is a product of your no-mind.In fact no-mind and buddha are synonymous. But the poor disciple who has taken these notes goes on using the word mind which is absolutely absurd.Why look for a buddha beyond this no-mind?Buddhas of the past and future only talk about this no-mind. This no-mind is the buddha. and the buddha is the no-mind. Beyond the no-mind there is no buddha. And beyond the buddha there is no no-mind. If you think there is a buddha beyond the no-mind, where is he?The same mistake continues all along the sutra. It is the ancientmost sutra about Bodhidharma, and for almost fourteen centuries it has been accepted as Bodhidharma’s teaching. And the reason is that nobody tries to understand the experience by experiencing it. People simply read scriptures, they become knowledgeable, but deep inside the ignorance prevails. They start talking about light, but their blindness continues. That’s why he says, …you think there is a buddha beyond the mind. There is the buddha only beyond the mind; it is not a question of thinking, but this stupid disciple says there is no buddha beyond the mind. He has made it a point that buddha and mind are synonymous. Then what is the need of meditation? You all have minds; you have enough of buddha – do you need more mind?You need freedom from the mind, freedom from all the fetters of thought, emotions, moods, sentiments; they all constitute your mind. And beyond them there is a witness, a watcher. That watcher is the buddha.I have to be hard on this disciple, although he has done a service to humanity. He has kept a record of Bodhidharma’s words, although he is not capable of keeping the record in a right way. But still, his record can be corrected by anybody of the same state as Bodhidharma. So there is no problem. He has done a great service, although he is stupid.Once in a while, he repeats Bodhidharma:You can’t know your real no-mind as long as you deceive yourself. As long as you are enthralled by a lifeless form, you are not free.What is your imprisonment? Your mind is your prison. There are different prisons, but they are all prisons. The Hindu has a different kind of prison, different architecture; the Mohammedan has a different prison, different architecture; the Christian has a different prison, and so on and so forth. But they differ only in their architecture. As far as the prisoner is concerned, they are all prisons. And people move from one prison to another prison in the hope that perhaps they will find freedom. The Christian becomes the Hindu, the Hindu becomes the Buddhist, the Buddhist becomes the Mohammedan and they are simply changing prisons. From one program they move to another program, and what is needed is a deprogramming. That’s what, in scientific terms is the meaning of the word meditation – deprogramming.If your mind can be completely deprogrammed, it can become a completely erased tabula rasa, a clean slate from which every knowledge has been erased. This innocence is the beginning of no-mind. This innocence is the birth of the buddha in you.If you don’t believe me, deceiving yourself doesn’t help. It is not the buddha’s fault. People, though, are deluded. They’re unaware that their own no-mind is the buddha. Otherwise, they wouldn’t look for a buddha outside the no-mind.The greatest delusion according to those who have reached to the highest peak of awareness, is searching and seeking outside yourself for the truth, the meaning of existence, or the deathless, eternal current of life. Mind always tries to look outside, because the very function of the mind is to work in the world. That’s why mind is perfectly okay in science, in business, in economics. In everything that is outside you, then mind is perfectly the right means.But that which is within you is beyond mind’s reach. You will have to leave the mind, and move above and away. The moment you become only a witness, watching the mind as something outside you, you have come home. But the man who took the notes and the man who translated them into English…perhaps neither had experience of meditation. They go on repeating the word mind where only no-mind is ever possible.Buddhas don’t save buddhas.Now this I can say must have come from Bodhidharma. This is such a tremendously meaningful statement, and so outrageous that it is beyond the capacity of the poor disciple, who cannot even understand it. He has simply written it, he must have heard it. Perhaps Bodhidharma was again and again repeating it. This is one of the most essential teachings of Gautam Buddha, that nobody can save you.Jesus says, “I am the savior.” If you compare Jesus and Bodhidharma, you will be in for a great surprise. Jesus says, “You are the sheep, I am the shepherd and if you get lost, I will find you.” And it looks, for those who don’t understand, to be a great compassionate ideology. Jesus seems to be of great compassion, love, kindness. In fact Christians say that he sacrificed himself to save humanity, but nobody asks why humanity is not saved. The poor fellow died unnecessarily.I have always been wondering…. I have been listening to Christians, and without feeling any embarrassment they go on saying that Jesus gave up his life to save humanity. I used to be very friendly with a preacher, Stanley Jones, who was a renowned Christian missionary and had a very philosophical bent of mind. Whenever he used to come into the city where I was, I always used to go to listen to him. One day it was too much; he was continuously repeating that “Jesus is the only savior.”I had to stand up. I said, “It is not my business, I am not a Christian and in fact, I should not create any disturbance in the church; I don’t belong to the congregation. But you are repeating such nonsense. You go on saying that he saved humanity by giving up his life on the cross. But I don’t see humanity saved anywhere. He could not even save himself.”But all the religions born outside India have the idea of the savior. Mohammedanism, Judaism, Christianity – three religions are born outside India and all three have the idea of the savior. In India there are four religions: Hinduism, Sikhism, Jainism, Buddhism. Jainism and Buddhism are the only two religions which simply deny the very concept of saving anybody, because they say – and I agree with their concept – that it is condemnatory, it is humiliating. The very idea that “I will save you” makes me higher than you, and holier than you. I become special. I am the only begotten son of God, or I am the only prophet of God, or the only messenger of God, and you are just ordinary human beings.Bodhidharma’s statement is, Buddhas don’t save buddhas. He is saying you are all buddhas whether you know it or not, and how can anybody save you? How can one buddha save another buddha? All that a buddha can do is to wake you up. That is not much of a saving. When you wake somebody up, do you think you are holier, and special, and you have done a great service to humanity, by waking a poor fellow who was sleeping?Buddhas don’t save buddhas. This is a very pregnant statement. It gives equality to every being. The only difference, which is not much of a difference, is…everybody is a buddha; a few are asleep and are unaware of who they are, and a few have become awakened and know who they are. But essentially, there is no difference at all, and there is no question of saving anybody. It is his right if somebody wants to continue to sleep; it is his birthright. You cannot forcibly wake up somebody because that is interfering with his freedom.It happened:I was sitting on the banks of the Ganges in Allahabad. I had gone to speak in a Christian college in Allahabad, and the Christian college is just on the bank of the Ganges on a very beautiful spot just near the railway bridge. I was sitting on the bank, and there was nobody for miles and suddenly a man came and jumped. I thought perhaps he was taking a bath, and as he jumped, he started shouting, “Help me, help me.” He was just close to me.For a moment I thought, “What is the matter? If he wanted to be helped, why has he jumped?” But I thought it is better to first bring him out. If I start thinking about it, by that time he will be finished. So I jumped. He was a heavy man but I pulled him out somehow, and I felt a certain resistance. It became even more puzzling, he was shouting, “Save me, I am drowning.” But when I was trying to bring him out, I felt that he was not being helpful, he was resisting my effort.I said, “You seem to be mad. Do you want to be saved or not?”He said, “Please save me.” So I pulled him out. And when he was out, he started becoming very angry at me saying, “Can’t you understand? I was committing suicide.”I said, “You should have said so before. So why were you shouting, ‘Save me’?”He said, “It is natural. I wanted to commit suicide but deep down somewhere there was still a desire to live. That’s why I started shouting.”I said, “Okay.” I simply pushed him back. I said, “If this is the case, then I will not do anything against you.”He started shouting again, “Are you mad or what? Do you want to kill me?”I said, “Now I have nothing to do with you. Whatever I have done, I have undone it. Now I will sit silently here and watch.”Somebody else came by and jumped in and took him out. This time he did not give any resistance but he went on looking at me. I said, “What is the matter, where are you going?”He said, “Is it compulsory to commit suicide?”I said, “It is not; I have never told you to commit suicide. You were committing suicide; have you forgotten?”He said, “You seem to be a strange man. When somebody commits suicide, or tries to commit suicide, people prevent him – but you help them.”I said, “I am ready to help in any way. If you want to get out of the river, I am ready to help. If you want to go in the river, I am ready to help. I don’t want to interfere in your lifestyle whatever you want to do.”He said, “I don’t want to die.”I said, “That’s perfectly okay. You can go, but think twice. You may have to come back again.”He said, “I am not going to come back.”I said, “It is up to you. I am just reminding you that the idea of suicide will come again to you, and this is a good chance. Don’t miss it. Ordinarily, there are so many people on the bank. Just by chance there is nobody – only a man who is ready to help in any way, this way or that.”He said, “As long as you are here, I am not going to come back!”I said, “It is up to you. Without me you will be in difficulty.”Bodhidharma is saying, Buddhas don’t save buddhas. Buddhas simply make every effort to wake people to their own reality, but it is not a question of saving. They are buddhas already, nothing has to be added. This is one of the greatest contributions of Buddhism and Jainism. But again and again that disciple is bound to commit mistakes; he is simply helpless. This sentence he has put exactly as it should be.But again he starts:If you use your mind to look for a buddha, you won’t see the buddha. As long as you look for a buddha somewhere else, you will never see that your own no-mind is the buddha.He is saying mind, I am reading no-mind.And don’t use a buddha to worship a buddha. Again, this statement I can say with absolute authority, comes from Bodhidharma. Don’t use a buddha to worship a buddha. Just as a buddha cannot save another buddha, so it is absolutely idiotic that one buddha should worship another buddha. Buddhism is against worship.The last words of Gautam Buddha were, “Don’t make my statues, don’t make my temples, because my whole life I have been teaching you that you are a buddha, and you don’t have to worship another buddha.” And particularly if a stone buddha is being worshipped by a living buddha; this is sheer absurdity.And don’t use the mind to invoke a buddha. Buddhas don’t recite sutras. Buddhas don’t keep precepts. And buddhas don’t break precepts. Buddhas don’t keep or break anything. Buddhas don’t do good or evil.These statements must be coming directly from Bodhidharma because it is beyond the capacity of the disciple to say such great things. Bodhidharma is saying that buddhas don’t follow any discipline except their own awareness. They don’t follow any scriptures except their own light. Neither do they follow anything nor do they break anything. They do neither good nor evil. They simply act out of spontaneity which is beyond good and evil.Buddhas are not puritans or moralists. They act out of pure consciousness and their actions are not decided by any ideals, by any precepts, by any sutras. They don’t recite any sutras. They don’t bother about holy scriptures because they know their own awareness is enough to show them the path and to lead them to their ultimate destiny.To find a buddha, you have to see your nature. Whoever sees his nature is a buddha. If you don’t see your nature, invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings and keeping precepts are all useless.These words certainly have the ring and the sound of a man of awareness. They must be coming from Bodhidharma. But the disciple is not satisfied, he must be feeling a little uneasy. The whole idea that reciting sutras, making offerings, and keeping precepts are all useless…he must be feeling uneasy because these are all irreligious ideas. No ordinary religion is going to accept them.Hence, the disciple immediately puts his own ideas. Invoking buddhas results in good karma. Now this is his addition. Just now it was useless, but he could not feel at ease with the word useless. He had to write it because Bodhidharma must have been saying it, but he is free to dilute it. In fact, he starts changing its whole tone.Invoking buddhas results in good karma. Reciting sutras results in a good memory. Keeping precepts results in a good rebirth. And making offerings results in future blessings. But no buddha.The disciple has been trying hard to put the words of Bodhidharma exactly, but it must have been a great effort and a great tension for him because what Bodhidharma is saying can be understood only by people of great meditation. It is not possible for it to be understood by so-called ordinary humanity. It goes against all ordinary religions, ordinary prophets, ordinary messengers of God, ordinary holy scriptures.Feeling uneasy, the disciple makes some additions on his own part. Now if a man reads these sutras without having a taste of meditation, he is bound to be in confusion, and he is bound to be misled by the additions. The disciple is mixing, and polluting the pure crystal clear water of Bodhidharma with all kinds of crap, because he cannot tolerate such a crystal clear approach, so refined.Although there have been many enlightened people in the lineage of Gautam Buddha, Bodhidharma became the most famous. He is not the founder of Zen Buddhism; the founder of Zen is Mahakashyapa. But even Mahakashyapa has faded. Bodhidharma is not the founder but he has become the most important enlightened person after Gautam Buddha just because of his outrageousness, his non-compromising approach. He is not going to console anybody; he is simply going to say the truth. Whether it hurts you or heals you it is up to you, but he is not going to add a single word just to console you, because every consolation is putting you into sleep. Every consolation is a kind of opium.Bodhidharma is absolutely strict. That’s why he is painted as a ferocious looking man. It does not mean that he was like that. He was a prince, and I don’t think that the way he has been painted down the centuries is his actual photograph. It is rather the experience of those who had to deal with him – he was ferocious. And he was ferocious because he would not say any consolatory words, he would simply say the naked truth. If it hurts you, good. Perhaps you need to be hurt and only that will awaken you. You don’t need any consolation, because that will put you into a deeper sleep.Bodhidharma is unique, and I can understand why his disciple could not understand. That must have been the case with many people who heard him. At the last moment when he wanted to choose a successor – he had chosen only four disciples, and from four he was going to choose one successor. He was really strict; perhaps the most strict master the world has ever known, but the most compassionate, because his strictness is nothing but his compassion.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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If you don’t understand by yourself, you’ll have to find a teacher to get to the bottom of life and death. But unless he sees his nature, such a person isn’t a teacher. Even if he can recite the twelve-fold canon, he can’t escape the wheel of birth and death. He suffers in the three realms without hope of release.Long ago, the monk Good Star was able to recite the entire canon. But he didn’t escape the wheel because he didn’t see his nature. If this was the case with Good Star, then people nowadays who recite a few sutras or shastras and think it’s the dharma are fools. Unless you see your mind, reciting so much prose is useless.To find a buddha, all you have to do is see your nature. Your nature is the buddha. And the buddha is the person who’s free, free of plans, free of cares. If you don’t see your nature and run around all day looking somewhere else, you’ll never find a buddha. The truth is, there’s nothing to find. But to reach such an understanding you need a teacher. And you need to struggle to make yourself understand. Life and death are important. Don’t suffer them in vain. There’s no advantage in deceiving yourself. Even if you have mountains of jewels and as many servants as there are grains of sand along the Ganges, you see them when your eyes are open. But what about when your eyes are shut? You should realize then that everything you see is like a dream or illusion.If you don’t find a teacher soon, you’ll live this life in vain. It’s true, you have the buddha-nature. But without the help of a teacher you’ll never know it. Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help.If though, by the conjunction of conditions, someone understands what the buddha meant, that person doesn’t need a teacher. Such a person has a natural awareness superior to anything taught. But unless you’re so blessed, study hard. And by means of instruction, you’ll understand.People who don’t understand and think they can do so without study are no different from those deluded souls who can’t tell white from black. Falsely proclaiming the buddhadharma, such persons, in fact, blaspheme the buddha and subvert the dharma. They preach as if they were bringing rain. But theirs is the preaching of devils not of buddhas. Their teacher is the king of devils. And their disciples are the devil’s minions. Deluded people who follow such instruction unwittingly sink deeper in the sea of birth and death.Unless they see their nature, how can people call themselves buddhas? They’re liars who deceive others into entering the realm of devils. Unless they see their nature, their preaching of the twelve-fold canon is nothing but the preaching of devils. Their allegiance is to Mara, not to the buddha. Unable to distinguish white from black, how can they escape birth and death?Whoever sees his nature is a buddha. Whoever doesn’t is a mortal. But apart from our mortal nature if you can find a buddha-nature somewhere else, where is it? Our mortal nature is our buddha-nature. Beyond this nature there’s no buddha. The buddha is our nature. There’s no buddha besides this nature. And there’s no nature besides the buddha.Sanskrit, Prakrit, and Pali, three languages used in the past by the enlightened people of this land, have a very rich vocabulary as far as inner experiences are concerned. The West today has a very exact language to express scientific research, discoveries, inventions and technologies, but the Eastern languages don’t have this. However, as far as the interior experience is concerned, the Eastern languages are immensely rich while the Western languages are absolutely poor. Of these three languages, Sanskrit has been used by the Upanishads and the Hindu mystics, Prakrit has been used by Mahavira and all the Jaina mystics and masters, and Pali has been used by Gautam Buddha.Just for the word teacher, they have many words, all with slight differences. The first word is sikshak; that means a man who only imparts information. He may know, he may not know – that is irrelevant. But his information is correct; he is a man of the mind.The second word, which goes a little deeper into experience, not just information, is adhyapak. That teacher is not only an informer but he himself is informed. It is not only a mental thing for him; it is part – but only a part – of his heart, too.And the third word is upadhyaya which goes a little more deeper into experience. This teacher’s information is more alive than the previous two. He has traveled the path, but he has not reached the goal.And then finally the acharya, who has reached the goal, and the information that he imparts is his own experience. He is his own authority, his own argument; his own presence is the whole evidence.But in English there is only one word, teacher, which is used for all kinds of people. The other word is master, which is not used very much by the English speaking people themselves. But I would like to use the word master, equivalent to the word acharya: One who knows, not only through mind, but through experience.Most of the sutras in this part are unpolluted. The disciple has simply noted them down as Bodhidharma must have spoken them.If you don’t understand by yourself, you will have to find a teacher…Instead of teacher, the word master would be right because a teacher is one who teaches you about things of the outside world. Even if he teaches about the inner experiences, it is borrowed. He may be knowledgeable but he is not knowledge itself. To make the distinction, the translator has made the point in a different way.If you don’t understand by yourself, you will have to find a teacher to get to the bottom of life and death. But unless he sees his nature, such a person is not a teacher.It is better to call a man who has reached to the highest peaks of experience a master, and leave the word teacher for those who impart knowledge from one generation to another. And master, also has a dignity of its own.The teacher is almost like a computer. He has read, he has studied, he may have crammed all scriptures but his presence does not indicate that he knows anything. His actions are not arguments for what he says. His sayings come only from the superficial layer of the mind; they are not coming from the innermost core of his being. The teacher cannot teach without words. But the master, on the contrary, cannot teach without silences. If he uses words, it is only to create silence.The master is a living example of what he is saying. The teacher simply shows a very well-versed, educated mind. The master shows a transformed being, a luminous presence. Anybody who has eyes can see it…his grace, his beauty, his blissfulness, his laughter; even in his silence much is said, without words. Even his silence is a song of the ultimate; even unmoving, he is a dance expressing the dance of the whole universe. The master is so far away from the teacher that it is better to use the word separately.I would prefer to say: If you don’t understand by yourself, you will have to get a master, because the master knows his own nature. And by knowing his own nature, he also knows the nature of every living being because it is the same nature. By knowing himself, he knows you too. His knowledge, his knowing, is a bridge between him and his disciples.Even if the teacher can recite the twelve-fold canon, he can’t escape the wheel of birth and death. He suffers in the three realms without hope of release.Just knowledgeability is not going to give you the experience of your immortality or your eternity or your oneness with the whole. It fills your mind with many words, but it leaves your being empty and hollow. You don’t know anything firsthand, and truth can only be known firsthand. The moment it is secondhand, it is no longer truth; it is just a dead word, with no life.The man of great knowledge, a scholar, a pundit, a rabbi, is not going to get free from the wheel of birth and death. And he is not going to be free from the suffering in the three realms. According to Gautam Buddha, heaven, the earth, and hell, all three are nothing but different kinds of sufferings. Buddhism reaches to the highest peak, because even heaven is not considered to be the ultimate home. It is still a suffering – very refined suffering, but suffering all the same. One has to be free from all three; then it is nirvana, then it is enlightenment.Long ago, the monk Good Star was able to recite the entire canon. But he did not escape the wheel because he did not see his nature. If this was the case with Good Star, then people nowadays who recite a few sutras or shastras and think it’s the dharma are fools.It can be taken for granted that Bodhidharma must have said this. It is beyond the capacity of a disciple to call knowledgeable people who can recite all the Buddhist sutras, fools. Only Bodhidharma can do that, not out of any arrogance, not out of any ego, not to condemn them, not to humiliate or insult them, but for Bodhidharma, it is simply the fact.And the fact has to be stated. He is not a man of manners and etiquette and all that rubbish. He simply says whatsoever is the truth. I absolutely agree with him. My own experience with great learned scholars is that they are learned fools. They have big degrees, great honors from universities, but as far as their own consciousness is concerned, it is of the same quality as anybody else’s. They are just parrots. And perhaps parrots are more intelligent than your pundits.I have heard about a parrot:It was wintertime and the lady to whom the parrot belonged used to cover the parrot and his cage with a thick blanket so that he would not feel cold. In the day she used to remove the blanket. One day she removed the blanket as the sun was rising and the parrot started singing, the way all parrots sing, not a song taught to him, but a song that is natural and spontaneous to all the parrots even if they are wild – meaningless to us, but tremendously joyful to them. And just then the lady heard her husband’s car stopping near the porch. Her husband was on an emergency army duty, so once in a while he used to come home without notice.She immediately put the blanket back on the parrot and went to her bed. The parrot said, “My god, today’s day has been very short.”Now nobody has taught him this. This was coming out of his own intelligence. It was strange…every day the blanket was removed in the morning, and in the evening the blanket was put back. What happened today? The day had been really too short.But your so-called learned people around the world don’t have even that much intelligence, for the simple reason that their knowledge becomes mountainous and every possibility of intelligence becomes lost in their knowledge. The burden of knowledge is too heavy. They cannot afford to be intelligent against their knowledge.They are certainly fools – fools because they are not only deceiving others by talking to them about things they know nothing of, but because they are also deceiving themselves. And they are wasting their life in mere words.Authentic life consists of experiences, not mere words. You can go on repeating love, love, love, your whole life, and still you will not have an experience of love. And the moment you have the experience of love, you will be suddenly surprised that the experience is so vast that the word love cannot contain it; it is too small.If this is the case with love, what will be the case with truth? – because truth is infinite, eternal. To know it means to become silent.Just the presence of truth, the feeling of it, leaves you in a state of awe. All words fall short.Unless you see your no-mind… Here the disciple falls back to his own understanding; he again uses the word mind.Unless you see your no-mind, reciting so much prose is useless.And if you know your no-mind, then too reciting so much prose is useless because then there is no point in reciting it. You have come to the very source from which every buddha has spoken. Now there is no meaning in scriptures, sutras, and shastras. The holy books can’t give you more than you know already.To find a buddha, all you have to do is to see your nature.That’s what I have been telling you again and again. The only way out of ignorance and out of this dark night of the soul is to be aware of your own being, aware of your own awareness. In that moment when you are aware of your own awareness, everything stops, time stops. Suddenly you are beyond time and beyond space, and a door opens which makes you part of the whole. This is the inner mathematics, that the part of the whole is not smaller than the whole. That will be difficult to understand. The part of the whole is equal to the whole, because the whole cannot be divided into parts. Division is not possible.That’s why we call the real authentic being in you ‘individual’. Individual means indivisible – that which cannot be divided. So the moment you feel yourself part of the whole, that is the beginning – the first encounter with the whole. Soon you will realize you are not the part, you are the whole because there is no possibility of any division.Your nature is the buddha. And the buddha is the person who is free, free of plans, free of cares. If you don’t see your nature and run around all day looking somewhere else, you will never find……enlightenment.The truth is, there is nothing to find.So, all your running is useless. I can testify this statement must be coming from Bodhidharma himself. There is nothing to find. You are all.The finder itself is the treasure; there is nothing else to find. Hence, I have told you that Jesus’ statement, “Seek, and ye shall find, knock and the door shall be opened unto you, ask and it shall be given,” is beautiful, poetic, impressive, but not true.If you follow Bodhidharma, he will say, “Seek, and you shall never find,” because every seeking takes you away from yourself. Who are you trying to find? You are the one, you are the buddha. Where are you going?Do not knock, otherwise the door will be closed because your very knocking is a desire, is a demand – and a buddha has no desire, no demand. That’s why the door is always open for him.Do not ask, otherwise you will go on missing. Who are you asking? There is no one to give it to you. You have already got it. In asking you are wandering away, you are looking up to somebody else. And nobody can give it to you. There is no question of giving it to you, you have got it already.So all that is needed is neither seeking, nor knocking, nor asking. All that is needed is to be aware of your own nature and you have found it. There is nothing to find. But to reach such an understanding you need a master.Why do you need a master? Because you already have the truth within you, why can’t you just relax and become conscious of it?The problem is that for ages your consciousness has been wandering all over the world. It has forgotten the way to come home. It has been a long, long time since you left home and now you don’t know whether you have a home or whether you ever had a home. Your remembrance of home seems to be as if you have seen it in a movie or in a dream, or you have read about it somewhere. It is a faraway echo in the valleys; it does not give you a certainty.Hence, the need of a master. The master is nothing but a certainty. His presence makes it absolutely certain that there is much more within you than you ever dreamt of. His eyes give you a glimpse of your own possibility. His silence provokes a silence in you and his authority triggers a process in you. Bodhidharma is right:But to reach such an understanding you need a teacher. And you need to struggle to make yourself understand. Life and death are important. Don’t suffer them in vain. There is no advantage in deceiving yourself.And everybody is deceiving: a few are deceiving by earning money and thinking that when they are super-rich they will have reached to the realization of their potential; a few are deceiving by accumulating knowledge; a few are deceiving by becoming powerful, respectable; a few are even deceiving by becoming saints, ascetics. But whatever you do, unless it leads to awareness of your nature, it is a deceiving.Even if you have mountains of jewels and as many servants as there are grains of sand along the Ganges, you see them when your eyes are open. But what about when your eyes are shut?They all disappear. Bodhidharma is saying that this is just a small experiment for you. As you close your eyes, your palaces disappear, your whole world disappears almost in the same way as when in the morning, you open your eyes, all your dreams disappear. And have you ever watched one very strange thing? In the day sometimes, you can suspect perhaps it is not real because there is no way to be certain about its reality. You are sitting here – can’t you think it is just a dream? It is possible that you are dreaming. How do you know that it is true and not a dream? The only difference is that your eyes are open. But in a dream in the night – you never suspect in a dream that it may be a dream. This is one of the strangest mysteries. In real life, fully awake, you can doubt its reality; in a dream nobody ever doubts the reality of the dream. Nobody thinks it is a dream. It is so real.Bodhidharma is trying to give you an example. When you die, your eyes will be closed…. In the East it is a tradition: the moment somebody dies, immediately his eyes are closed. From my very childhood I have been interested in the idea – why? Let him die if he wants to die with open eyes. Why should others be interfering – you cannot even allow him a little freedom of keeping his eyes open after death? I asked everybody, because whenever somebody died I was always present. The moment I heard somebody had died in the neighborhood or somewhere, I immediately went to see the whole thing, what was happening. And I have asked many but nobody was able to answer why it mattered, why they closed the eyes.Most often people die with open eyes. It is very rare to die with closed eyes for the simple reason that for closing the eyelids, you need life energy; just as you cannot die with a fist, because to keep your hand as a fist you need a certain life energy. Everybody dies with an open hand; now there is no more energy, how can you keep the fist? In the same way almost everybody dies with open eyes.And my own understanding is, although nobody has been able to tell me…. I have asked great saints and they said, “You bring such strange questions. We have never thought about it and there is no mention of it in any scriptures. It is just convention.”But I said, “It goes on and on. I cannot accept that it is absolutely meaningless because I can see the meaning. When a man dies, his eyes turn upwards. In a dead man’s open eyes you will see only the white – all the black part, the real eye, turns upwards. That creates fear in people. Just to see somebody’s eyes open and all white gives them fear. It also happens in your sleep; your eyes turn up. That is a rest for the eyes. And now the eyes have gone into complete rest and so as not to provoke fear in people, the eyes are immediately closed.”And in a philosophical sense, the eyes are closed because now the world no longer exists for you to see. You are not; the world has disappeared for you. The moment a man dies he cannot take his empire with him, he cannot take his knowledge with him, he cannot take his prestige, respectability, honor with him. All that he can take with himself is his awareness of his own nature. That is your only wealth. And if you are not earning that wealth, you are wasting a tremendous opportunity.You should realize then that everything you see is like a dream or illusion.…Because death is going to take it all away. That which death cannot take is the only criterion for reality.If you don’t find a master soon, you will live this life in vain. It is true, you have the buddha-nature. But without the help of a master you will never know it. Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a master’s help.This I can say is coming directly from Bodhidharma. This is beyond the capacity of an ordinary recorder of notes; a disciple, however learned, cannot manage to say this: Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a master’s help. Even Bodhidharma has not become enlightened without a master’s help.But the possibility remains because it is your self-nature. In fact, there is no need at all of any master. If you are courageous enough to enter within yourself without bothering whether you are going to find something there or not, you will find it without the help of the master.What is the help of the master? He only gives you a certainty, because you are not adventurous – otherwise, what is the need of certainty? It is your life and you have the right – and you should have a longing – to know what it is all about.I had no master in my life. Many times I have come across enlightened people, but I simply told them to just leave me alone. What can their help do? Just give me a certainty. But I was capable of going without certainty. In fact it is more juicy to go without any certainty, not knowing at all where you are going, whether you are going to find anything or not.When you go with certainty it is as if you are seeing a film twice. Everything is certain, you know exactly now what is going to happen. The new man I have been talking about all my life will not need masters, because he will be so full of adventurous spirit that he would like to go within himself just out of sheer adventure, to see what is there at the very source of life.But up to now it has been happening: Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s help. Perhaps I am that one person, because I don’t know of any enlightened people in the whole history of mankind who have not had a master. But Bodhidharma recognized the fact and the possibility, although he himself had a master. And I am fulfilling his statement: Only one person in a million becomes enlightened without a teacher’s, a master’s help.If though, by the conjunction of conditions, someone understands what the buddha meant, that person does not need a master. Such a person has a natural awareness superior to anything taught. But unless you are so blessed, study hard. And by means of instruction, you’ll understand.These last sentences cannot be from Bodhidharma. First, knowing your nature does not come by studying. You can go on studying all the scriptures of the world and still you will not know yourself. Nor does it come by instruction; instruction means information from outside. Then how does it come?It comes through communion with the master, through falling in love with someone who has reached, seeing in him your own future. You are just a seed and he has come to blossom. That gives you a longing to move upwards and to become a flower yourself. It is not a question of study, it is not a question of instruction; it is a question of deep love for the master. Hence I say these statements are not from Bodhidharma; they cannot be. Even if Bodhidharma were here and even if he were to say that they are his statements, I will refuse to believe it. They are not his statements. A man like Bodhidharma cannot say such rubbishy things.People who don’t understand and think they can do so without study are no different from those deluded souls who can’t tell white from black.These are the disciple’s notes. He is again emphasizing the fact of studying.You all know people of great learning, great knowledge, but in whom deep down, there is no light; they don’t radiate a blissfulness. In fact, their studies make them serious. Rather than making them light, they make them burdened. They know too much without knowing anything and it becomes a great tension in their being, because actually they know nothing but they have accumulated so much information. People worship them, people respect them, so they cannot accept the fact that all our knowledge is superficial. It has not grown within our own being, it has no roots in us. All these flowers have been purchased from the marketplace. They have not grown in our own being.I have heard about a man who had gone fishing. The whole day he tried and could not get a single fish. Now he was worried about his wife so he went to the fish market and purchased three beautiful big fish, but on a condition. The fisherman who was selling those fish could not understand the condition which was very strange, and it was the first time he had come across such a thing. The man was ready to pay the price, whatsoever the fisherman was asking, but the condition was that he had to throw the fish and the man would catch them. The fisherman said, “There is no problem. I will throw, you catch, but I don’t understand…what is the point of it?”The man said, “You don’t understand but I don’t like to lie. When I go home, my wife will ask how many fish I have got. I will show the three fish I have caught with my own hands. I want to be exactly true.”Such a man can deceive his wife, but can he deceive himself? And is this really true or just a falseness covered with the name of truth? And that is the situation of all your so-called learned people. They have caught fish, not from the lake but from a fisherman and his shop in the market, and they have certainly caught them. But they themselves know that they have not caught, they have purchased – and truth cannot be purchased.You have to catch hold of your inner light with your own awareness. Other than that there is no way.Falsely proclaiming the buddhadharma, such persons, in fact, blaspheme the buddha and subvert the dharma. They preach as if they were bringing rain. But theirs is the preaching of devils not of buddhas. Their teacher is the king of devils. And their disciples are the devil’s minions. Deluded people who follow such instruction unwittingly sink deeper in the sea of birth and death.Unless they see their nature, how can people call themselves buddhas? They’re liars who deceive others into entering the realm of devils. Unless they see their nature, their preaching of the twelve-fold canon is nothing but the preaching of devils. Their allegiance is to Mara…Mara is the Buddhist equivalent of the devil.Their allegiance is to Mara, not to the buddha. Unable to distinguish white from black, how can they escape birth and death?Whoever sees his nature is a buddha. Whoever doesn’t is a mortal. But apart from our mortal nature if you can find a buddha-nature somewhere else, where is it? Our mortal nature is our buddha-nature.It only needs recognition. There is no other difference. One who recognizes and is aware of his nature is a buddha. One who does not recognize his own self-nature, who has never gone inwards, is a mortal. But the difference is only of recognition, of awareness; there is no qualitative difference between you and the enlightened man. The difference is only that he knows it and you are unaware of your own treasures.Hence, Bodhidharma declares: Our mortal nature is our buddha-nature.Beyond this nature there’s no buddha. The buddha is our nature.But unless we are aware we will remain mortals.There’s no buddha besides this nature. And there’s no nature besides the buddha.The word buddha will be repeated again and again by Bodhidharma so you have to understand what it means. It is not a personal name of anybody. Buddha simply means one who is awakened. Gautam Buddha is the most famous awakened person but that does not mean that he is the only awakened person. There have been many buddhas before him and there have been many buddhas after him and as long as every human being can become a buddha, there will go on springing up new buddhas in the future.Because everybody has the potentiality…it is only for a time, the right time that you are waiting. Some day, tortured by the outside reality, in despair of having seen everything and found nothing, you are bound to turn inwards.Gautam Buddha’s personal name was Siddhartha. Gautama is his family name so his name was Gautama Siddhartha. Buddha is not his name, it is his awakening. Because I have named our discos Zorba the Buddha, the ambassador of Sri Lanka – Sri Lanka is a Buddhist country – the ambassador wrote a letter to me, saying, “It is very disrespectful and it hurts our religious feelings that you have given the name Zorba the Buddha to discos. Please take the buddha out of it.”I wrote him a letter saying, “Perhaps you are a born Buddhist, but I am a buddha. And I have every right to call the discos, Zorba the Buddha; it has nothing to do with your buddha…you can be satisfied. If I were calling it “Zorba the Siddhartha”, there would be a point to your being disturbed. But buddha is not a personal name; Gautam Buddha is only one of the buddhas amongst millions. And Zorba has every potential to become a buddha. I cannot prevent it and neither can you. And you are only a Buddhist, just a follower, an imitator. You don’t even know exactly the meaning of the word buddha. You have never experienced what self-awareness is. So write to me again what you want.”He has been silent, he has not answered. And I don’t think he has shown the letter to anybody else.So whenever Bodhidharma uses the word buddha, remember he is not mentioning Gautam Buddha. He is saying awareness, enlightenment, liberation, total freedom – all those qualities are in that word buddha. It is nobody’s name and it is everybody’s potential.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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But suppose I don’t see my nature, can’t I still attain enlightenment by invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, observing precepts, practicing devotions, or doing good works?No, you can’t.And why not?If you attain anything at all it’s conditional, it’s karmic. It results in retribution. It turns the wheel. And as long as you’re subject to birth and death, you’ll never attain enlightenment. To attain enlightenment you have to see your nature. Unless you see your nature, all this talk about cause and effect is nonsense. Buddhas don’t practice nonsense. A buddha is free of karma, free of cause and effect. To say he attains anything at all is to slander a buddha. What could he possibly attain? Even focusing on a mind, a power, an understanding or a view is impossible for a buddha. A buddha isn’t one-sided. The nature of his mind is basically empty, neither pure nor impure. He’s free of practice and realization. He’s free of cause and effect.A buddha doesn’t observe precepts. A buddha doesn’t do good or evil. A buddha isn’t energetic or lazy. A buddha is someone who does nothing, someone who can’t even focus his mind on a buddha. A buddha isn’t a buddha. Don’t think about buddhas. If you don’t see what I’m talking about, you’ll never know your own mind.People who don’t see their nature and imagine they can practice doing nothing all the time are liars and fools. They fall into endless space. They’re like drunks. They can’t tell good from evil. If you intend to practice doing nothing, you have to see your nature before you can put an end to rational thought. To attain enlightenment without seeing your nature is impossible.Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn’t exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn’t wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception.But if our every movement or state, whenever it occurs, is the mind, why don’t we see this mind when a person’s body dies?The mind is always present. You just don’t see it.But if the mind is present, why don’t I see it?Do you ever dream?Of course.When you dream, is that you?Yes, it’s me.And is what you’re doing and saying different from you?No, it isn’t.But if it isn’t, then this body is your real body. And this real body is your mind. And this mind, through endless kalpas without beginning, has never varied. It has never lived or died, appeared or disappeared, increased or decreased. It’s not pure or impure, good or evil, past or future. It’s not true or false. It’s not male or female. It doesn’t appear as a monk or a layman, an elder or a novice, a sage or a fool, a buddha or a mortal. It strives for no realization and suffers no karma. It has no strength or form. It’s like space. You can’t possess it. And you can’t lose it. Its movements can’t be blocked by mountains, rivers or rock walls. Its unstoppable powers penetrate the mountain of five skandhas and cross the river of samsara. No karma can restrain this real body. But this mind is subtle and hard to see. It’s not the same as the sensual mind. Everyone wants to see this mind. And those who move their hands and feet by its light are as many as the grains of sand along the Ganges. But ask them. They can’t explain it. They’re like puppets. It’s theirs to use. Why don’t they see it?I feel extremely sad and sorry because Bodhidharma has the wrong kind of people taking the notes of his statements; they are mixing in their own confusions. They are trying hard to make it appear as if what they are saying is said by Bodhidharma. And the people who do not understand existentially what enlightenment is, are bound to fall into their trap. They will not be able to discriminate what belongs to Bodhidharma and what belongs to the people who have taken these notes.Seeing the situation, I am reminded of one instance I have told you about, but it needs to be repeated.Rabindranath Tagore, one of the greatest poets of this country, translated his own book of poems, Gitanjali, into English. Although he was educated in England…he belonged to a very super-rich family of Bengal; his grandfather was given the title of king by the British empire.He had all the best education possible in the world, but still a mother tongue is a mother tongue. He had written all his poems in Bengali, but a few friends suggested that Gitanjali has such a grandeur that if it is translated into English there is every possibility of it getting a Nobel prize. But who should translate it except Rabindranath himself? Who could be a better translator?So he translated it, but he was still hesitant. He asked a great Christian missionary of those days, C.F. Andrews – a great scholar and very influential, a world famous figure – to go through the translations because he could also understand Bengali. He was living in Bengal as a missionary; he was working amongst Bengalis and had learned their language. So he was the right person to go through the translation and to look at the original. He approved the whole book except at four points, just four words scattered through the book. He said, “They are not grammatically correct, and I would suggest different words meaning almost the same, but grammatically correct.”And Rabindranath was convinced that C.F. Andrews was right as far as language was concerned. So he changed those four words and replaced them with the words suggested by C.F. Andrews. In England he had friends among all the English poets, so he went to London where he was a guest of one of the great poets of those days, Yeats. And Yeats called a meeting of only English poets to listen to the recitation of Rabindranath’s Gitanjali. He was convinced that the book was so rare and so unique that it could be proposed for a Nobel prize, but it would be good to have the opinion of many Nobel prize winning poets.So nearabout twenty or twenty-five poets gathered in Yeats’ house to listen to Rabindranath’s recitation. They were all immensely impressed, and unanimously they wanted to make an appeal to the Nobel prize committee that the book should be honored by a Nobel prize. But Yeats himself had a little reservation. He said, “Everything is perfectly right, except for four words.” Rabindranath could not believe it – these were exactly the four words that C.F. Andrews had suggested!Yeats said, “They are perfectly grammatical, but they are not poetic. They look as if somebody else has interfered; they prevent the flow of poetic beauty. Rather than being a help, they are hindrances and I would suggest that you change these words.“Where did you get them? Because I have every certainty in my being that they are not your words. No poet can use those words in the places where they have been used. A linguist, yes; a man who wants to be perfect in grammar and language will use them. But a poet has a certain freedom; he has a poetic license to go a little off the track with grammar because poetry is a higher value than prose. For prose, grammar is okay, but for poetry, grammar can be a disturbance.”Rabindranath could not believe it, but he said, “You are right, these are not my words; these words are from C.F. Andrews. I will tell you the words that I originally used.”And he gave his words and Yeats was immensely happy. He said, “Now everything is okay. Those four rocks are removed from the river-like flow. Your words are not grammatical but they are poetic, and they are coming from your very heart.”Grammar is a game of the mind and poetry is not part of the mind; mind is essentially prose, poetry belongs to the heart.Grammatically wrong, but poetically right, Gitanjali was presented to the Nobel prize committee and was accepted unanimously for the prize.This instance shows that the people who have been writing these sutras of Bodhidharma were good as far as language was concerned, but they were not at all in tune with the experience of enlightenment – not at all. So there are many false statements, very confused statements, along with absolutely right statements from Bodhidharma.So one has to read with a very sharp awareness; otherwise it is very difficult to find where Bodhidharma ends and the disciple comes in, and where the disciple ends and Bodhidharma comes in. It is so mixed, and I feel sad because Bodhidharma deserves better disciples. He is one of the greatest masters the world has known. But perhaps he was so great a master that very few disciples could even reach close to him. And those who reached close to him have not written any notes.Hui Ko, whom he had chosen as his successor, when asked by Bodhidharma, “What is my essential teaching?” simply fell to his feet, tears rolling down from his eyes, not uttering a single word. Bodhidharma helped him to stand up and said, “Although you have not answered, I accept your answer. Although you have not said a single word, your tears are enough to convey the message. You have understood me and I can understand why you are silent. Your silence is saying more than you could have managed by saying anything. You are my very soul; you will represent me when I am gone.”But Hui Ko has not written a single word. So it is a strange fate: those who can understand find it hard to make anything but a confused statement. They would prefer to remain silent rather than commit a mistake. And those who do not understand fear nothing. They don’t know that they are committing mistakes, mistakes of profound meaning and significance.And I will show you that on the surface the notes look perfectly right, but just underneath, in many places they cannot be the statements of Bodhidharma. They cannot be the statements of anyone who has attained to ultimate consciousness, of one who has reached to the destiny of self-realization.The sutras:But suppose I don’t see my nature, can’t I still attain enlightenment by invoking buddhas, reciting sutras, making offerings, observing precepts, practicing devotions, or doing good works?No, you can’t.This no is certainly from Bodhidharma. The statement above is what all the religions are doing in the world. The so-called religious people are doing all these things; they are invoking God, they are invoking buddhas, they are invoking jinnahs, they are invoking prophets, messiahs, saviors. They are reciting sutras, holy Koran, holy Bible, holy Gita, holy Dhammapada. They are making offerings in temples, in mosques, in churches, in synagogues, in gurudwaras. They are observing precepts, fasting, not eating in the night, not drinking in the night. Thousands of different kinds of precepts are being followed by different religions.Just the other day I was looking at the Talmud, the holy scripture of the Jews, and I could not believe…. Many times before I have also opened it and closed it, because just to read one paragraph is enough to see the stupidity. You open anywhere and things are said which seem to have no relevance at all to any spirituality. For example, on the holy day of the sabbath you can go to your farm or your garden or your field, but not to the very end. You can go very close to the end, but not to the very end. And this is part of a holy scripture! And then there are commentaries on it; one rabbi says, “Why is it said?” Then another rabbi says something else. Then another rabbi…. Hundreds of commentaries on such a stupid statement.Or…that you should have one door and only one window and the question is whether the window should be on the right side of the door or on the left side of the door. And there are great rabbis discussing the point that it has to be on the right or it has to be on the left, and they are giving great arguments why. And it has not to be big, it has to be small – how small…?In the name of precepts, disciplines, all kinds of nonsense is being practiced – devotions, or doing good works, opening hospitals, schools, orphanages. Only a man like Bodhidharma can say, “No, you cannot attain to enlightenment or buddhahood by such stupid things.” There is only one way and that is to know your being, that is to know your self-nature.And why not?If you attain anything at all it’s conditional.Now this is very significant and you have to understand it. Anything that is conditional you can lose if the condition is removed. Enlightenment has to be unconditional for the simple reason that it cannot be taken away. Your life is conditional: anybody can murder you, you can commit suicide. But your enlightenment has to be unconditional.You cannot do anything to demolish, to destroy anything that is unconditional. You cannot make any effort to go backwards, because there is no condition, there is no cause; it is free from being destroyed. For example, you are having a bonfire – but it is conditional. If you remove the wood, the fire will be gone. That wood was absolutely necessary for the fire to remain in existence. It was not unconditional, it was an effect of a cause. The cause removed, the effect disappears.That is the difference between the spiritualist and the materialist. The materialist says in philosophical terms that life, consciousness, are all conditional, are all effects. When causes are removed they will disappear. When in death the five elements of which your body is made fall apart, back into their original sources – water into water, earth into earth, air into air, fire into fire, space, sky into sky – then nothing is left. There is no soul that survives; it was only an effect. If causes were present, the effect was present – when causes are removed, the effect disappears. In other words Karl Marx says, “Consciousness is only a by-product; in itself it has no existence.”Bodhidharma is saying:If you attain anything at all, it’s conditional, it’s karmic. It results in retribution. It turns the wheel. And as long as you’re subject to birth and death, you’ll never attain enlightenment.Enlightenment has not to be an effect of some cause, not an effect of some practice, not an effect of some conditions that you have fulfilled. It has not to be an attainment, but only a discovery. It is already there.You are just keeping your eyes closed, so when you open your eyes and you see your buddhahood, you cannot say you have attained it. It was already there before you had even seen it. It is not your ‘attainment’, and the opening of your eyes is not a cause.Whether you open your eyes or not, your buddhahood is intact. Even with closed eyes you are buddhas; with open eyes there will be no change – you will be buddhas. The only change will be in your understanding, not in your quality, not in your being. The only change will be in your understanding: “My God, I have been looking for enlightenment, for buddhahood, for lives altogether, searching and seeking everywhere and doing every kind of good act, observing precepts, making offerings, doing prayers, reciting sutras – and that was all foolish, because while I was reciting sutras I was a buddha. When I was offering flowers to a stone statue I was doing such an idiotic act because I was making a buddha touch the feet of a stone statue. I have always been the buddha; that is my unconditional nature.”That’s why Bodhidharma’s statement is of tremendous significance when he says, “No, you cannot find buddhahood by all these so-called things which religions go on preaching to people.”To attain enlightenment you have to see your nature.And it is just language and the difficulty of language that one has to call it attainment; otherwise what attainment is there? It is really only a discovery. The treasure is there, you simply uncover it.You are not producing it, you are not creating it, it is not something new; it has always and always been there. And whether you discover it or not makes no difference to it. It is unconditionally eternal.Unless you see your nature, all this talk about cause and effect is nonsense.I can say that these harsh words can only come from Bodhidharma, not from any disciple who cannot have that much courage. Only a Bodhidharma can say:Buddhas don’t practice nonsense.It is a lion’s roar. It is a lion’s roar, not an ordinary disciple’s writing.A buddha is free of karma, free of cause and effect. To say he attains anything at all is to slander a buddha.There is no question of attainment, he only discovers. He only opens his eyes and sees himself.What could he possibly attain? Even focusing on a mind, a power, an understanding, or a view is impossible for a buddha. A buddha is not one-sided.Hence, he cannot focus on himself. He is multidimensional, he is universal. Only one-dimensional beings can focus. Your ordinary mind can focus; it can concentrate, but a buddha cannot concentrate. He is as open as the sky, in all directions, in all dimensions.A buddha is not one-sided. The nature of his no-mind… The disciple is writing his mind, but I have to correct him.The nature of his no-mind is basically empty, neither pure nor impure.And you can see why I am correcting it because if it is mind, it cannot be empty. Mind is always full of thoughts; mind is nothing but a container of thoughts. Mind is another name for the thought process. In the day it is thinking, in the night it is dreaming, but it is always filled with something. It is never empty.And mind is always either pure or impure. It depends on what kind of thoughts it has going through it. If you are thinking of murdering someone, or if you are thinking of stealing something, or you are thinking of helping someone…. If you are filled with a compassionate thought, a loving thought or a destructive thought…it will depend what kind of content is in your mind, and mind is never empty. Hence, either it will be pure or impure, or it will be both together. Because your mind is such a mess, impurity and purity, good thoughts and bad thoughts, all are standing there as a crowd. Hence, I want to change the word mind to no-mind. Then only can the statement become meaningful: the nature of his no-mind is basically empty, neither pure nor impure – because the no-mind is beyond duality.Mind can never be beyond duality. It is always thinking for or against, it is always divided and split, it is always schizophrenic; it is never total. A part of it is always hesitating. Whatever you do, a part of you will not be with you; it will go on saying, “Don’t do it, you will repent if you do it.”That is one of the causes why every human being is in misery. Because whatever you do, it doesn’t matter what, the part that has not cooperated is going to take revenge with vengeance. It will say to you, “Listen, now look, I have told you before, don’t do this, but you never listened.” If you had listened to it, then too the situation would not have been different because the other part that was saying, “Do it,” will wait and watch for its opportunity to condemn you saying, “You never listen to me.” You are always in such a catch-22: whether you do this or do that, you are always wrong.Only no-mind can be without any duality, because it is empty. The no-mind is choicelessness. The no-mind is pure awareness. It is just the empty sky.A buddha doesn’t observe precepts.Now this is a great statement. It should be written in gold letters everywhere around the earth for everyone to understand it. A buddha doesn’t observe precepts. He does not follow any discipline. Why? Because he has no need to follow any discipline, any precepts; he has not to follow any morality for the simple fact that he lives in full awareness. Out of his full awareness comes the response – not from any precepts, any scriptures, any moral codes. No, he acts moment to moment out of his pure emptiness.Just looking silently he allows his whole being to respond. He is just like a mirror; he reflects, he does not do anything else. His responses are his reflections.A buddha doesn’t do good or evil. A buddha is not energetic or lazy. A buddha is someone who does nothing, someone who can’t even focus his mind on a buddha.Even if God is standing before him, he cannot concentrate on him. He is just pure emptiness. He does not carry any tensions, because concentration is a tension, focusing is a tension. He is utterly relaxed.Here Bodhidharma comes to his height when he says:A buddha isn’t a buddha.Now this will be very difficult for people to understand – particularly those whose minds are prejudiced by so many religions in the world. A buddha isn’t a buddha. It has to be understood, because it is so significant that if you miss it, you will miss everything.Just take a few instances; perhaps that may help. A child who is just born is utterly innocent. But do you know or do you think he is aware that he is innocent? Can the innocent child know that he is innocent? If he knows that he is innocent, he is no longer innocent. The innocent child is innocent only if he does not know that he is innocent.The buddha is a rebirth, the rebirth of consciousness. He is attaining a second childhood; he is born again. He is absolute consciousness, but he cannot be aware and he cannot say, “I am absolute consciousness.” That statement will make the consciousness impure. His consciousness is just like the innocence of a child. It cannot be self-conscious. It is there and there is no space left for anything else, even for the thought, “I am a buddha.”A buddha isn’t a buddha.Don’t think about buddhas.Because thinking about buddhas is an absurdity. You are a buddha. Why are you wasting your time thinking about buddhas? Why not simply open your eyes and be awake and be a buddha? What are you going to gain by thinking about buddhas?If you don’t see what I am talking about, you’ll never know your own no-mind.People who don’t see their nature and imagine they can practice doing nothing all the time are liars and fools.There is a danger – Bodhidharma is aware of it – that there can be cunning people, liars, fools, deceiving others, deceiving themselves. I have come to know many who, reading or listening to such great statements like Bodhidharma’s, start pretending that for them there is nothing good, nothing bad, that they need not be concerned about discriminating between right and wrong. Because Bodhidharma and people like Bodhidharma declare that you are a buddha, they enjoy the idea without opening their eyes. It is so ego-fulfilling that they don’t open their eyes. They don’t experience their self-nature, but they start declaring that they’re enlightened. Such people do immense harm to themselves and immense harm to others.I have seen so many people who start declaring themselves enlightened and they are not even a little more conscious than you are. So these great statements can be dangerous. They are like great heights of the Himalayan peaks. From these heights, you can fall and you can destroy yourself. These secrets should be understood in a very sincere, honest way; they should not be used to exploit people and to enhance your ego.These people….Fall into endless space. They’re like drunks. They can’t tell good from evil. If you intend to practice doing nothing, you have to see your nature before you can put an end to rational thought. To attain enlightenment without seeing your nature is impossible.So it is up to each individual to continuously remember to remain sincere. Otherwise nobody can prevent you; you can declare you are enlightened but your life will show, your actions will show, your eyes will show, everything around you will show that you are not enlightened. And this is not going to help you in any way; this may even mislead a few people. And if you can get a few people to believe in your enlightenment, which is always possible because the world is so full of idiots that any idiot can find disciples…. And once you have found a few idiots as disciples, then you become absolutely certain that you must be enlightened; otherwise how can so many wise people believe in you?Still others commit all sorts of evil deeds, claiming karma doesn’t exist. They erroneously maintain that since everything is empty, committing evil isn’t wrong. Such persons fall into a hell of endless darkness with no hope of release. Those who are wise hold no such conception.It is a question of great individual responsibility; there is no other responsibility which is greater than this. Remember always – and don’t forget for a single moment – don’t say anything which you are not; otherwise you will be falling into a darkness from which it is very difficult to come out.But if our every movement or state, whenever it occurs, is no-mind, why don’t we see this no-mind when a person’s body dies?The no-mind is always present. You just don’t see it.No-mind is not a thing. It is not a commodity, it is not an object. No-mind is pure space. It is utter emptiness, it is silence. You cannot hear it. Have you ever thought about it, when you say it is absolutely silent? Do you hear silence? All that you hear is no noise. Because you are hearing no noise, you conclude it is silence.Because you don’t experience any worry, any anxiety, any tension, any misery, any suffering, you infer that this is the state of peace and bliss. But these are not things or objects that you can see. Or when a person dies, you cannot see his no-mind leaving the body.Remember again, I am changing the statements – wherever there is mind, I am saying no-mind – because mind can be seen. You see it every day. There is no need to die to see it; even while living you see it. Just close your eyes and you will start seeing it.But if the no-mind is present, why don’t I see it?The disciple is raising questions and trying to find Bodhidharma’s answers. Perhaps he asked these questions…he must have received the answers, but he could not understand those answers. He has interpreted those answers in his own way. Bodhidharma has said: The no-mind is always present. You just don’t see it. You cannot see it because it is pure space, it is not a thing. It is nothing; or better, it is a no-thing. It is not visible. But still the disciple goes on asking the same question in a different form. If the mind – if the no-mind – is present, why don’t I see it?It seems he has not written…he has forgotten, or he has not understood the answer given by Bodhidharma, because the question is there, but the answer is not there. The answer must have been: Because you are it, so you cannot see it.You can see everything in the world except yourself. Obviously I can catch with my hand everything in the world except my hand itself. I can see with my eyes everything in the world except my own eyes.No-mind is my nature.I can feel it, I can live it, I can relish it, I can sing it, I can dance it, but I cannot see it. Because I am it. Something like this must have been the answer but it is not recorded.And Bodhidharma must have tried hard so that the disciple could understand the distinction. He asks him:Do you ever dream?Of course.When you dream, is that you?But still the disciple does not get it. He answers:Yes, it’s me.And this goes against the whole philosophy of Bodhidharma and Gautam Buddha and all those who have ever become awakened. The answer should be, “No, it is not me.” Because how can I be the dreams? The dreams float in front of me. I see them. Because I see them, obviously I am not them. I am the seer and they are the seen. I am the knower and they are the known. They are objects, I am the subject. Hence the right answer should be, not “Yes, it is me,” but “No, it is not me.”And is what you’re doing and saying different from you?Again the same fallacy; the answer given is:No, it isn’t.It is not different from me – any doing or saying…. But it is so simple; particularly for you it must be so simple. Walking, you can see that it is an action of your body, but you are not it. You are not walking; your consciousness inside is exactly where it has always been. Whether you stand still or walk, it is always the same. The real answer will be, “Yes, it is different. It is not me. My action cannot be me, my doing cannot be me. I am always the watcher behind; I am always the witness beyond.”But if it is, then this body is not your real body. That’s my correction. The notes themselves are just the opposite. The notes continue in the same way being wrong. The note is:But if it isn’t, then this body is your real body.If you are not different from your actions, if you are not different from your dreams, then this is your real mind, this is your real body.But this body is not your real body. Soon a day will come when this body will be burning on a funeral pyre. But you will not be burning. Your consciousness will have taken a new form – moved far away.So I will go with my corrections: But if it is, then this body is not your real body.And this real body is your no-mind. And this no-mind, through endless kalpas without beginning, has never varied. It has never lived or died…Just see the confusion. If this body is real, then the later statements cannot be relevant – through endless kalpas – through endless ages.Without beginning, has never varied. It has never lived or died, appeared or disappeared, increased or decreased. It’s not pure or impure, good or evil, past or future. It’s not true or false. It’s not male or female. It doesn’t appear as a monk or a layman, an elder or a novice, a sage or a fool, a buddha or a mortal. It strives for no realization and suffers no karma. It has no strength or form. It’s like space. You can’t possess it.These statements are possible only if my corrections are made; otherwise these statements become absolutely impossible because your body has died many times, has been born many times, will die again, will be born again. This body is not your real body.Your real body is your real being – which has never died, which has never been born, which has always continued eternally through many forms, but it has been the same. There is a statement of Gautam Buddha: “You can taste the ocean from anywhere, from any direction; its taste is always the same.”So whether in this body or in another, your consciousness is the same. And this body is certainly male or female; only your being is not male or female. So unless my corrections are there, all the statements following become absolutely irrelevant and diametrically opposite to the statements that the disciple has written.And you can’t lose it. Its movements can’t be blocked by mountains, rivers or rock walls. Its unstoppable powers penetrate the mountain of five skandhas…These five skandhas are what I have been calling the five elements. Skandha is the Buddhist word for element – the earth, the air, the water, the fire, and the sky. These are the five elements your so-called body is made of. But your real being is beyond all these skandhas.…the mountain of five skandhas and cross the river of samsara.Your consciousness does not consist of these five elements and even if these five elements are mountainous, still they cannot prevent your consciousness from passing beyond to your real home.Even oceans of this samsara, this world, cannot prevent you from reaching to your ultimate home. Because the ultimate home is already inside you, nothing can prevent you from reaching it. You are already there, just you are not aware of it.No karma can restrain this real being, or this real body. But this no-mind is subtle and hard to see. It’s not the same as the sensual mind. Everyone wants to see this no-mind. And those who move their hands and feet by its light are as many as the grains of sand along the Ganges.Although you don’t see it, everybody has it. You live in its light. Your very life belongs to your no-mind.But ask them. They can’t explain it.You live, you know you are alive, but if somebody asks you what life is, or to define what you mean by living, you will be at a loss. It is just as if you taste something delicious; you know the taste, but is there any way to say what it is, how it is? The only way is for the other person to taste it. No explanation can help.You cannot explain what sweetness is to the man who has never tasted sweets. You can bring all your articulateness, but you cannot explain a simple thing, sweetness. The only way is to offer him some sweets. That’s what the masters have been doing all along. Rather than telling you what sweetness is, they offer it to you to taste. They themselves are offering their own being, their own presence for you to taste it.Everybody has a buddha inside but because they are unaware they function like puppets. This buddha inside is theirs to use; why don’t they see it? Why do they go on remaining like puppets? Why don’t they become masters of their own being? And it is not a difficult task, in fact it is not a task at all. It is just a little knack of becoming aware, just shaking yourself and waking up. All the meditations are simply devices to shake you so that the deep spiritual sleep is disturbed. P.D. Ouspensky has offered and dedicated his book, In Search of the Miraculous, to his master, George Gurdjieff, with very beautiful words: “To George Gurdjieff, the disturber of my sleep.” But that is the only function of a master: in some way to disturb you, in some way to shake and wake you up.There is nowhere to go and there is nothing to attain. You are already there where you need to be. Seeking is the only sin. Searching is the only way of going astray.Just remaining within yourself, withdrawing yourself from everything, every energy, every ray of energy, and concentrating it at the very center of your being…Gurdjieff calls it ‘crystallization’. And he was a man very much like Bodhidharma. If anybody can be put in the same category as Bodhidharma, then Gurdjieff is the man. What he calls crystallization of your being is called by Bodhidharma awakening of your being, or buddhahood.Reading through these sutras, I have been thinking to have a look at other ancient sutras, because the same fallacies that I am seeing in these sutras are bound to be there. They are not written by enlightened people. And these confusions, these misstatements, without any intention, are doing immense harm to all those who are following them; they have to be corrected. So my commentaries are more corrections and critiques of all that is confused and wrong. I want to bring out Bodhidharma completely clearly, without any impressions left by these disciples who have written the sutras. It has always happened…the gospels of Jesus were written after three hundred years when Jesus was not there to correct them. And no Christian would like another Jesus to correct them. Otherwise…I am absolutely willing.Gautam Buddha’s sutras were written after his death. And there was so much quarreling amongst the disciples that immediately after his death there were thirty-two schools in conflict with each other. Somebody was saying, “This has been said by him,” or “This has not been said.” Thirty-two interpretations, contradicting each other, and poor Gautam Buddha was no longer alive and certainly he was not saying things which had thirty-two different interpretations. He was not a madman. His meaning was very clear, but that clarity is possible only to those who have gone beyond mind, because mind is confusion, and no-mind is clarity.The silence of no-mind gives you the clarity. You can see immediately what is right and what is wrong; there is no question of any argumentation. Reading these sutras, I have not had to think for a single moment or hesitate for a single moment as to where it is wrong and where it is right. The moment I came to any place which was wrong, it was immediately and absolutely clear to me, without any hesitation.Just because of seeing these sutras, I have been thinking to have a look into all ancient scriptures which are written by unenlightened disciples and to correct them. Because it is time – they have lived for thousands of years without any correction.But people become so obsessed and fanatic that they don’t want any change. For example, my corrections will not be liked by the Buddhists. They will feel very much hurt – every line has to be right – but they don’t see the point that these lines are not written by Bodhidharma; otherwise they would have been all right. They have been written by people who are not enlightened. Hence, it is absolutely certain that there are going to be fallacies, confusions, misstatements, many things missing and perhaps many things added by the disciples, just to make it a complete story, a complete system of philosophy. It is going to be a difficult job. It is going to annoy many more people. I have annoyed so many people that now I don’t care anymore. It does not matter. I have annoyed millions of people, a few millions more – now it does not matter at all.The future generations of the new man will feel grateful that at least there was one man who did not care about the whole world being annoyed with him. He went on discriminating between what is truth and what is not truth.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The buddha said people are deluded. This is why when they act they fall into the river of endless rebirth. And trying to get out, they only sink deeper. And all because they don’t see their nature. If people weren’t deluded, why else would they ask about something right in front of them? Not one of them understands the movement of his own hands and feet. The buddha wasn’t mistaken. Deluded people don’t know who they are. Something so hard to fathom is known by a buddha and no one else. Only the wise know this mind, this mind called dharma-nature, this mind called liberation. Neither life nor death can restrain this mind. Nothing can. It’s also called the unstoppable tathagata, the incomprehensible, the sacred self, the immortal, the great sage. Its names vary but not its essence. Buddhas vary too, but none leaves his own mind.The mind’s capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, smelling odors with your nose, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or mode, it’s all your mind. At every moment, where languages can’t go, that’s your mind.The sutras say, “A tathagata’s forms are endless. And so is his awareness.” The endless variety of forms is due to the mind. Its ability to distinguish things, whatever their movement or mode, is the mind’s awareness. But the mind has no form and its awareness no limit. Hence, it’s said, “A tathagata’s forms are endless. And so is his awareness.”A material body of the four elements is trouble. A material body is subject to birth and death. But the real body exists without existing because a tathagata’s real body never changes. The sutras say, “People should realize that the buddha-nature is something they have always had.” Mahakashyapa only realized his own nature. …The sutras say, “Everything that has form is an illusion.” They also say, “Wherever you are, there’s a buddha.” Your mind is the buddha. Don’t use a buddha to worship a buddha.Even if a buddha or bodhisattva should suddenly appear before you, there’s no need for reverence. This mind of ours is empty and contains no such form. Those who hold onto appearances are devils. They fall from the path. Why worship illusions born of the mind? Those who worship don’t know. And those who know don’t worship. By worshiping you come under the spell of devils. I point this out because I’m afraid you’re unaware of it. The basic nature of a buddha has no such form. Keep this in mind, even if something unusual should appear. Don’t embrace it, and don’t fear it. And don’t doubt that your mind is basically pure. Where could there be room for any such form? Also, at the appearance of spirits, demons, or divine beings, conceive neither respect nor fear. Your mind is basically empty. All appearances are illusions. Don’t hold onto appearances.It is one of the most strange coincidences that Gautam Buddha and Mahavira both revolted against the knowledgeable, the learned, the scholarly, the brahmins, the pundits, for a single reason – that by being knowledgeable, you simply cover up your ignorance. It is not dispelled out of your being.It is just like on a dark night when you don’t have even a lamp in your house. You may have as much information about light as you like, but your information about light is not going to bring light into the house. The house will remain dark. But one thing is possible: your information may create a delusion for you. You may become so engaged in the information about light that you forget about darkness. But darkness is there; whether you forget it or not makes no difference.In fact it is better to know that the darkness is there, and something has to be done to create light, to destroy darkness. Knowing about light is of no help; real light is needed. The strange coincidence is that both Gautam Buddha and Mahavira were surrounded by brahmin scholars. And all that they have said has been compiled by the same people against whom they were speaking their whole lives.Mahavira had eleven intimate disciples – they were all brahmin scholars of great integrity, of great learning, of great knowledge, but their ignorance was just the same as anybody else’s. Ignorance can decorate itself with knowledge, but that only hides it; it does not destroy it. One has to discover one’s own light, one’s own being, one’s own self-nature. The moment one discovers one’s inner being, all darkness starts disappearing, because at the very center of your being is nothing but pure light. But it has to be discovered.The people who are interested in knowledge, or interested in scriptures, or interested in learning from other wise men, are not doing anything to reach to their own light, to the very source of enlightenment.The same happened with Gautam Buddha. His closest disciples were brahmins and hence a great misunderstanding has arisen in their reportings. What they have reported about Gautam Buddha is mixed, polluted, corrupted by their own knowledgeability, by their own learning. Their minds have come in and interfered with the message that was given in silence – a message that was transmitted heart to heart, being to being, but not from mind to mind.The same unfortunate situation has happened with Bodhidharma – even on a far greater scale because Bodhidharma was born in India, but he was teaching in China. The people who surrounded him, who became interested in him, were the people who were interested in knowledge. And certainly he had the golden key that opens all the mysteries of life. His every word comes from an authentic experience. He attracted thousands of monks, but the problem is that those were the people who crammed his words and forgot the phenomenal presence of Bodhidharma. And they have written these sutras. Naturally, there are great mistakes but even though there are many stones, there are a few diamonds, and we can find those diamonds.Even though they were not able to experience in the same way as Bodhidharma, they were certainly impressed by his charismatic being. Just like moths come to the flame of a candle, they came from faraway provinces in China, just to sit at his feet. But it is not enough. It is a good beginning, but it is not the end of the journey. They could not forget their own minds. Even while listening to him, they were still thinking their own thoughts, they were still comparing whether it fits with their ideology or not. They were interpreting, giving new meanings, new colors to his words.And because Bodhidharma has not written anything…. No enlightened being has written anything for the simple reason that the written word is a dead word. A spoken word has the warmth, the splendor, and the presence of the master. The spoken word is a totally different category from the written word. The written word is only a corpse; the spoken word is alive, it is still breathing. It has a heartbeat which the written word cannot have. That’s why no enlightened man around the world, in any age, has ever written anything.So you have to be very aware. I will point out where the minds of the disciples who are collecting these sutras have interfered and destroyed something immensely beautiful. But even though they could not report exactly what Bodhidharma was saying, here and there, perhaps by mistake, they have reported the actual words.Even to find a few actual words spoken by Bodhidharma and give them again a heartbeat, is a great joy. My commentary is not just a commentary; it is giving life, a resurrection, to those beautiful words which have fallen in wrong hands. They have to be relieved and released from this confused, imprisoned corpse-like existence. The sutras:The buddha said people are deluded. This is why when they act they fall into the river of endless rebirth. And trying to get out, they only sink deeper. And all because they don’t see their nature. If people were not deluded, why else would they ask about something right in front of them? Not one of them understands the movement of his own hands and feet. The buddha was not mistaken. Deluded people don’t know who they are.The first thing to be understood is that these are actual words of Bodhidharma with no interference from the people who have been collecting these words.The emphasis in these sutras is that people are deluded. What is their delusion? Their delusion is that they don’t know who they are. Because they don’t know who they are, they create false personalities around themselves – because it is impossible to live knowing that you don’t know who you are; you would certainly go mad.Just think for a moment: if you are aware that you don’t know who you are, it will be such a shock, such a shattering of all your identity. You cannot live without knowing yourself, who you are. And if you cannot know, then you have to create something. It will be a false substitute, but it will take away the maddening situation of not knowing oneself.Ask somebody who he is, and he will say he is a doctor, he is an engineer, he is a professor, he is a Christian, he is a Hindu, he is a Buddhist…. These are false identities. These are creating a false layer around yourself to forget the maddening situation that you don’t know yourself.You are getting identified with a thousand and one things. You are a husband, you are a wife…but these are not your nature. You were not born as a husband, and you were not born as an engineer; and you were not born as a doctor, or a professor. These are created by you and by the society so that you don’t feel continuously in an emptiness, which can be dangerous and can create an insanity in you.And people are not satisfied. They go on making the false layer thicker and thicker. They become members of political parties, they become members of religions, they become members of Rotary clubs, Lions clubs; they go on creating some idea of who they are. This is needed just to keep you in your normal insanity.One has to face oneself in utter nudity, without all these clothes that you have covered over yourself.This is the delusion, that everybody is living a life which is not coming out of his self-nature, which is more like acting than like an authentic living. Just watch yourself, and you will see the great insight in the very significant and meaningful statement, People are deluded. That’s why their actions always go in wrong directions. That’s why they live a life of misery, suffering, agony, anguish.When Bodhidharma says that these people go on falling into darkness, he is saying that they go on becoming more and more deluded. They have to make the layer of their delusion as thick as possible so they can remain unaware of their reality. And out of this false layer, their love becomes false, their friendship becomes false, their whole life becomes just a drama.They are doing everything, but it is not coming from their spontaneity. It is not coming from their individuality. It is not coming from their very being. Hence, they are always wishy-washy, they are always hesitant, they are always asking what is right, and what is wrong; they are always asking questions about everything.The man who knows himself has no questions to ask. The man who knows himself knows exactly what has to be done, and there is no question of choosing. Whatever he does, is right. Out of your self-nature, only right arises. Just as out of a real rosebush, only authentic roses arise. It is a natural phenomenon.I used to live for few months in Raipur and just by my side lived a retired professor of mathematics. I used to see him from my windows. He had a beautiful pot with beautiful flowers, and every day he used to bring water to shower on the pot. The first day there was no problem, but as days passed, I was surprised that those flowers went on being the same. Their petals didn’t fall, they didn’t disappear as is the natural way of life – that the old disappears to give place for the new. Finally I could not resist my temptation. I went close to his window and I was surprised. Those were not real flowers, they were plastic flowers. But to keep the illusion in the neighborhood that they were real, he was watering them. I knocked on the door, and asked the old man, “What are you doing? These flowers don’t need watering.”He said, “I know it also, but the whole neighborhood does not know about it. I have to water them, just to keep up appearances.”Your false personality is just a plastic flower. It cannot give you fulfillment, it cannot give you enlightenment, it cannot give you liberation from misery.It cannot take you from your agony into an ecstatic experience. It cannot take you away from darkness into light, from death into immortality. This is the delusion.Something so hard to fathom is known by a buddha and no one else.Remember, by ‘buddha’ is not meant any personal name. ‘Buddha’ simply means the awakened one. Anyone who becomes awakened, enlightened, is the buddha. You are also the buddha; the only difference is that you are not aware of it. You have never looked inside yourself and found the buddha there. Your very life source is nothing but enlightenment.Bodhidharma is saying: Something so hard to fathom is known by a buddha and no one else. You will know only that you are deluded if you enter yourself and find your authentic individuality. Then there will be a comparison. The man who has never seen real roses may remain with plastic flowers his whole life, believing that these are real roses. To wake him up, you have to bring real roses so that he can compare and he can see the difference. The plastic flowers are dead; they don’t have any fragrance. They have not grown up; they will not die.The real flower is fragile. With the morning it comes into existence, dances in the rain, in the wind, in the sun, and by the evening it is gone. It comes from the unknown and moves back into the unknown. The same is the situation of our human life.We come from the unknown and we go on moving into the unknown. We will come again; we have been here thousands of times, and we will be here thousands of times. Our essential being is immortal but our body, our embodiment, is mortal. Our frame in which we are, our houses, the body, the mind, they are made of material things. They will get tired, they will become old, they will die. But your consciousness, for which Bodhidharma uses the word no-mind – Gautam Buddha has also used the word no-mind – is something beyond body and mind, something beyond everything; that no-mind is eternal. It comes into expression, and goes again into the unknown.This movement from the unknown to the known, and from the known to the unknown, continues for eternity, unless somebody becomes enlightened. Then that is his last life; then this flower will not come back again. This flower that has become aware of himself need not come back to life because life is nothing but a school in which to learn. He has learned the lesson, he is now beyond delusions. He will move from the known for the first time not into the unknown, but into the unknowable.If from the known you move to the unknown, you will be born again. But if you move from the known to the unknowable, to the mystery of existence, you become one with the universe; there is no coming back.Only the wise know this no-mind, this no-mind called dharma-nature, this no-mind called liberation.Here the person who has taken these notes has missed the point. Instead of saying no-mind, he says mind. Mind is not your ultimate reality. He has not understood Bodhidharma and it is a great sin to misrepresent a man of enlightenment because for centuries people will be confused.Neither life nor death can restrain this no-mind. Nothing can. It is also called the unstoppable tathagata, the incomprehensible, the sacred self, the immortal, the great sage.And the person who has taken these notes is not even intelligent enough to see the point that mind cannot be called tathagata. Mind cannot be called the incomprehensible. The mind cannot be called the sacred self, the immortal, the great sage.The mind is very ordinary, mundane. It is useful for day-to-day work; its function is in the outside world. In the inner world it is absolutely useless. Those who want to know their inner being have to go beyond mind. They have to leave the mind behind. That is the whole process of meditation.One word tathagata has to be understood. The translator could not find any word to translate it; perhaps he could not even understand the meaning of the word because in the West and in Western languages, no parallel word exists. Tathagata is specifically a Buddhist term. Gautam Buddha preached the philosophy of tathata and tathata is very close to the word suchness. Whatever happens, Buddha says, such is the nature of things. There is no need to be happy, there is no need to be miserable, there is no need to be affected at all by anything that happens. Birth happens, death happens, but you have to remain in a suchness, remembering that this is how life functions. This is the way of life. You cannot do anything against it.Just as rivers move towards the ocean, that is their suchness. Just as fire is hot, that is its suchness. Suchness is our self-nature.So whatever happens…somebody comes and insults Gautam Buddha, abuses him. He listens silently and when asked by his disciples, when the man went, “Why did you remain silent?” Buddha said, “That was his suchness, that was his way of behaving. It was my suchness to remain silent. I’m not holier than that man, I’m not higher than that man, just our suchness is different, our natures differ.”The word tathata is of great profundity. A man who understands what tathata is becomes undisturbed in every situation; nothing can disturb him, he becomes unperturbable. And tathagata means one who has been living moment-to-moment in tathata. Tathagata is one of the most beautiful words possible in any language: one who lives simply according to his nature without being bothered about other people’s nature.Gautam Buddha used to say, “Once I was passing through a forest, and a branch of a tree fell on me. What do you think? Should I beat that branch of the tree because it hurt me, it wounded me?” The person to whom he was talking said, “There is no question of beating the branch; it had no desire to hurt you, it had no desire to fall on you. It was just a natural accident that you happened to be under the tree when the branch fell.”Buddha said, “If somebody insults me, that is also the same. I simply happened to be there and that man was full of anger. If I had not been there he would have been angry with somebody else. It was his nature; he was following his nature. I followed my nature.”And to be in tune with your nature, you certainly become impenetrable, unperturbable. You become so crystallized in yourself that nothing can disturb you.Its names vary but not its essence. Buddhas vary too, but none leaves his own no-mind.This is a significant statement to be understood. Buddhas vary too… Each awakened person has a uniqueness of his own. This has created great misunderstandings in people, because Christ does not behave like Gautam Buddha, Mahavira does not behave like Gautam Buddha, Krishna does not behave like Gautam Buddha. Even Bodhidharma, a disciple of Gautam Buddha, does not behave like Gautam Buddha. This has created a great confusion in the world. People think these people cannot all be right.Buddhists think only Gautam Buddha is right; Christ cannot be right. The misunderstanding arises because they think every buddha down the ages is going to be the same. In existence, nothing is the same. Every person has his own uniqueness.And when he becomes enlightened, his uniqueness becomes even more unique. He becomes a Himalayan peak, like Gourishankar, standing aloof, alone, reaching to the stars. It is not like any other peak in the Himalayas, or like any other mountain. It is just itself.That’s why I have been speaking on so many awakened people. This has been done for the first time in the whole history of man. Hindus have been speaking on Krishna, on Rama; Buddhists have been speaking on Buddha, on Bodhidharma; Christians have been speaking on Christ, St. Francis, Meister Eckhart. Mohammedans have been speaking about Mohammed; Sufis have been speaking about Jalaluddin Rumi, Sarmad, al-Hillaj Mansoor. But nobody has dared to bring all the enlightened people together.My whole effort has been to make it clear to the world that all enlightened people, howsoever different in their behavior, howsoever different in their philosophies, howsoever different in their actions, howsoever different in their individualities, still have the same taste, still have the same no-mind. Their innermost core is the same. It is the same light.Don’t go according to the shape of the candle. The candle can have any kind of shape, but the flame in every candle – of different shapes, different sizes, different colors – is the same. Those who know the flame don’t bother about the candles and their shapes and their sizes and their colors. What is important is not the candle; what is important is the flame.No-mind is the flame of every awakened being. He functions out of his self-nature, not out of his mind.The no-mind’s capacity is limitless, and its manifestations are inexhaustible. Seeing forms with your eyes, hearing sounds with your ears, tasting flavors with your tongue, every movement or mode, it’s all your no-mind. At every moment, where language can’t go, that’s your no-mind.But the reporter of Bodhidharma’s sayings goes on saying it is your mind. Now it is so stupid, so illogical, so irrational that one can not conceive what kind of disciple this was who could not see a simple contradiction. Language can’t go to the mind…language belongs to the mind, there is no need to go. Language cannot go to the no-mind, to the silence beyond thoughts. Mind is full of thoughts and all thoughts are in the form of language.The sutras say, “A tathagata’s forms are endless. And so is his awareness.”Not understanding that the forms of tathagatas, of the buddhas, of the people, of awakening are endless, religions have been fighting about trivia. For example, Jainas don’t accept Gautam Buddha as enlightened for a simple reason: because they accept Mahavira as enlightened, and Mahavira lived naked. Gautam Buddha did not live naked. Just the clothes…. Because Buddha used clothes, he is not enlightened. Mahavira lived naked; he is enlightened. And the same is the situation with Buddhist scholars. They don’t accept Mahavira as enlightened because he lived naked.Nobody is ready to accept the varieties. They want buddhas to be produced almost like cars on an assembly line. Every car looks the same. In the factories of Ford, every minute one Ford car comes out of the assembly line, and you cannot make any distinction between one Ford and the other. In one hour, sixty Ford cars will come out and they will be all similar.A buddha is not a machine. Machines can be similar. Even people who are not enlightened are not similar. Here, five thousand people are here, and you cannot find two persons similar. Even twins are not exactly similar. Their mother recognizes them and slowly, slowly their friends start recognizing them. Although they look almost the same – but it is almost – there are slight differences even in twins. And these buddhas are not twins. Christ has his own flavor, Mahavira has his beauty, Buddha has his own splendor.I want it to be impressed in you as deeply as possible that all over the world, in different ages, in different races, enlightened people have existed. And it is time that they should be recognized as belonging to the same category, although protecting their uniqueness. They have a certain oneness but that is their innermost core. On the periphery, they are as unique as you can conceive. And it is beautiful. Having all the buddhas like Jesus Christ, everybody carrying his cross on his shoulder, the world would be very poor. Wherever you go, you would meet a Jesus Christ carrying a cross. Or if all the enlightened people lived naked, like Mahavira, that would not be enriching the world.Mahavira alone is perfectly good. He has his uniqueness, his beauty, his grandeur, and he is incomparable. Every enlightened being is incomparable. He is unparalleled by anybody else.This is how things should be. The world should not have only roses, it should have all kinds of flowers, and it should have all kinds of fragrances. Only then existence becomes richer.Its ability to distinguish things, whatever their movement or mode, is the no-mind’s awareness. But the no-mind has no form and its awareness no limit. Hence, it is said, “A tathagata’s forms are endless. And so is his awareness.”A material body of the four elements is trouble. A material body is subject to birth and death. But the real body – the real being – exists without existing, because a tathagata’s real body never changes.Within your so-called body there is an inner being, an inner body, the body of your awareness, the body of your flame of consciousness. That never changes.The sutras say, “People should realize that the buddha-nature is something they have always had.”This is one of the most important emphases of Bodhidharma. That you all have – every human being has – the same space within you, the same no-mind, and the same potential to blossom into a unique flowering. Nobody is poor and nobody is rich as far as the inner being is concerned. You have always had it. Even this very moment you are all buddhas. But you have never looked into yourself, you have never discovered it. Remember buddhahood, enlightenment, awakening, liberation, moksha, nirvana; all these words mean the same thing.When you become enlightened, the first thing is to have a good laugh about yourself. And the second thing is to have a good hot cup of tea. A good laugh, because you have been searching for something which you always had within you. And a cup of tea…you are so tired, ages of search and seeking and finding nothing. And the problem was you could have gone searching for ages and you would not have found, because the searcher is himself your search. What you are trying to find outside in the world, you are not going to find because the searcher himself is the sought.Once you discover yourself, you will be simply amazed – you have always been enlightened, just you were not aware of it. It’s as if you had a diamond, a Kohinoor, in your pocket, and you were begging all your life, not knowing that in your pocket you have the most precious diamond in the world. The day you discover it, you are bound to be surprised that life has played a great joke with you.Mahakashyapa only realized his own nature.You need to be reminded about that story. Bodhidharma is not the founder of Zen. The real founder is Mahakashyapa. But because he never spoke, people have always forgotten him; he has fallen into shadows, but he was a tremendously beautiful man, a man of immense grace. And how he became the founder of Zen is something to be remembered.One day, a poor man in Vaishali – he was a shoemaker – found in his pond, a lotus flower out of season. He was very happy that he could sell it for a good price because it was not the season, and it was a beautiful lotus flower. He took the flower, and as he was going towards the palace he saw the richest man of the city coming towards him in his golden chariot. Seeing the beautiful lotus flower, the super-rich man stopped the chariot and asked Sudas, “How much will you take for your untimely lotus flower?”Poor Sudas could not conceive how much. He said, “Whatever you can give will be enough for me. I am a poor man.” The rich man said, “Perhaps you don’t know but I am going to see Gautam Buddha who is staying outside the city in a mango grove, and I would like this untimely lotus flower to put at his feet. Even he will be surprised with such a gift. I will give you five hundred gold coins.”Sudas could not believe it. He had never dreamt that he would ever have five hundred gold coins. But just then the king’s chariot stopped, and the king said to Sudas, “Whatever that rich man is giving you, I will give you four times more. Don’t sell it, wait.”Sudas could not believe what was happening. Five hundred gold coins, four times. Two thousand gold coins for a single flower. He asked the king, “I don’t understand. What is the reason why you are so interested?”But the rich man was not to be defeated so easily. He was richer than the king; in fact the king owed much money to him. He said, “It is not right of you. You are the king, but right now we are competitors. I will give four times more than what the king is giving.” And this way they went on four times, four times…and Sudas lost track of how much money. The poor man did not know much arithmetic either; it was going beyond his capacity to count. But one thing he suddenly understood. And he stopped both the men and said, “Wait, I am not going to sell it.” They were both shocked and said, “What is the problem? Do you want more?”He said, “I don’t know how much the price has gone to. And I don’t want more. I simply don’t want to sell it for the simple reason that both of you are going to give it to Gautam Buddha. I don’t know anything about him, I have just heard his name. If the man is such that you are fighting to give any amount of money, then I will not miss the chance. I will present the lotus flower to Gautam Buddha. Let him be doubly surprised.” From a poor man, who was being offered uncountable money…. But he refused.Sudas went. The king and the rich man had reached there before and they had already told the story: “We have been shocked by a shoemaker; we have been defeated. He refused to sell it at any price. I was ready to offer him my whole treasury.” And then Sudas, walking, arrived, touched Gautam Buddha’s feet, and offered his flower at his feet.Gautam Buddha said, “Sudas, you should have accepted; they were giving you so much money. I cannot give you anything.” There were tears in the eyes of Sudas, and he said, “If you can just hold my flower in your hand, it is enough. It is far greater than the whole kingdom. It is far greater than the super-rich man’s whole treasury. I am poor, but I am perfectly okay; I earn my livelihood. There is no need for me to be rich. But it will be a historical event remembered for centuries and centuries – as long as man remembers you, Sudas will be remembered and his flower will be remembered. You just take it in your hand.”Buddha took the flower in his hand…and this was the time of the morning when he used to give his morning sermon. Everybody was waiting for him to start but rather than starting the morning sermon, he simply went on looking at the lotus flower. Minutes passed, one hour passed. People started becoming restless, thinking, “What has happened? This flower seems to be something magical that he is simply looking at the flower.”At that moment Mahakashyapa, one of the disciples of Gautam Buddha – who had never spoken, and who had not been mentioned before this or again after this, in any scriptures – laughed. And Gautam Buddha called Mahakashyapa, and gave the flower to him.And he said, “It is not only the flower that I am giving to you, I am transmitting to you my whole light, my whole fragrance, my whole awakening. It is a transmission in silence; this flower is only symbolic.” This is the beginning of Zen.People asked Mahakashyapa, “What happened? Although we were present and we were eyewitnesses, we could not see anything except the flower being given to you. And you touched the feet of Gautam Buddha and went back to your seat again and closed your eyes. What happened?”Mahakashyapa is reported to have said only one thing: “You ask my master. While he is alive, I have no right to answer.” And Gautam Buddha said, “This is a new beginning, of transferring without words my whole experience. One just has to be receptive. And Mahakashyapa, by his laughter, showed his receptivity. You don’t know why he laughed. He laughed because in that moment, he suddenly looked into himself and he found that he is also a buddha. And I offered the flower as a recognition – ‘I accept your awakening.’”This man Mahakashyapa was the founder of Zen – or this situation between Mahakashyapa and Gautam Buddha is the beginning of the river of Zen. But Bodhidharma was such a strong individual that he has almost become the founder, although he came one thousand years later than Mahakashyapa. But he is immensely articulate. He can say things which cannot be said. He can speak the unspeakable. He can find ways and means and devices to bring you back home, to awaken you to your self-nature.Mahakashyapa only realized his own nature. Nothing was given to him; it was only a recognition from the master. The master never gives anything to the disciple except the final recognition. The disciple already has everything. He just has to be tricked in some way to look into himself. All the meditations are simply arbitrary methods to look into yourself. Once you look into yourself the master can give you the recognition.The sutras say, “Everything that has form is an illusion.” They also say, “Wherever you are there is a buddha.”You are there: there may not be anybody else, but wherever you are, there is a buddha, because you are a buddha. Don’t look all around for where the buddha is. Wherever you are, there is a buddha, because you are there.Your no-mind is the buddha. Don’t use a buddha to worship a buddha.Hence, Buddha has not taught worshipping, because it is ugly. All are buddhas – a few are asleep, a few are awake, but that does not make much difference. Those who are asleep will become awake. Those who are awake have been asleep. There is no question of worshipping. There is no prayer as such in Buddha’s teachings.Even if a buddha or a bodhisattva should suddenly appear before you, there is no need for reverence.Bodhidharma is saying something that can be misunderstood. In fact, everything that he is saying can be misunderstood, so you have to be very alert not to misunderstand him. To understand him is very difficult, to misunderstand him is very simple. If you can manage not to misunderstand him, there is a possibility for understanding him.When he says There is no need for reverence, the sentence is clear. But it can be easily misunderstood. He is saying: There is no need for reverence. He is not saying that there is no possibility of a spontaneous reverence. There is no need; it is not a duty. You are not obliged to revere a buddha, but your whole being may feel to, although there is no need. Without any need, you may feel a great reverence, a great gratitude just because the buddha represents your future, reminds you of your self-nature.He is a reminder. He is an arrow pointing towards you. So there is no need for reverence, but there may be a spontaneous feeling for reverence.Even Mahakashyapa touched Gautam Buddha’s feet; there was no need. Even Bodhidharma, every day – although Buddha had died one thousand years before – used to bow down from China, towards the direction of the place where Buddha became enlightened, near Bodhgaya, by the bank of a small river, Niranjana.He used to find on the map, the place where Buddha had become enlightened one thousand years before, and he would touch the earth in China with his head. And he is saying: There is no need for reverence.Certainly there is no need. But there arises a spontaneous reverence, and that is authentic reverence. When you do it as a need, it is false. When you have to do it because it is expected of you, then it is hypocrisy. But when it has been said to you that there is no need and still it arises in you, then it has an authenticity, a sincerity, a love, a gratitude, a truth, a beauty of its own.This no-mind of ours is empty and contains no such form. Those who hold onto appearances, are devils.It has to be said to you that in Buddhism, neither God exists nor devils. God and the devil can exist only together. They are two sides of the same coin. God cannot do without the devil, and the devil cannot do without God; they are partners in the same business – but both are hypothetical. So when Bodhidharma uses the word devil he simply means darkness. It is a personalization of darkness. There is no person as devil; there is no person as God. There is godliness, and there is evil. These are qualities, not persons.Those who hold onto appearances are devils. They are living in darkness, they are living a life of evil.They fall from the path. Why worship illusions born of the mind? Those who worship don’t know.These are very strong and very pregnant statements. Those who worship don’t know. Certainly they are not aware that they are carrying within themselves the buddha himself.And those who know don’t worship.So in the temples, in the synagogues, in the mosques, in the churches, all that worshipping going on is utterly out of ignorance, out of darkness. Those who know don’t worship: They live a life which itself is worship. They don’t go to the church, they don’t go to the temple. They live a life which is twenty-four hours nothing but a worship. They live a life which is nothing but a prayerfulness. They live a life of compassion and love and gratitude. Each of their actions shows their enlightenment.By worshiping you come under the spell of devils. I point this out because I am afraid you are unaware of it. The basic nature of a buddha has no such form. Keep this in mind, even if something unusual should appear. Don’t embrace it, and don’t fear it. And don’t doubt that your no-mind is basically pure. Where could there be room for any such form? Also, at the appearance of spirits, demons, or divine beings, conceive neither respect nor fear.These are only fantasies of your mind; they are only hallucinations. There are people who see Krishna, there are people who see Christ, there are people who see ghosts. There are people, all kinds of people, seeing all kinds of illusions. They are your mind creations. There is no need either for respect or for fear.Your no-mind is basically empty. All appearances are illusion. Don’t hold onto appearances.Remember only one thing: your basic nature is absolute silence, serenity, peace, almost a nothingness, an emptiness. And that is your buddha-nature, that is your nature awakened to its own potential. To be aware of it is the greatest experience of life, because it brings liberation from life, birth, death. It takes you out of the wheel that goes on eternally giving you birth and death, and all the agonies and the sufferings. It takes you out into the world of ecstasy, of eternal blissfulness.These sutras are not just for your entertainment. They are for your enlightenment. And remember the enlightenment is not going to come from outside. It is already there. You just have to wake up. You have been asleep for millions of lives. How many more do you want to sleep? It is time. In fact, you have already overslept. Now be kind to yourself and wake up.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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If you envision a buddha, a dharma or a bodhisattva and conceive respect for them, you relegate yourself to the realm of mortals. If you seek direct understanding, don’t hold onto any appearance whatsoever, and you’ll succeed. I have no other advice. … Don’t cling to appearances, and you’ll be of one mind with the buddha.But why shouldn’t we worship buddhas and bodhisattvas?Devils and demons possess the power of manifestation. They can create the appearance of bodhisattvas in all sorts of guises. But they’re false. None of them are buddhas. The buddha is your own mind. Don’t misdirect your worship.Buddha is Sanskrit for what you call aware, miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching your brows, blinking your eyes, moving your hands and feet, it’s all your miraculously aware nature. And this nature is the mind. And the mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the path. And the path is Zen. But the word zen is one that remains a puzzle. Seeing your nature is Zen.Even if you can explain thousands of sutras and shastras, unless you see your own nature, yours is the teaching of a mortal, not a buddha. The true way is sublime. It can’t be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his own nature finds the way, even if he can’t read a word. … Everything the buddha says is an expression of his mind. But since his body and expressions are basically empty, you can’t find a buddha in words. …The way is basically perfect. It doesn’t require perfecting. The way has no form or sound. It’s subtle and hard to perceive. It’s like when you drink water. You know how hot or cold it is. But you can’t tell others. Of that which only a tathagata knows, men and gods remain unaware. The awareness of mortals falls short. As long as they’re attached to appearances, they’re unaware that their mind is empty. And by mistakenly clinging to the appearance of things, they lose the way.If you know that everything comes from the mind, don’t become attached. Once attached, you’re unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire canon becomes so much prose. Its thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear mind. Understanding comes in mid-sentence. What good are doctrines?The ultimate truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They’re not the way. The way is wordless. Words are illusions. They’re no different from things that appear in your dreams at night, be they palaces or carriages. … Don’t conceive any delight for such things. They’re all cradles of rebirth. Keep this in mind when you approach death. Don’t cling to appearances, and you’ll break through all barriers. A moment’s hesitation and you’ll be under the spell of devils. Your real body is pure and impervious. But because of delusions, you’re unaware of it. And because of this, you suffer karma in vain. Wherever you find delight, you find bondage. But once you awaken to your original body and mind, you’re no longer bound by attachments.The understanding of Bodhidharma and his insight into the secrets of human consciousness is so profound that it certainly can be said it is perfect. Nothing can be added to it and nothing can be edited out of it. He speaks telegraphically, uses only the most essential words.You will see how a man can express something which eludes expression, something which has always been known as inexpressible. But Bodhidharma comes very close to expressing it. If you don’t understand, it is your fault.Otherwise it is very difficult to find a master of the stature of Bodhidharma. In the whole legendary past of masters, Bodhidharma stands very aloof, very alone; his way of life, his way of teaching, everything is his own. Never before was there anybody like Bodhidharma, and there has never been another after him who can be called exactly equal in insight, in understanding, in profundity. And yet he does not use a jargon; he is not a philosopher, not a theologian. He is a very simple man. He uses direct words that go just like arrows into your heart. All that is needed on your part is to keep the doors of your heart open. He will not come uninvited within you, but invited he is sure to reach to your heart. Your receptivity is ultimately going to be the decisive factor.In the sutras this evening, except for a few mistakes by the disciples who have taken the notes, almost everything seems to be authentically Bodhidharma’s.If you envision a buddha, a dharma, or a bodhisattva, and conceive respect for them, you relegate yourself to the realm of mortals.According to Bodhidharma, everybody is essentially a buddha. But if you start imagining buddhas and worshipping them, then you are doing tremendous harm to yourself. It means you have not understood the basic teaching. There is no one to be worshipped, no one to be envisaged, because you are a buddha yourself.It is because of this point that Gautam Buddha denies the existence of one God. His denial is so great that its significance has not been understood. He denies one God, not because he is an atheist; he denies one God because he respects every living being as a god. There are as many gods as there are living beings. A few have attained to the realization of who they are, and most of the people among the living beings are still asleep. They do not know who they are but their ignorance does not change their nature.So the first sutra is: If you envision a buddha…you relegate yourself to the realm of the mortals. You unnecessarily degrade yourself. Every worshiper in every temple, in every synagogue, in every church, is humiliating himself and is humiliating the god within. The god within needs no other god to be worshipped. All that it needs is an awakening, awareness, a consciousness of one’s own being.The moment one becomes conscious of himself, he is no longer a mortal; he becomes an immortal. He has always been an immortal but because of his misunderstanding, he degraded himself into being a mortal, into someone who is going to die. Although the life within you and the consciousness within you is eternal and immortal, still you go on being afraid of death because you see somebody dying every day. And everybody’s death reminds you of your own death.The poet sings, “Never ask for whom the bell tolls, the bell tolls for thee.” In Christian villages, it is an ancient custom that when somebody dies, the church bell starts tolling, informing the whole village, the people who have gone to the farms, or the people who have gone to the orchards, or the people who have gone to their wine presses, to come back; somebody has died.The poet is saying, “Never ask for whom the bell tolls, it always tolls for thee.” He has some truth to convey to you. Every death is symbolic. It shows that you are standing in the same queue and the queue is becoming shorter and shorter. Every day you are coming closer and closer to death. In fact the day you were born was not the day of your birth; it was the day you started dying. And since then you have been dying every day. Every birthday, your death has come one year closer.It is an absolutely certain fact that people die, animals die, trees die, birds die. How can you avoid the fact that you are also going to die – maybe tomorrow, maybe the day after tomorrow? It is only a question of time.But still, those who are aware of their being know that nobody dies. Death is an illusion.You have seen people die; have you ever seen yourself dying? And when you see somebody dying, are you really seeing somebody dying? All that you are seeing, and all that your medical science can see is that the man has stopped breathing, that his pulse has disappeared, that his heart beats no more, and they declare that he is dead.Just a few days ago, a man in the part of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan, for the third time deceived his friends, his colleagues, his family. At the age of one hundred and thirty-five, he died for the third time. People were very suspicious because two times before he had played the trick; he died. Diagnosed by the doctors as dead, certified as dead, he woke up, opened his eyes and started laughing. So when he died this time, people were very cautious. Doctors were very cautious, but there was every certainty of his death; there was no question.They said, “Perhaps before he may have deceived you, but this time he is certainly dead. As far as medical science can know, he fulfills every requirement of a dead man.” And the moment the certificate was signed by three doctors, the man opened his eyes, started laughing and said, “Listen, next time when I am going to die, I am going to really die. I just thought one time more….”That part of Kashmir occupied by Pakistan has the longest living people in India and Pakistan. One hundred and twenty is very ordinary, normal. One hundred and fifty you can find; it is not so normal, but still there are hundreds of people who have passed one hundred and fifty. And there are a few rare cases who have reached one hundred and eighty years of age and they are still young; they are still working in their fields.And this man has been questioned by newspapers, by journalists from all over the world, because he is a rare man; three times certified dead and three times he has defied all medical knowledge, all medical science. And they asked, “What have you been doing? What happens?”He said, “Nothing – because I am not my body. I know it; and I am not my breathing, I know it; and I am not my heart, I know it – I am beyond all these. I simply slip into the beyond. The heart stops, the pulse stops, the breathing stops, and you are all befooled. Then I slip back again into the body, the blood starts running again, the pulse starts working again and the heart starts beating again.”He is a simple man, a farmer. He is not a yogi; he has never practiced anything. But just when he was a very young child, not more than seven or eight years old, he came in contact with a Sufi mystic who told him that death is an illusion. And he was so innocent that he accepted it.The Sufi mystic said to him, “There is a very simple way to slip out of your body. Just watch it from inside; watch the body and suddenly there will come more and more distance between you and your body. Soon the body will be miles away. Watch the mind and the same will happen with the mind.“You simply remain a watcher and you will be able to slip out of the body, out of the mind, out of this whole personality. And it is within your control to come back. Because you have slipped out, you know the way you slipped out. So you know the way to come back in. And the way is that by watching, you slipped out – now stop watching. Become identified with the body. Say, ‘I am the body, I am the mind, I am the breathing, I am the heart beating.’ Immediately the distance will disappear. You will come closer and soon you will slip back into the body.”Identifying yourself with the body, you become the body. Then you are a mortal. Then there is fear of death. Non-identifying with the body, you are just a watcher, you are just a pure consciousness, a no-mind. And there is no death and there is no disease and there is no old age. As far as your witnessing is concerned, it is eternal and it is always fresh and young and the same.The authentic religion does not teach you to worship. The authentic religion teaches you to discover your immortality, to discover the god within you. And that’s what Bodhidharma is saying.If you seek direct understanding, don’t hold onto any appearance whatsoever, and you will succeed. I have no other advice.His advice is very simple, but it never fails. He is advising not to get identified with any appearance: the body is an appearance, the mind is an appearance, the world is an appearance. The only thing that is absolutely real is your consciousness. Everything else goes on changing. That which goes on changing is an appearance – don’t get identified with it. You are the unchanging divine, you are the unchanging godliness. And Bodhidharma says: I have no other advice.Don’t cling to appearances, and you will be of one mind with the buddha.The sutra says: You will be of one mind with the buddha. That is the misunderstanding of the person who has been taking notes of Bodhidharma’s statements. I have to make the correction from “mind” to “no-mind.”As minds, you can never be one with the buddha. Just try to understand, because it is infinitely significant. Here, if you are all minds, then there are as many people as there are minds. But if you all become silent, with no thoughts, then there is only one no-mind – then all the distinctions disappear. Whether you are a man or a woman, a young child or old, educated or uneducated, rich or poor, it does not matter.All distinctions disappear the moment mind is transcended. All distinctions are made by the mind. Beyond the mind is just a silent sky, a pure space. In that pure space with the buddha, you are all one with existence.You are one with the whole.I call this oneness with the whole, the only holiness.The disciple asks Bodhidharma:But why shouldn’t we worship buddhas and bodhisattvas?The disciple seems to be of a very mediocre mind, because Bodhidharma has already answered. And now what he gives as Bodhidharma’s answer, I deny absolutely that it can be the answer of Bodhidharma. It is so stupid that Bodhidharma cannot say it. So first I will read what the disciple writes, then I will tell you what exactly Bodhidharma must have said.Devil and demons possess the power of manifestation. They can create the appearance of bodhisattvas in all sorts of guises. But they’re false. None of them are buddhas. The buddha is your own mind. Don’t misdirect your worship.The disciple is saying that worshipping a buddha is denied because the devils can pretend to be buddhas. If you worship, the appearance will be of the buddha, and in fact there is a devil hiding behind the appearance. This cannot be the answer of Bodhidharma.A man who does not believe in God cannot believe in devils. A man who is capable of denying God is certainly capable of denying all devils. And his only answer could have been the one which he gave in the basic sutra. Without any doubt his answer would have been, “You should not worship any buddhas because you are a buddha. It is simply ridiculous that a buddha worships another buddha.”I am reminded of another Zen master. He must have been a man of some similar qualities to Bodhidharma; he was a disciple in the same lineage. He was staying in a Buddhist temple on a winter night – the priest, knowing that he was a great master had allowed him to stay in the temple. But in the middle of the night the priest woke up. Suddenly there was so much light. He looked inside the temple…because his room was by the side of the temple. The master he had allowed to stay in the temple was enjoying burning a beautiful statue, a wooden statue of Gautam Buddha.The priest was simply mad. He said, “Are you insane or something? You have burnt the statue of Gautam Buddha.” The master took his staff and started searching for something in the ashes of the burned statue. The priest said, “What are you searching for?” He said, “I am looking for the bones.”Even the priest had to laugh, although he was angry and his most beautiful statue had been burned. But he said, “You are really insane. But how can a wooden statue have bones?”The master said, “That’s what I have been showing you; that if there are no bones inside it, it is not the statue of Buddha. It is not Buddha; it is just wood cut into a certain shape. Don’t be deceived by it. The night is long and it is too cold and I am so tired of this long journey. If you can be of some help…you have still got three more statues. One is enough for worshipping, two you can give me. The night is really cold. Moreover I am a living buddha. For a living buddha it is absolutely right to burn a wooden buddha to have a little heat. It is too cold in this temple.”The priest became very afraid that this man seemed to be absolutely dangerous and thought, “If I go to sleep, he is going to burn all my statues.” In the middle of the night he threw the master out of the temple. The master was insisting, “This is not right. Listen, you will repent of it. You are throwing a living buddha into the darkness of the night, into the cold winter night. And you are protecting wooden buddhas. Are you mad or something?”The priest said, “I don’t want to discuss it with you. I know who is mad. You just get out.”In the morning the priest opened the door to see at what had happened to the master. He was sitting by the side of the road. He had picked a few wild flowers and he had put those wildflowers on a milestone. He was worshipping, “Buddham sharanam, gachchhami. Sangham sharanam gachchhami. Dhammam sharanam gachchhami.”The priest could not believe it. “He is really mad. Last night he burned a buddha, so costly” – it was made of sandalwood – “and now that madman is worshipping a milestone as a buddha.” The priest came close to him and said, “What are you doing?”The master said, “My morning prayer.” The priest said, “But you look a strange type. Last night you destroyed my buddha and now you are worshipping a milestone.”He said, “You don’t understand. It is only our visualization. If you visualize that this is a buddha, this is a buddha. You visualized a buddha in the wooden statue – it became a buddha. It is all a mind game. I don’t believe in prayers. It was just for you that I waited and was worshipping the milestone – just to show you that whatever you worship, you are worshipping something wrong, because you are the buddha. The worshiper is the buddha, not the worshipped. Can I come in the temple again tonight?”The priest said, “No, although you appear to be right and perhaps I am wrong, I cannot follow your great understanding – it is dangerous. It will be good if you leave this place and do your act in some other temple. I am a poor priest; you have already destroyed one of my most beautiful buddhas; now I cannot – even though you convinced me – I cannot allow you inside the temple.”The master said, “It is not a question…but I can see that you have understood rightly, and one day you will come searching for me. I can see in your eyes the light of understanding, a ray of understanding. Don’t let me in…but I am already within you.”And after two years the priest had to come to the master to give an apology, and he brought the remaining three statues, saying, “You can burn them whenever you need. I have understood. Since that night, I have not been able for a single moment to forget you – your beauty, your grace, your peace, your silence and your great effort to make me understand that what I had been doing was stupid. And I misbehaved with you; I threw you out in the dark night, on a cold night. Still you waited for me next morning, to give me another opportunity to understand. And I was so foolish that I missed that opportunity too.“But two years are enough. You have been haunting me. Now I have come, knowing perfectly well that the buddha is within; he is not in the statues of the temples, and the statues of the temples and the milestones are not different.”That reminds me: when for the first time in India, the British government created the roads and put the milestones, they painted those milestones red, because red is a very brilliant color and you can see it from far away. Particularly in contrast to the greenery of the fields and the forest, it looks separate. Any other color may get mixed, but red stands absolutely separate.The British engineers who were working on the roads were surprised that the villagers started worshipping them! They thought that these were statues of Hanuman. It was a great problem for the engineers to tell those villagers that they were just milestones. But the villagers insisted, “They may be milestones for you, but for us, it is perfectly good. They look so beautiful, and we are not doing any harm to you. We will just be worshipping them.”I have been reading the history…when the roads were first made in India, the British engineers were shocked. They could not prevent the villagers who had said, “You can think of them as milestones, but what is the harm if we worship them? To us they look just the statues of Hanuman.”Bodhidharma’s answer cannot be what the disciple has noted here. His answer can only be: Remember your own buddhahood, awaken to your own buddhahood, and this awakening will make your no-mind one with the buddha. Don’t misdirect your worship. You have to worship your own innermost consciousness. You are the temple, you are the worshipper, and you are the worshipped.Buddha is Sanskrit for what you call aware, miraculously aware. Responding, perceiving, arching your brows, blinking your eyes, moving your hands and feet, it is all your miraculously aware nature. And this nature is the no-mind. And the no-mind is the buddha. And the buddha is the path. And the path is Zen. But the word zen is one that remains a puzzle. Seeing your nature is Zen.The word zen remains a puzzle because it comes from a Sanskrit root; it comes from the word dhyan. Buddha used the contemporary language of his people – which was a revolutionary step, because Sanskrit has always been the language of the scholars. Buddha brought a revolution by using the people’s language, not the language of the scholars. He used Pali so that every villager could understand. In Pali, dhyan is changed into a little different form; it has become jhan.And when Bodhidharma reached China, he talked about jhan. But in Chinese, it took another change; it became chan. And then from China, it reached Japan; from chan it became zen. Far away it lost the original root. Now in Japanese there is no root for zen; the word is foreign to Japanese. For chan there is no root in Chinese; the word is foreign.That’s why it is a riddle; what is zen? But if you can come back to the root, things become simple; the puzzle disappears. Dhyan means going beyond the mind, going beyond thought process, entering into silence, utter silence where nothing moves, where nothing disturbs, where everything is absent – only a pure emptiness. This space is Zen; this space is meditation. There is no riddle about it.But only in this country can the root of zen be found. Zen was born here in this country; it blossomed in Japan. The flowers came in Japan and they were a riddle, because they could not find where the root is, where the tree is. They could only see the flowers and the fragrance. The roots were far away in this country, and it is such an unfortunate thing that dhyan flowered to its ultimate in Japan, and in India it disappeared almost completely.The Indian embassies have been informed by the Indian government that anybody from any country of the world who wants to come to India to learn meditation, should not be given any tourist visa.The government does not know anything about meditation. Politicians cannot afford to be meditators, because the foundation of meditation is to be non-ambitious, non-desiring, non-achieving. A politician cannot afford to be a meditator. Hence, in Indian universities there is no provision for meditation, which is India’s greatest contribution to the world. And people who want to come to India to learn meditation are prevented by Indian embassies all over the world. They are allowed visas to come if they just want to see the Taj Mahal, temples of Khajuraho, go for honeymoon to Kashmir, or for any absurd reason, but not for meditation.It is one of the unfortunate incidents that has happened in India. India created the greatest meditators in the world, and from India the whole of Asia learned meditation. It still is alive in the monasteries of Japan; but in India there is no support from any source for India’s own greatest contribution to human progress. But the reason is clear: the people who are in power don’t understand even the ABC of being silent. They know only a tense mind, anxieties and worries, ambitions, cunningness, pulling each other’s legs, sabotaging each other’s power. Their whole concern is a tremendous ambition for being in power.Meditation is totally different; not only different, but a diametrically opposite dimension. It is the way of the humble man, it is the way of the simple heart. It is the way of those who want to rejoice in disappearing just like a dewdrop disappears in the ocean.Even if you can explain thousands of sutras and shastras, unless you see your own nature, yours is the teaching of a mortal…You may understand the holy scriptures, you may know the Vedas, you may know the Upanishads, you may know the holy Bible, you may know the holy Koran, or the holy Gita, but if you don’t know yourself, your teaching is just a repetition, a mechanical repetition like a parrot. And perhaps parrots are also more intelligent than your pundits.I have heard about a bishop who had two parrots, and for years he trained them to recite the official Christian prayer. He made small golden beads for the parrots; they were holding the beads and reciting the prayer, and any guest who used to come was simply amazed. Their recitation was so perfect and they looked almost like saints, with their beads in their hands.Finally, because he had been praised so much for what he had done in teaching the parrots, the bishop thought he would purchase one more parrot and train him also. So he bought another parrot and put that new parrot between those two sages, reciting the prayer with their beads. As the bishop went in, one parrot said to the other, “George, now drop the beads. Our prayers have been heard; our beloved has reached us.”It was a female parrot. Even parrots seem to be more intelligent….A man who does not know himself should feel ashamed teaching others just because he knows scriptures. Scholarship has no meaning at all in the authentic world of religion. It is a world of experience, not of explanations. The man who teaches according to the scriptures is:…a mortal, not a buddha. The true way is sublime. It can’t be expressed in language. Of what use are scriptures? But someone who sees his own nature, finds the way, even if he can’t read a word. Everything the buddha says is an expression of his no-mind. But since his body and expressions are basically empty, you can’t find a buddha in words. …The way is basically perfect. It does not require perfecting. The way has no form or sound. It is subtle and hard to perceive. It is like when you drink water. You know how hot or cold it is, but you can’t tell others. Of that which only a tathagata knows, men and gods remain unaware. The awareness of mortals falls short.You have a little awareness – but very little. If your whole being can be taken into account, then nine parts of it are in darkness and in unconsciousness. Only one part out of ten is conscious, just a very superficial layer which can easily be disturbed. Somebody insults you and you forget all about humbleness, you forget all about being nice, you immediately become enraged. Suddenly your barbariousness comes up. Just a little scratch and the animal starts showing its reality from your very being.Your civilization is so superficial. It is just like your clothes; you can drop them any moment. And you all know that there are moments when you drop all your civilization, all your culture, all your religion, all your great qualities that you talk about; within a second, they disappear. Your consciousness is so small.The awareness of mortals falls very short. It cannot reach to the heights of a fully awakened human being. That’s why a buddha is bound to be misunderstood. Whatever he will do is so far away from you – he is almost on a sunlit peak of the Himalayas and you are in the dark valleys. Even if what he says reaches you, it is no longer the same. You hear only resounding valleys. Something of it reaches you and you interpret according to your own mind.One night it happened: Gautam Buddha used to say to his disciples every night, after his discourse, “Now it is time; go and do the last necessary thing. Don’t forget before you go to sleep.” His hint was about the last meditation before you go into sleep. But one night it happened, there was a thief in the congregation and there was a prostitute too. When Buddha said, “Now it time you go and do the last thing before you go to sleep,” the prostitute thought, “My God, he knows that I am here, and that it is time for my profession. I should go, hurry up.”The thief said, “I am hiding in dark corners, because nobody knows…. This man, he may recognize that I am a thief, and he has recognized. He is saying to me, ‘Now go, and do the last thing, before you go to sleep. It is time.’ My God, this man is really strange. I have to run now; it is late and it is time to finish my work; otherwise I won’t have any sleep tonight.”Thousands of the sannyasins went to meditation. The prostitute went to her marketplace. The thief started searching for his work. Buddha said one thing, but there were different interpretations according to everybody’s own mind.As long as they are attached to appearances, they are unaware that their no-mind is empty. And by mistakenly clinging to the appearance of things, they lose the way.If you know that everything comes from no-mind…Everything comes from nothingness, and disappears again into nothingness. And you see it happening every day; from a seed a tree arises. You just cut the seed and see – you will not find any tree, you will not find any branches, you will not find any foliage, you will not find any fragrance, any fruits – nothing, just emptiness.But from a seed, which is nothing but emptiness, a great tree arises with great foliage, with many flowers, with many fruits and with millions of seeds. And from each seed, again millions of seeds. The scientists who study trees, vegetation, say that a single seed can make the whole earth green. It has so much potential, although you cannot see by cutting it – you will not find anything there.Everything comes out of nothingness and goes back into nothingness. Hence there is no need for attachment, because attachment will bring misery. Soon it will be gone. The flower that has blossomed in the morning, by the evening will be gone.Don’t get attached; otherwise in the evening there will be misery. Then there will be tears, then you will miss the flower. Enjoy while it is. But remember, it has come out of nothing, and it will go back to nothing. And the same is true about everything, even about people.You love a man, you love a woman; from where have they come? From very small seeds which cannot even be seen by bare eyes. If they are put in front of you, they will not be bigger than the full stop. And you will not recognize that this is you, or that one day you were like this, that this is your old photograph.One day you will disappear on a funeral pyre – just into nothingness, as smoke. Don’t get attached to anything. This attachment takes you away from your real being; you become focused on the thing to which you are attached. Your awareness gets lost in things, in money, in people, in power. And there are a thousand and one things, the whole thick jungle around you, to be lost in.Remember, non-attachment is the secret of finding yourself, then awareness can turn inwards because you don’t have anything outside to catch hold of. It is free, and in this freedom you can know your self-nature.…don’t become attached. Once attached, you are unaware. But once you see your own nature, the entire canon becomes so much prose.Then all the scriptures are useless. You have seen the holiest of the holy; the very source of the Upanishads, the very source of the Vedas, the very source of all so-called holy scriptures. When you have found the source, who bothers about scriptures? They are so much prose, nothing else.Its thousands of sutras and shastras only amount to a clear no-mind. Understanding comes in mid-sentence.This is such a beautiful statement. Understanding does not come through words, but through gaps – in the moments of silence.Understanding comes in mid-sentence. What good are doctrines?The ultimate truth is beyond words. Doctrines are words. They are not the way. The way is wordless. Words are illusions. They are no different from things that appear in your dreams at night, be they palaces or carriages. Don’t conceive any delight for such things. They are all cradles of rebirth. Keep this in mind when you approach death. Don’t cling to appearances, and you will break through all barriers.This is a great statement to be remembered because everybody is going to pass through the gates of death someday. If you can remember that you are only pure consciousness – not the body, not the mind, not the heart, not your money, not your prestige, not your power, not your house, but just pure consciousness – then you can pass through the barrier of death unscratched. Then death cannot make even a dent in you.Death has power over you only if you are attached.You are not afraid of death. The basic psychology is you are afraid of death because it will take you away from all your attachments. If it were possible that you could take your wife and your children and your house and your money and your power and everything that you think belongs to you, with yourself when you are dying, I don’t think you would be afraid. You would rejoice; a great adventure – going with the whole caravan. But death cuts everything away from you, leaves you utterly naked – only as a consciousness….In the Upanishads there is an ancient story that I have always loved.A great king named Yayati became one hundred years old. Now it was enough; he had lived tremendously. He had enjoyed all that life could make available. He was one of the greatest kings of his time. But the story is beautiful….Death came and said to Yayati, “Get ready. It is time for you, and I have come to take you.” Yayati saw Death, and he was a great warrior and he had won many wars. Yayati started trembling, and said, “But it is too early.” Death said, “Too early! You have been alive for one hundred years. Even your children have become old. Your eldest son is eighty years old. What more do you want?”Yayati had one hundred sons because he had one hundred wives. He asked Death, “Can you do a favor for me? I know you have to take someone. If I can persuade one of my sons, can you leave me for one hundred years more and take one of my sons?” Death said, “That is perfectly okay if somebody else is ready to go. But I don’t think…. If you are not ready, and you are the father and you have lived more and you have enjoyed everything, why should your son be ready?”Yayati called his one hundred sons. The older sons remained silent. There was great silence, nobody was saying anything. Only one, the youngest son who was only sixteen years of age, stood up and he said, “I am ready.” Even Death felt sorry for the boy and said to the young man, “Perhaps you are too innocent. Can’t you see your ninety-nine brothers are absolutely silent? Someone is eighty, someone is seventy-five, someone is seventy-eight, someone is seventy, someone is sixty – they have lived – but they still want to live. And you have not lived at all. Even I feel sad to take you. You think again.”The boy said, “No, just seeing the situation makes me completely certain. Don’t feel sad or sorry; I am going with absolute awareness. I can see that if my father is not satisfied in one hundred years, what is the point of being here? How can I be satisfied? I am seeing my ninety-nine brothers; nobody is satisfied. So why waste time? At least I can do this favor to my father. In his old age, let him enjoy one hundred years more. But I am finished. Seeing the situation that nobody is satisfied, I can understand one thing completely – that even if I live one hundred years, I will not be satisfied either. So it doesn’t matter whether I go today or after ninety years. You just take me.”Death took the boy. And after one hundred years he came back. And Yayati was in the same position. And he said, “These hundred years passed so soon. All my old sons have died, but I have another regiment. I can give you some son. Just have mercy on me.”It went on – the story goes on to say – for one thousand years. Ten times Death came. And nine times he took some son and Yayati lived one hundred years more. The tenth time Yayati said, “Although I am still as unsatisfied as I was when you came for the first time, now – although unwillingly, reluctantly – I will go, because I cannot go on asking for favors. It is too much. And one thing has become certain to me, that if one thousand years cannot help me to be contented, then even ten thousand will not do.”It is the attachment. You can go on living but as the idea of death strikes you, you will start trembling. But if you are not attached to anything, death can come this very moment and you will be in a very welcoming mood. You will be absolutely ready to go. In front of such a man, death is defeated. Death is defeated only by those who are ready to die any moment, without any reluctance. They become the immortals, they become the buddhas.A moment’s hesitation when death comes and you will be under the spell of devils. Your real body, – your real being – is pure and impervious. But because of delusions, you are unaware of it. And because of this, you suffer in vain. Wherever you find delight, you find bondage. But once you awaken to your original being and no-mind, you are no longer bound by attachments.This freedom is the goal of all religious search. Freedom from attachment is freedom from death. Freedom from attachment is freedom from the wheel of birth and death. Freedom from attachment makes you capable of entering into the universal light and becoming one with it. And that is the greatest blessing, the ultimate ecstasy beyond which nothing else exists. You have come home.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Anyone who gives up the transcendent for the mundane, in any of its myriad forms, is a mortal. A buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad. Such is his power, karma can’t hold him. No matter what kind of karma, a buddha transforms it. Heaven and hell are nothing to him. …If you’re not sure, don’t act. Once you act, you wander through birth and death and regret having no refuge. … To understand this mind, you have to act without acting. Only then will you see things from a tathagata’s perspective.But when you first embark on the path, your awareness won’t be focused. You’re likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn’t doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else. …If you see a light brighter than the sun, your remaining attachments will suddenly come to an end, and the nature of reality will be revealed. Such an occurrence serves as the basis for enlightenment. But this is something only you know. You can’t explain it to others. … Or if, while you’re walking, standing, sitting or lying in the stillness and darkness of night, everything appears as though in daylight, don’t be startled. It’s your own mind about to reveal itself. …If you see your nature, you don’t need to read sutras or invoke buddhas. Erudition and knowledge are not only useless, they cloud your awareness. Doctrines are only for pointing to the mind. Once you see your mind, why pay attention to doctrines?To go from mortal to buddha, you have to put an end to karma, nurture your awareness and accept what life brings. …Once mortals see their nature, all attachments end. Awareness isn’t hidden. But you can only find it right now. It’s only now. If you really want to find the way, don’t hold onto anything. Once you put an end to karma and nurture your awareness, any attachments that remain will come to an end. Understanding comes naturally. You don’t have to make any effort. But fanatics don’t understand what the buddha meant. And the harder they try, the farther they get from the sage’s meaning. All day long they invoke buddhas and read sutras. But they remain blind to their own divine nature, and they don’t escape the wheel.A buddha is an idle person. He doesn’t run around after fortune and fame. What good are such things in the end? …Bodhidharma does not divide the world into matter and spirit. He is against all divisions. The universe is one organic whole. But there seem to be divisions…then they must be coming from somewhere else, because the world is undivided. They come from your consciousness. If you are not conscious, you are a mortal; if you are conscious, you are immortal. If you are unconscious, you look at the world as mundane, and that which is beyond the world as sacred. But if you are conscious, aware, enlightened, a buddha, then there is nothing mundane and nothing sacred. Then everything is one. This oneness has to be deeply understood.Divisions come from our consciousness or unconsciousness; it is our perspective. Just like the blind man standing in the sun is still in darkness…it is not that there is darkness outside of him. It is bright light, a beautiful morning, the birds singing praises and welcoming the sun. And the flowers are opening their buds and releasing their fragrance to the wind. It is a tremendous experience. But for the blind man, there are no colors, no flowers, no sun, no light. If his eyes are cured, suddenly he will be amazed that the world of darkness he used to see before is the same as the world of light which he sees now. The division was because of his blindness, not because there is a division in existence itself.On this point Bodhidharma has a tremendous contribution to make. Most of the philosophers of the world and founders of religions have always divided the mundane and the sacred, the material and the spiritual, without knowing that the moment you divide existence as material and spiritual you are also dividing man into body and soul. And a man divided within himself is a house divided which can fall any moment. A man divided within himself is always in a constant fight with himself; his whole energy is wasted in fighting with himself. He cannot use his energy in a beautiful flowering. Springs come and go, but he has no energy to bring flowers. He is exhausted.Perhaps the vested interests of the world have always wanted man to be tired and exhausted. It is supportive to their vested interests, because a man overflowing with energy cannot be prevented from being a rebel.A man who is tired and exhausted cannot be provoked into any rebellion against any injustice, against any exploitation. He has no energy for it. He is living at the minimum, while he could have lived at the maximum. But a basic conspiracy against man has been practiced down the ages: divide. And that is the fundamental principle of all rulers – divide and rule. Religious preachers, priests, have not been anything other than politicians. Their whole desire is also to divide and rule.An undivided individual cannot be enslaved. This division is a kind of castration. Just see the beauty of a bull: you cannot force him to carry your cart, you cannot keep him on the road under your control. He has so much power and so much individuality that he will choose his path, he will go this way and that way. And if he comes across a girlfriend, then your life and your cart are both in danger!But just look at a bullock, carrying your carts, your loads…you have destroyed the beauty, the energy, the individuality, by castrating the bull. It is the same animal, but now without any energy. You have made him impotent, and he was so potent….Strangely enough, the same has been done with man. All the religions and all the politicians of the world have been castrating man; otherwise man would also have the beauty and the grandeur and the splendor of being a bull, not a bullock. A bullock is a tragedy. A bullock is a condemnation of all those who have destroyed his natural beauty, power, potentiality. But to make a slave of a bull, this was a necessary step.Why has man tolerated all kinds of exploitations, humiliations, slavery? For a simple reason: he has no energy. Where has his energy gone? He has been taught and conditioned to fight with himself. The conspiracy is really very clever. By fighting with yourself, you are destroying yourself.Bodhidharma’s singular teaching is to know your self-nature, which is undivided, which is neither separate nor profane, which is neither material nor spiritual – which is transcendent, transcendent to all divisions, all dualities. This transcendental in you is your real being. And it has so much energy, so much overflowing power that it brings all kinds of blessings to you without ever being asked. It brings all kinds of beautiful flowers to blossom within your being without being asked. It is simply natural.Man has been put into an unnatural situation; hence his misery, his suffering, his hell. To be unnatural is to be in hell, and to be in your self-nature is to be in heaven. There is no other hell, there is no other heaven.These sutras are tremendously significant for all those who want to know their self-nature. Because that is the ultimate wisdom, and out of it, all your actions become beautiful, gracious, good – without any effort on your part, just naturally, as naturally as a roseflower grows out of a rosebush. Goodness, beauty, grace, virtue…everything grows naturally, without any effort, without any action on your part, once you know your self-nature.This is the greatest knowing in the whole of existence.Anyone who gives up the transcendent for the mundane, in any of its myriad forms, is a mortal.To give up the transcendent…. Remember the meaning of the transcendent: that which transcends all dualities. Anyone who forgets the language of oneness with existence unnecessarily becomes a mortal. Then there is death – against life. Then there is body – against spirit. Then everything has its polar opposite. Then there is love as a polar opposite to hate. But remember one fundamental thing: the polar opposites are exchangeable. Love can become hate, hate can become love – and you all know it.Friendship can turn into enmity, and enmity can become friendship. You all know – happiness can turn into sadness, and sadness can change into happiness. Although they are polar opposites, they are almost like twins, very close. Just a slight change in circumstances and one disappears…the other was just behind it.So remember the transcendent – existence belongs to the transcendental. Don’t divide it; otherwise you will be continuously tortured by the duality.A buddha is someone who finds freedom in good fortune and bad.It does not matter to a man of awareness whether he is successful or unsuccessful, whether he is well known or absolutely unknown, whether he is somebody powerful or just a nobody, a nonentity. To a man of awareness, all these dualities don’t matter at all, because awareness is the greatest treasure. When you have it, you don’t want anything else. You don’t want to become a president of a country, or a prime minister of a country. Those are for children, retarded people, to play the game.The people who go on running after ambitions are no more intelligent than football players. Their games may have different names, but their reality is the same. And they suffer continuously. Even in their success they suffer, because then they become afraid of whether they are also going to keep this successful position tomorrow. First they were suffering because they were not successful; now they are suffering because people are dragging on their legs, and everybody wants to be in their place.To be on a powerful throne is to be in a most hilarious position. Everybody is pulling you down and you have to remain glued to the throne, whatever happens. Somebody is pulling your hands, somebody is taking your head, somebody is taking your legs away…whatever happens, dead or alive, you are determined to remain on the throne.The life of a successful man is not a life of peace. And if this is the situation of success, you can conceive the situation of failure. If this is the situation of times you call good, you can understand the situation of times which are bad.But for a man of awareness, it is all the same. Success comes and goes, failure comes and goes. You remain untouched and aloof.This aloofness, this untouchedness, is your transcendental self-nature. Nothing makes even a scratch on you.One of the mystics of India, Kabir, sings a song, jyon ki tyon dhar dinhi chadariya. “I have returned to God” or to existence, “the clothing that he had given to me to live in the world – without any change. I have not made it dirty; not even a particle of dust has gathered on it. I have put it back into his hands exactly as fresh as it was when he gave it to me.” This is the experience of an awakened man. He lives in the darkest nights in the same silence, in the same peace, as he lives in the brightest day. He never makes the division. He remains always transcendental, he remains always above any divisions. Divisions are left far behind.Such is his power, actions can’t hold him. No matter what kind of action, a buddha transforms it.This statement has to be taken deep into your heart….You have heard the story in Greek mythology of king Midas, who had been praying his whole life to God: “Just grant me one wish, that whatever I touch must turn into gold.” And it seems God became tired of his continuous nagging…because what are your prayers other than nagging?And a poor God, and so many nagging people, and he has been nagged for millions of years – it is no wonder if he has disappeared or committed suicide or whatever has happened. Nobody can tolerate that much nagging.Finally, God granted him the wish – “Whatever you touch will turn into gold. And now leave me at peace!”But the unconscious man cannot do anything better. Friedrich Nietzsche is right when he says that if all your prayers were fulfilled, you would be in utter hell. Your prayers are coming from your unconsciousness; you don’t know what you are asking for. It is good that God is deaf and no prayer is ever answered; otherwise you would repent…”Why have I prayed…?”And this was the situation with king Midas. He had never thought of all the implications of his whole lifelong prayer. Morning and evening he went on praying only for one thing: “I don’t want anything else. Just a simple thing – whatever I touch should be transformed into gold.”But as the prayer was granted he became aware of its implications. He could not eat because whatever he touched turned into gold. He could not drink because by the time his lips touched the water, it would turn into gold. His wife escaped, his children left him, his friends stopped coming to see him. Even his servants remained alert. All his great courtiers forgot to come to his court. He used to sit alone – hungry, thirsty, but it was now too late. It took his whole life to pray to get the wish. Now to get it canceled would take a whole life again!He started praying but nothing happened. He died from starvation, and he killed a few people by touching them. He certainly made a gold palace by touching his house; all his furniture became gold – but what is the purpose of it? He suffered so badly as perhaps nobody has ever suffered, and he was one of the richest men in the world.You have heard about “green thumbs” – gardeners have them. Great gardeners have them; whatever they touch turns green. King Midas had golden fingers; whatever he touched turned into gold. But he lost his wife, he lost his friends, he lost his courtiers, he lost everything – although he was the most successful and the richest man.A man of awareness, a buddha, also has a transforming power: whatever he touches becomes blissful. Misery comes to him and he finds in it something blissful; sadness comes to him and he finds something immensely beautiful and silent in it. Death comes to him but he finds only immortality in it. Whatever he touches is transformed, because now he has the transcendental perspective. And that is the greatest power in the world – not power over anybody, but simply your intrinsic power.Night becomes as beautiful as day; death becomes as much a celebration as life, because the man of transcendence knows that he is eternal.Lives come and go, deaths come and go. He remains untouched, he remains always beyond.This quality of remaining always beyond is the true enlightenment. Heaven and hell are nothing to him. Hence, once when Bodhidharma was asked, “What do you say about heaven and hell?” he said, “I cannot say anything because it all depends on you.”The man was puzzled: how can heaven and hell depend on a poor man? Bodhidharma said, “There is no hell and there is no heaven. Wherever a man of awareness dwells, there is heaven; and wherever a man of unawareness dwells, there is hell.”You carry your hell in your unconsciousness and you carry your heaven in consciousness. These are not geographical places, these are states of your being. Asleep, you are in hell and suffering from nightmares. Awake, you are in heaven and all suffering has ceased.Heaven and hell are nothing to him.I am reminded of a beautiful incident that happened in the life of Edmund Burke, an English philosopher. He had a great friendship with the archbishop of England – and the archbishop of England is equal to the pope. As far as the church of England is concerned, the archbishop is the representative of Jesus Christ.Edmund Burke and the archbishop were great friends because they had studied together in the university. And the archbishop used to come to listen to Edmund Burke’s lectures, whenever he announced lectures. But Edmund Burke never went to the archbishop’s sermons – not even once. And naturally, the archbishop was waiting: someday….Finally, he himself invited him: “This Sunday you have to come. No excuses.” And he prepared his life’s best sermon. He wanted to impress Edmund Burke…and he constantly looked at him, because he was sitting in the front row. And the archbishop was feeling great fear, because he did not see even a sign on the face of Edmund Burke that he was impressed or moved. Although he was shouting and beating the table and doing every kind of gymnastics that Christian missionaries are trained to do, Edmund Burke remained silent, without saying a word.The sermon finished, and they both left in the same car. Edmund Burke was still silent…the archbishop was thinking perhaps he would say something now. And they came to his house and he was getting out of the car, and the archbishop could not contain his temptation to ask – “You have not said anything about my sermon. Say anything. Even if it was not good, at least say it; otherwise I will continuously think about it, about what your impression was.”Edmund Burke said, “It was neither good nor bad, it was simply stupid. You made such idiotic statements that I would have never thought a man of your intelligence could make.”He said, “What idiotic statements?”Edmund Burke said, “You said that those who believe in Jesus Christ and do good works will go to heaven. And those who don’t believe in Jesus Christ and do evil acts will go to hell. Can’t you see the idiocy in it, the stupidity?”The archbishop said, “I can’t see it yet.”Edmund Burke said, “Then I will show it to you: If a man does not believe in Jesus Christ and does good works, where is he going? And if a man believes in Jesus Christ and does evil acts, where is he going? Are good works and evil acts to be decisive? Then the belief in Jesus Christ is superfluous. Or if the belief in Jesus Christ is the criterion, then the question of good acts or evil acts is irrelevant.”The archbishop had never thought about it. Perhaps no religious person ever thinks about it, that a man can be absolutely religious without believing in any religion, that a man’s life can be absolutely the life of wisdom and goodness without believing in any God, without believing in any prophet, without believing in any savior. And vice versa: A man may believe in God, in Jesus, and still his life will be nothing but the life of an animal.The archbishop said, “The question is very difficult and I have never thought about it. You will have to give me seven days. Next Sunday in my sermon, I will answer it. You will have to come once more, because I would like to make my statement before my whole congregation.”Edmund Burke gave him seven days, and those seven days were of great torture to the archbishop. He worked from this way and that way, but he could not find any solution. Either he has to insist that belief in Jesus Christ is the criterion – then virtue and sin, good and evil don’t matter. Then the whole morality goes down the drain. If he says morality is decisive, then why bother about Jesus Christ? Then Jesus Christ goes down the drain.And he was trying to keep both together. He could not sleep for seven days. The whole night the same question was going round and round in his mind. On the seventh day, he reached the church a little early, because he had not found the answer yet and he thought, “It will be better: I should go before the time people start coming – early, in darkness – to pray to Jesus Christ himself: ‘You show me the way. I cannot find any way out of the puzzle. Whatever I decide seems to be wrong, and I have never been in such anguish. Help me.’”But he was so tired, and he had not slept for seven days, so just putting his head at the feet of Jesus Christ’s statue, he fell asleep and he dreamt a beautiful dream: He was sitting in a train which was going very fast, and he asked, “Where are we going?” The people said, “You don’t know? This train is going to heaven.”He said, “My God, perhaps this is the answer from Jesus Christ – ‘look with your own eyes!’” And the train stopped at the station where, in very faded words, hardly visible, was written heaven and all over, it looked like a desert, a wasteland.He could not think that heaven should be like this. He asked again, but people were getting down. They said, “It is heaven.” He entered the streets…they were so rotten and so dirty. He saw a few saints, so dry and so dead, sitting under their trees, repeating continuously, “Hallelujah, hallelujah.”He asked them, “Is it truly heaven?” And they said, “What do you think we are doing here? We are great saints and with great austerity we have attained heaven.”He said, “A strange heaven…not a single flower.” He asked a saint, “Can I know – is Gautam Buddha in heaven? Is Socrates here? Is Epicurus here?”, because all these people did not believe in God, and obviously there was no question of believing in Jesus Christ; they had been born before Jesus Christ. And the saint said, “Never heard of any such people here.” But they were the people who were absolutely good, the very essence of goodness.He rushed to the station and inquired, “Is there a train going to hell too?” And they said, “It is leaving right now, standing at the platform.” So he went on the train towards hell. And as the train entered the station of hell, he could not believe – this should have been heaven! So green, so many flowers and everybody so radiant, so joyous, so much music…as if it were some celebration day.He inquired, “Is there some celebration going on?” They said, “No, this is our usual everyday life. Celebration is our life.” He said, “Can I ask, is Gautam Buddha here? Is Socrates here? Is Epicurus here?”They said, “They are all here. Just look in the garden by the road – Gautam Buddha is working as a gardener. Since these people came, everything changed. Otherwise, hell used to be just like heaven, but since Gautam Buddha, Socrates, Heraclitus, Epicurus, Mahavira, these godless people came into hell, they transformed the whole situation.“Now, hell is really heaven. The old names remained, but everything has changed and life is just a continuous dance. Everything has become a blissfulness. They have brought poetry and music and art and they have transformed the whole place.”Seeing the situation – it was so shocking – he woke up. People had started coming; Edmund Burke was already sitting in the first row.The archbishop must have been a sincere man at least. He said, “I have not been able to find any answer. I prayed to Jesus – I don’t know whether this dream is given by Jesus or I have dreamt it myself, but this is the only answer I can give to you.”He simply told his dream, and he said, “Please forgive me for making a stupid statement. I want to correct it: Wherever people are who are authentically good, there is heaven. And wherever people are who are basically evil, there is hell. These are psychological, spiritual spaces.”A buddha transforms everything.If you’re not sure, don’t act.Bodhidharma is saying in other words, act only out of totality. And this kind of act is possible only if your whole being is totally conscious and your action comes from your whole being, not from a small part of your being – then it cannot be total and cannot be sure. Act totally and act intensely, and act absolutely in consciousness and in spontaneity. Then whatever you do is good.If you act in uncertainty – with a divided mind, with “either/or,” with just a small portion of your mind as conscious and the major part as unconscious – whatever you do it is wrong. It may appear good, but appearances cannot deceive.For example, you may donate to a poor man, but you are not sure…. To any observer it is a good act; you have helped the poor man. But to a man of the perceptivity of a Bodhidharma or a Gautam Buddha, you have acted out of uncertainty; hence you have not really been compassionate towards his poverty. You are simply bragging about your compassionateness, about your kindness. You are simply fulfilling your ego. Nobody will see it, everybody will see that you are serving the poor. But you can see that you are serving only your own egoistic idea of yourself that you are a great public servant. The whole beautiful act has gone poisonous.Once you act…out of uncertainty……you wander through birth and death and regret having no refuge. To understand this no-mind, you have to act without acting.This will look a little illogical, but the philosophy based on meditation takes it as the most logical thing: acting without acting. This is one of the fundamentals of Bodhidharma to be understood. What I call a spontaneous act is the same – that way it does not create in your mind a conflict; what I call a total act is the same.Whenever you act spontaneously, you are not acting. The action is coming out of your life source on its own accord; it is acting without action. When you decide to act, when you bring your mind in, when you bring your past experiences in, the action is your action. You have decided to do it. But when you allow existence to respond and your mind is no longer interfering, you are in a state of no-mind. In utter silence, you allow your self-nature to do whatever is spontaneous; you act without acting.It is almost like a mirror. When you come before a mirror, do you think the mirror thinks, “Should I reflect this fellow or not?” Do you think the mirror thinks, “This guy looks like a Mafia guy with sunglasses – should I reflect him or not?” Somebody is beautiful, somebody is ugly – to the mirror it does not matter; it is not a question of deciding. The mirror simply reflects them as his self-nature – the nature of the mirror is to reflect. There is no question of any decision or any judgment. Seeing a beautiful woman, it does not appreciate her, or seeing a man who looks like a camel, it does not hesitate even for a single moment whether to reflect this fellow or not.There is a beautiful story about one of the very great mystics, Ashtavakra. The word Ashtavakra means that he was the ugliest man you can conceive of. On eight points in his body, he was just like a camel; nothing was as it should be. Everything was wrong. His eyes – one would be looking to the left and one would be looking to the right. His legs – one would be going this way, one would be going that way….he was a very strange fellow. How he managed is difficult to conceive.There was a great spiritual discussion going on in the court of the king, Janak, and all great scholars of the country had gathered there. Ashtavakra’s father had also gone – he was a well-known, learned scholar and there was every chance that he might win. And there was a great prize for the winner. But it was getting late and Ashtavakra’s mother told him, “You should go and tell your father that it is so late, and the food is getting cold. He can come and take his food, and then he can go back. That discussion is going to continue for days – so many scholars…it is not going to be finished in one day.”So Ashtavakra went into the court of the king, and every single scholar started laughing. They had never seen such an ugly man – everything was wrong. Ashtavakra looked at everybody and said to the king, “I thought that you had gathered the wise people of the land. But these people seem to be shoemakers, because they can’t see my being. They can only see my skin, my bones. Are these people shoemakers or butchers? Certainly they are not enlightened; otherwise they would not have laughed. Their laughter is a judgment; they are humiliating me because of this wrong body. But whether the body is wrong or right does not matter; what matters is my consciousness.”King Janak was so much impressed that he dissolved the council of those learned people, and he said, “Now I don’t need you. The man I wanted to listen to has come. I wanted a man who knows the ways of awareness, consciousness, of the innermost being. And he is right – you are only learned, but you are not enlightened.”An enlightened man has no judgment. He acts without thinking about it. He acts out of no-mind. Hence his action has a beauty and grace and a truth and a goodness and a divineness in it.You have to act without acting. Only then will you see things from a tathagata’s perspective.Unless you come to awareness, spontaneity, total action, action without acting, you cannot know the perspective of an enlightened man, his vision towards things and life.I have explained to you that a tathagata is a man who accepts everything as it is, in its suchness. He has no condemnation for anything and he has no appreciation for anything. The camel is perfect as he is, in his suchness, and the lion is perfect as he is, in his suchness. They are simply manifesting their own nature.A tathagata’s perspective means accepting everybody as he is, without any condemnation, without any judgment, respecting everybody as he is, in his suchness. A tathagata never interferes in anybody’s life, he never trespasses on your territorial imperative. This is his nonviolence, this is his love, this is his compassion.But to understand his perspective, you will have to come a little closer to his being. You will have to learn acting without acting, acting without your mind interfering in it, acting with totality. And that is possible only when your whole being is full of light, when you are enlightened, when all darkness has been dispelled from you.Bodhidharma now gives you a few hints. He has given you the goal, tathagata – now he gives a few hints for the beginners on the path:But when you first embark on the path, your awareness won’t be focused. It will be wavering. You’re likely to see all sorts of strange, dreamlike scenes. But you shouldn’t doubt that all such scenes come from your own mind and nowhere else.So don’t become attached to any dreamlike scene, howsoever sweet. Gautam Buddha is reported to have said, “If you meet me on the path, immediately kill me.” He is talking about your meditation. If in your meditation you see Gautam Buddha, your mind will try every possible way to convince you that you have arrived – even Gautam Buddha has appeared in your consciousness, now what more do you want? Stop worshipping Gautam Buddha!And so many so-called saints of the world have only stopped in such dreamlike phenomena. There are Christian saints who have seen Christ and have thought they have arrived, and the Christ is nothing but a projection of their own mind. No Hindu ever sees Christ; the Hindu sees Krishna, the Hindu sees Rama. No Christian ever sees Krishna or Buddha.These are our conditionings. The mind is carrying the conditioning of Christ or Krishna or Buddha and when you become a little silent, the conditioning comes in front of you. And it is so alive that there is every possibility that you may get deluded. Hence, Bodhidharma is making you aware that anything that happens on the path in your meditation is just a projection of your mind and nothing else. Remove it; whether it is Buddha or Christ or Krishna does not matter. You have to go far; you have to go to a point where nothing appears, where all projections of the mind are left behind. Then you have reached to the transcendental. Then you have reached to your self-nature.But before your self-nature is revealed, one experience Bodhidharma suggests you remember:If you see a light brighter than the sun, your remaining attachments will suddenly come to an end, and the nature of reality will be revealed. Such an occurrence serves as the basis for enlightenment.It is not enlightenment, but it serves as a basis. If you see a light brighter than the sun… because mind cannot project it. Mind can project only that which it knows. The mind can project the sun, but the mind cannot project a brighter sun which it has never known. If you see a light brighter than the sun…. Kabir says that in his meditation, it was as if one thousand suns had suddenly risen all around him. The light was so blinding that even to keep looking at it was scary. This is not enlightenment, but this is the beginning of two things: the end of all your attachments – as if they are burned by this light – and the creation of a basis for enlightenment.But this is something only you know. You can’t explain it to others.And in fact you should not talk about it to others because they will simply laugh. They may make it ridiculous. They cannot accept that you are ready for enlightenment – particularly you, whom they know perfectly well – and they have always thought themselves higher than you, holier than you. You must be cheating; you are trying to deceive but nobody is going to be deceived by you.It is better not to talk about it, because by talking about it, they can destroy it by their comments, by their criticism, by their ridicule. They can destroy the very basis for enlightenment. It is better to keep it deep in your heart as a secret. It is so valuable that you should not bring it out before others.Or if, while you’re walking, standing, sitting or lying in the stillness and darkness of night, everything appears as though in daylight, don’t be startled. It’s your own no-mind about to reveal itself.To different people enlightenment comes from different doors. It depends on your uniqueness, your individuality. To some it may start with the happening of a brighter sun, or a thousand suns. To somebody else it may start…you are lying in your bed in the night, in darkness, and suddenly you start seeing things as if it is full daylight. Don’t be startled, don’t be afraid: it is a good sign. It will create the basis for your enlightenment and it will destroy all your attachments.If you see your nature, you don’t need to read sutras or invoke buddhas. Erudition and knowledge are not only useless, they cloud your awareness.They are not only useless, they are also harmful, immensely harmful.Doctrines are only for pointing to the no-mind. Once you see your no-mind, why pay attention to doctrines?There have been many instances of great masters who, when they became enlightened, the first thing they did was to burn their scriptures – their work was finished. Their whole work was somehow to indicate to you your self, your self-nature. And once you have seen your self-nature, all those doctrines are just rubbish.To go from mortal to buddha… to go from death to deathlessness, to go from divisions to transcendence, you have to put an end to all your actions. You have to learn the actionless action.Nurture your awareness and accept what life brings.These are points to be remembered by everyone who is walking on the path: Nurture your awareness…. How does one nurture one’s awareness? Don’t miss any opportunity to be aware: walking, walk with awareness…. I can move my hand either without awareness or with awareness – move your hand with full awareness, and it will bring a great grace to your hand, and a great peace and silence will be felt inside.Eating, eat with awareness. Most of the time people are simply swallowing unconsciously; that’s why they eat too much, because their taste is not satisfied. If they were eating with awareness, then they would not just be swallowing, they would be chewing.The scientists say that unless you chew every bite forty-eight times, you are loading your digestive system unnecessarily. And your life span depends on your digestive system: if it remains young and alive, you can remain longer in the body. But if you are simply swallowing, you don’t know…your digestive system doesn’t have teeth, it cannot chew. The chewing has to be done by you in the mouth; beyond the mouth there is no question of chewing. And the unchewed food is a load, is a burden; it hurts your digestive system, it hurts your intestines. It creates all kinds of troubles in your stomach.Just try one day, to count forty-eight times – and you will remain aware because you have to count. You cannot go on thinking of other things. You have to be focused on your chewing and counting: one, two, three, four, up to forty-eight, and only then are you allowed to swallow.Nurturing awareness means making everything an opportunity to be aware. So more and more awareness in twenty-four hours…taking a shower, don’t just take it unconsciously, mechanically. Because you always take it, you know – you just stand under the shower and you go on thinking of a thousand and one things. Under the shower the only thing is to be aware of the coolness that is coming to you, the freshness that is coming to you. Be fully aware of it.Nurturing your consciousness means a twenty-four hour, day and night program. It is not tiring; on the contrary, it is very refreshing, rejuvenating.And the second thing: and accept what life brings. That is tathata – whatever life brings. Accept it with thankfulness and gratitude, because there was no necessity for life to bring that thing to you.A cool breeze comes – do you think you have earned it? Do you think you deserve it? Do you think existence owes it to you? A beautiful cloud passes, a beautiful sunset and all the colors on the horizon, a rainbow with all the seven colors…accept everything that life brings to you with gratitude, with joy, with thankfulness. This will slowly, slowly, create in you a deep acceptance of everything. And in that deep acceptance is hidden the transcendence.Once mortals see their nature, all attachments end. Awareness isn’t hidden. But you can only find it right now. It’s only now.This statement has to be understood. The insistence on now is to prevent you from postponing. People, thousands of people have told me during these three decades that I have been working with them, “I will start meditating.” Will start? If you have understood the meaning of meditation, then now is the moment, not postponement.Postponement simply means you have not understood. Meditation is not yet on the top of your laundry list, it is somewhere at the bottom. First you will earn money, then you have to marry off your daughter, then your son is going to medical college, then you have to build a house, and so on and so forth – the laundry list is infinite. And at the bottom of it – if, God willing you are still alive…most probably you will not be, because the list is too long and your life is too short – you won’t have time left to meditate. Death will come before meditation comes.Hence the emphasis on now – because at least one thing is certain: death has not come, not yet. This is the moment you are certain you are alive. But who knows about the next moment? So don’t postpone it even for a single moment. If you want to become an enlightened being, then now is the moment, then here is the place.If you really want to find the way, don’t hold onto anything.No prejudices – if you really want to find the way, don’t make demands. Don’t say that the way has to fulfill these certain demands. You don’t know the way. Go with humbleness, not with a demanding ego; otherwise, you will never find the way. Your prejudiced mind will never allow you to go beyond it. And the way goes beyond the mind. Don’t hold onto anything.Once you put an end to……all your actions – actions which are decided by your mind and are not spontaneous……and nurture your awareness, any attachments that remain will come to an end……by their simply being understood as meaningless.As your awareness grows, your attachments decrease. A full awareness means no attachments. That does not mean that you can’t have friends; that does not mean that you have to renounce the world. That simply means that you don’t get glued with people – that is an ugly state. You enjoy, you share, but you never depend on anybody or on anything; you never become a slave.Dropping attachments is really dropping all slavery and dependence on things and people. It brings to you a great freedom – the only authentic freedom. Political freedoms don’t mean much, economic freedoms don’t mean much. The only real freedom is spiritual freedom and that comes through dropping all your attachments and creating a great pillar of fire, of awareness.Understanding comes naturally. You don’t have to make any effort. But fanatics don’t understand what the buddha meant. And the harder they try, the farther they get from the sage’s meaning. All day long they invoke buddhas and read sutras. But they remain blind to their own divine nature, and they don’t escape the wheel.A buddha is an idle person, because he does not do anything on his own part. He is an idle person not because he is lazy, he is an idle person because he is spontaneous. Whenever a situation arises that needs a response, he waits for his consciousness, his self-nature to respond naturally without any effort. He is a man of effortless effort, actionless action. He has simply allowed the existence to function through him. He is no more. He is just a hollow bamboo.A singer can make a flute out of him and can sing songs. The only function of the flute is not to hinder the song. A buddha is just a hollow bamboo; the song comes from existence itself.A buddha is an idle person. He doesn’t run around after fortune and fame. What good are such things in the end?They simply destroy your life. They destroy all the opportunities to know yourself. They destroy all the opportunities to make your life a great blessing, a great benediction.These simple sutras of Bodhidharma can bring you the greatest ecstasy that existence is keeping ready for you. It is just that you are not ready. Get ready and claim your inheritance.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Among Shakyamuni’s ten greatest disciples, Ananda was foremost in learning. But he didn’t know the buddha. All he did was study and memorize. Arhats don’t know the buddha. All they know are so many practices for realization, and they become trapped by cause and effect. Such is a mortal’s karma: no escape from birth and death. By doing the opposite of what he intended, such people blaspheme the buddha. Killing them would not be wrong. The sutras say, “Since icchantikas are incapable of belief, killing them would be blameless, while people who believe reach the state of buddhahood.” …People who see that their minds are the buddha don’t need to shave their heads. Laymen are buddhas too. Unless they see their nature, people who shave their heads are simply fanatics.But since married laymen don’t give up sex, how can they become buddhas?I only talk about seeing your nature. I don’t talk about sex simply because you don’t see your nature. Once you see your nature, sex is basically immaterial. It ends along with your delight in it. Even if some habits remain, they can’t harm you. Because your nature is essentially pure. Despite dwelling in a material body of five aggregates, your nature is basically pure. It can’t be corrupted. …Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything. You’ll possess spiritual powers that can’t be obstructed. And you’ll be at peace wherever you are. If you doubt this, you’ll never see through anything. You’re better off doing nothing. Once you act, you can’t avoid the cycle of birth and death. But once you see your nature, you’re a buddha, even if you work as a butcher.But butchers create karma by slaughtering animals. How can they be buddhas?I only talk about seeing your nature. I don’t talk about creating karma. Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us. …In India, the twenty-seven patriarchs only transmitted the imprint of the mind. And the only reason I’ve come to China is to transmit the instantaneous teaching of the Mahayana: this mind is the buddha. I don’t talk about precepts, devotions or ascetic practices. …Language and behavior, perception and conception are all functions of the moving mind. All motion is the mind’s motion. … The mind neither moves nor functions. Because the essence of its functions is emptiness. And emptiness is essentially motionless.Hence, the sutras tell us to move without moving, to travel without traveling, to see without seeing, to laugh without laughing, to hear without hearing, to know without knowing, to be happy without being happy, to walk without walking, to stand without standing. And the sutras say, “Go beyond language. Go beyond thought.” … I could go on, but this brief sermon will have to do.Bodhidharma’s teachings in these sutras are profoundly interesting and of great importance for all pilgrims of truth. But there are a few false statements. And for the first time, perhaps these false statements are not due to the misunderstanding of the disciples; these false statements have been made by Bodhidharma himself.Hence, before I go into the sutras, I would like to make clear a few things.First, the teachings of Gautam Buddha have created two kinds of seekers: one is called arhata and the other is called bodhisattva.The arhata is someone who makes every effort to become enlightened and once he is enlightened he completely forgets about those who are still groping in the dark. He has no concern with others. It is enough for him to become enlightened. In fact, according to the arhatas, even the great idea of compassion is nothing but again another kind of attachment – and it has some significance to be understood.Compassion is also a relationship; howsoever beautiful and great, it is also a concern with others. It is also a desire. Although it is a good desire it makes no difference. According to the arhatas, desire is a bondage whether it is good or bad. The chains can be made of gold or of steel, it doesn’t matter; chains are chains. Compassion is a golden chain.The arhata insists that nobody can help anybody else at all. The very idea of helping others is based on wrong foundations. You can help only yourself.It may occur to the ordinary mind that the arhata is very selfish. But if you look without any prejudice, perhaps he also has something immensely important to declare to the world: Even helping the other is an interference in his life, in his lifestyle, in his destiny, in his future. Hence, arhatas don’t believe in any compassion. Compassion to them is another beautiful desire to keep you tethered to the world of attachments. It is another name – beautiful, but still just a name for a desiring mind.Why should you be interested that somebody else becomes enlightened? It is none of your business. Everybody has absolute freedom to be himself. The arhata insists on individuality and its absolute freedom. Even for the sake of good, nobody can be allowed to interfere in anybody else’s life.Hence the moment he becomes enlightened, the arhata does not accept disciples, he never preaches, he never helps in any way. He simply lives in his ecstasy. If somebody on his own can drink out of his well he will not prevent him, but he will not send an invitation to you. If you come to him on your own accord and sit by his side and drink his presence, and get on the path, that is your business. If you go astray, he will not stop you.In a certain way this is the greatest respect ever paid to individual freedom – to the very logical extreme. Even if you are falling into deep darkness, the arhata will silently wait. If his presence can help, it is okay, but he is not going to move his hands to help you, to give you a hand, to pull you out of a ditch. You are free to fall in a ditch and if you can fall in a ditch, you are absolutely capable of getting out of it. The very idea of compassion is foreign to the philosophy of the arhatas.Gautam Buddha accepted that there are a few people who will become arhatas. And their path will be called hinayana, “the small vehicle,” the small boat in which only one person can go to the other shore. He does not bother to create a big ship and collect a crowd in a Noah’s Ark and take them to the further shore. He simply goes himself in his small boat, which cannot even contain two. He is born alone in the world, he has lived and died millions of times alone in the world; alone he is going to the universal source.Buddha accepts and respects the way of the arhata – but he also knows there are people who have immense compassion and when they become enlightened, their first longing is to share their joy, to share their truth. Compassion is their way. They also have some profound truth.These people are called bodhisattvas. They provoke and invite others to the same experience. And they wait on this shore as long as possible to help all seekers who are ready to move on the path, and who just need a guide; they need a helping hand. The bodhisattva can postpone his going to the further shore out of compassion for blind people groping in darkness.Buddha had such a comprehensive and vast perception that he accepted both – that this is simply the nature of a few people to be arhatas, and it is also simply the nature of a few other people to be bodhisattvas.And this is the standpoint of Gautam Buddha, that such is the case, nothing can be done about it – an arhata will be an arhata and a bodhisattva will be a bodhisattva. Their natures have different destinies, although they reach to the same goal finally. But after reaching the goal there is a parting of the ways.The arhatas don’t stay on this shore even for a single moment. They are tired, they have been long enough in this wheel of samsara, moving through birth and death millions of times. It has already been too much. They are bored and they don’t want to stay even a single minute more. Their boat has arrived, and immediately they start moving towards the further shore. This is their suchness.And there are bodhisattvas who can tell the boatman, “Wait, there is no hurry. I have lingered on this shore long enough – in misery, in suffering, in anguish, in agony. Now all that has disappeared. I am in absolute bliss, silence and peace, and I don’t see that there is anything more on the other shore. So as long as I can manage, I will be here to help people.”Gautam Buddha is certainly one of those people who can see the truth even in contradictions. He accepts both without making anybody feel lower or higher. But bodhisattvas call their path – against the path of the arhatas – Mahayana, “the great vehicle,” the great ship. The other is just a small boat. Poor fellows, they simply go alone. And there has been a continuous conflict for twenty-five centuries after Gautam Buddha, between these two different approaches.Bodhidharma belongs to the bodhisattvas. Hence, he is making many statements against arhatas which are not true.I don’t belong either to arhatas or to bodhisattvas. I don’t belong to Gautam Buddha’s path at all. I have my own vision, my own perceptivity. Hence I have no obligation to agree with Bodhidharma on every point – and particularly on this point; even Gautam Buddha would not have agreed with him. He follows a particular party line.Secondly, he was an outrageous person, very ferocious. If you have seen his picture…you can use it for making your children afraid. But that is not his true picture; he was a prince, the son of a great South Indian king, Suha Verma – it was a great empire of the Pallavas. He must have been a beautiful man. But those pictures don’t represent his actual photographs. They depict his strange personality, his outrageousness.So a few things he can say which you need not agree with. I will make it clear where he is saying wrong things just because he belongs to Mahayana, a particular party, a particular ideology. I have immense respect for both arhatas and bodhisattvas, the same way as Gautam Buddha had.The first sutra:Among Shakyamuni’s ten greatest disciples…Shakyamuni is one of the names of Gautam Buddha, because he belongs to the clan of the Shakyas; his empire was an ancient empire belonging to the clan of the Shakyas. It was a warrior race, dwelling just on the boundary line of Nepal and India. Because of the Shakya clan, he is called Shakyamuni. Muni means one who has attained to ultimate silence.Among Shakyamuni’s ten greatest disciples, Ananda was foremost in learning.Now, Ananda is a special case, and something has to be understood about him. Ananda was a cousin-brother to Gautam Buddha, and a few years elder to him. And it is part of the Eastern culture that the elder brother is almost like a father, even though he may be an elder cousin-brother.When Ananda came to Gautam Buddha to be initiated as a disciple, he said, “Listen, Siddhartha” – Siddhartha was Gautam Buddha’s name given by his parents. He did not address him as Gautam Buddha, he addressed him, “Listen, Siddhartha” – he was just his younger brother. “I am going to be initiated by you into sannyas, on the path. Once I am your disciple I will no longer be your elder brother. Once I am your disciple, you will be in a position to order me and I will have to obey. Right now I am in a position to order you and you will have to obey. Before the situation changes, I want a few conditions to be remembered.”Gautam Buddha said, “What are the conditions?”Ananda said, “They are not very great, but to me they mean much. One, promise me while I am still your elder brother that after I become your disciple, you will not tell me to go away from you to preach the message to the masses. No, I am going to be with you day and night, your whole life. I want to take care of your body, your comfort, your health. You cannot prevent me. This promise you have to give right now, before I am no longer in a position to say anything.”Buddha said, “Granted.”Because as a younger brother, there is no other way in the East. You have to accept, respectfully, those who are elder.Ananda said, “And the second condition is that I can ask any question – relevant, irrelevant, meaningful, meaningless – and you cannot say, ‘Wait, someday you will understand.’ You will have to answer me immediately; you cannot try to postpone. You cannot find excuses… ‘Tomorrow I will see.’ Whenever I ask the question, immediately you have to give me the answer.”Gautam Buddha said, “Granted.”And Ananda said, “Third, if I bring someone to meet you – even in the middle of the night when you are asleep – you cannot say no. You will have to meet the person, whoever he is.”Gautam Buddha laughed and said, “Granted.”But Ananda said, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “That is not part of the conditions. Now you get initiated, and then you can ask the question why I have laughed. Whenever you ask the question, I will answer it – but the three conditions are complete.”Ananda became a disciple and lived with Gautam Buddha for forty-two years continuously, day in, day out. Springs came and went, seasons changed, year by year; he was just like a shadow to Gautam Buddha.But many people came after Ananda and became disciples and became enlightened – and Ananda remained without enlightenment. After twenty years he asked Gautam Buddha, “What is happening? People who have come after me have become enlightened…and I have been so close to you. Nobody has heard you more than I have heard you, nobody has the intimacy that I have with you. Why am I not becoming enlightened?”Gautam Buddha said, “Now you can understand why I laughed – remember? Twenty years before when you asked, before initiation, for three conditions, I laughed. This was the reason: because your conditions would be a barrier. You cannot forget that you are my elder brother. Even though you have become a disciple, deep down you know that you are my elder brother. That is your subtlest ego – although you have been with me more than anybody else, and you have heard me better than anybody else. You have become so knowledgeable, so learned, you have memorized every sermon that I have given. You have an immense memory but you don’t have any experience of your own. You can repeat mechanically everything that I have said in twenty years. But your subtle ego, that you are my elder brother and you have a special privilege of three conditions, is functioning as a barrier. You will not become enlightened until I die.”And actually, that’s how it happened. After forty-two years’ initiation, Gautam Buddha died. And amongst ten thousand disciples, Ananda was the first who burst into tears when Buddha said, “Now I want to say good-bye to you all. My body is old and tired, and whatever I wanted to say, I have said. I want now to go into ultimate rest.”Ananda was sitting on his right side and he burst out like a small child, although he was older than Gautam Buddha. And Gautam Buddha said, “Why, Ananda, are you crying and weeping? I am not dying ignorant, I am dying absolutely fulfilled, enlightened – and not an ordinary enlightenment, an enlightenment which has never been excelled before. And I am also dying immensely fulfilled because never before have so many disciples of a single master become enlightened. I am going into ultimate rest, because there is no death for me.”Ananda said, “I am not weeping for you. You misunderstood me. I am weeping for myself – that for forty-two years I have been following you like a shadow, day in, day out, and I have not become enlightened yet. I am still as unconscious as ever. What will happen to me when you are gone? And I don’t think that in ages to come I will ever meet anyone of your caliber, nor will I have such an opportunity to be so intimate and so close. You are leaving me in a darkness that seems to have no dawn.”Gautam Buddha laughed again, and even with tears in his eyes, Ananda could not resist asking him, “Why are you laughing? You laugh at strange moments.”Gautam Buddha said, “Within twenty-four hours you will know. Because once I am dead, within twenty-four hours you will become enlightened. Once I am dead, you are no more my elder brother. Once I am dead, your subtle ego will also disappear; it cannot disappear while I am alive.”And actually it happened in the same way: within twenty-four hours, Ananda became enlightened. He did not leave the place, he did not eat or drink or go to sleep. He remained sitting there with his eyes closed, under those two saal trees where Gautam Buddha had lain down and entered into eternal sleep.Ananda remained in the same place with closed eyes, with an absolute determination that he would open his eyes only if his eyes of the inner opened. If he becomes enlightened, only then will he see the outside world again with his eyes. Otherwise, he will remain within himself.First he wants to see his own self-nature; then only will he move his eyes or move his body from this place. Otherwise he will die here. With such determination, with such absolute commitment…. The night that had been seen by him as without a dawn, ended quickly, within twenty-four hours. He was enlightened. But he remained an arhata. That was his uniqueness, to be an arhata.The condemnation by Bodhidharma of Ananda on one point is right, on another point is wrong. He says:Ananda was foremost in learning, but he did not know the buddha.That’s true.All he did was study and memorize.That’s true.Arhats don’t know the buddha.That’s wrong. Arhatas become themselves buddhas; there is no question of their not knowing the buddha. Yes, as a scholar, as a great learned man, as a man immensely studious and a man of tremendous memory, he has not known what the nature of enlightenment is, what is buddhahood. But it is not because of his being an arhata. The moment he became enlightened, then he became an arhata. The arhatahood or bodhisattvahood comes after enlightenment, not before.Only when you become enlightened do you realize what is your nature. Is there any desire for compassion, or no desire for any compassion? Are you ready to leave this shore immediately, or are you going to stay here to help a few people to become enlightened?I know this statement that – arhats don’t know the buddha – is not the fault of the person who has taken the notes. It is Bodhidharma’s statement, because he is a bodhisattva and the conflict between bodhisattvas and arhatas is twenty-five centuries old. They go on condemning each other. They simply cannot understand a person who becomes enlightened and has no compassion.The bodhisattva cannot understand that enlightenment is possible without compassion and the arhata cannot understand that a man of enlightenment still has a desire to help; he has not yet become desireless. He still wants to interfere into other people’s lifestyle. If they don’t want to awaken, who are you to awaken them? Then just move silently so that their sleep is not broken…to the arhata that is real compassion. You don’t want to interfere in anybody’s life; everybody has to live his own life according to his own light, according to his own individuality. And whenever his time comes to become enlightened, he will become enlightened. You cannot force anybody to become enlightened. It is not something that somebody can be persuaded, or somebody can be seduced into.Neither the arhata can understand the bodhisattva, nor the bodhisattva can understand the arhata. They are such diametrically opposite poles. That’s why I say this mistake is not of the note-taker, this mistake comes from Bodhidharma himself; he is not an arhata.Now, Buddhist countries are divided into sections. For example, Japan belongs to Mahayana, the land of the bodhisattvas, and Sri Lanka belongs to Hinayana, the land of the arhatas. In Sri Lanka there is no respect for Zen at all. If you talk about Bodhidharma in Sri Lanka, they will simply laugh at you – “That man was mad!” And if you talk about arhatas like Ananda in Japan, they will simply say, “That man was utterly selfish; his whole life he was so blindly selfish that he was putting conditions on Gautam Buddha and when he became enlightened, then he simply disappeared, went to the further shore, into eternity – without bothering for a single moment that there are people who need a few guidelines, a few hints, who are borderline cases, just a little push and they will take the quantum leap.”But if Bodhidharma had not been prejudiced, if he had also been capable to understand the position of the totally opposite standpoint, he would have said, “Pundits, learned people, scholars don’t know the buddha.” And then it would have been perfectly right. To use the word arhata is simply not only wrong, but shows a very fanatic attitude: “Only I am right and everybody else is wrong.” I would like to exchange the word arhatas for pundits, scholars, learned people – just to help Bodhidharma come to his senses.Pundits don’t know the buddha.All they know are so many practices for realization, and they become trapped by cause and effect. Such is a mortal’s karma: no escape from birth and death. By doing the opposite of what he intended, such people blaspheme the buddha.This statement can be true about the pundits, but this statement is absolutely wrong about arhatas. And this shows his fanatic attitude when he says:Killing them would not be wrong.I cannot agree with him. He is saying, Killing the arhatas would not be wrong. And according to Gautam Buddha even killing an ant is wrong and the arhata is at least something better than an ant.But this is his fanatic attitude – and it is because of this fanatic, outrageous attitude that his picture has been depicted so ferociously. It is certain he would not have bothered: if there was any need to kill an arhata he would have killed. He was a man of his word; what he says he means. You cannot try to say that it is only symbolic. Bodhidharma does not speak in symbols, he says exactly what he means:Killing them would not be wrong. The sutras say, “Since icchantikas are incapable of belief, killing them would be blameless, while people who believe reach the state of buddhahood.”Now, something else has to be understood – this word, icchantikas. It means people who are one-dimensional, who know only one aspect of truth.And opposite to icchantikas are people like Mahavira and the Jaina tirthankaras; they are called anicchantikas, people who look from every aspect of the truth. Mahavira was so deeply rooted in the attitude of being multidimensional that he was the first man in the whole history of mankind to bring in the theory of relativity.It took twenty-five centuries for the West.Only Albert Einstein, through a very different path as a scientist, brought the same message, the same philosophy of the theory of relativity. Mahavira says that whatever you say is only relative. He was so much in his theory of relativity that he never made a single statement about anything – because any single statement will only show one aspect. What about other aspects?He found that every truth has seven aspects. So you ask him one question and he will answer with seven answers, and those seven answers will be contradicting each other. You will come back from meeting Mahavira more confused than you have ever been – and he was the most clear person who has ever walked on the earth. But his approach was multidimensional.For example, if you ask Mahavira, “What do you think about God?” In the first place, he never started his statements without the word perhaps. Every statement begins with “perhaps,” because to be certain is to be a fanatic. “Perhaps” keeps you open: the other can also be right, the opposite can also be right. “Perhaps” does not close the door, it keeps you alert and aware about other possibilities.You ask about God: the Christians are icchantikas; they will say, “Yes, there is one God and only one God.” You ask the Mohammedans, they say there is only one God. These are icchantikas. They believe in a way which can only be called one-dimensional. They don’t look at other possibilities – they are afraid to look at other possibilities. That’s why they have one God and one prophet – not even two prophets for the Mohammedans, because there is danger: if you take two prophets, they may contradict each other, they may say something, they may not agree with each other. There will be trouble.It is better to remain with one prophet, one God, one holy scripture. These are people who are afraid of a multidimensional reality.Against these are people like Mahavira who go to the other extreme: they will not say anything in an absolute way, they will always state everything relatively. You ask about God and Mahavira has seven statements and you cannot figure out whether God is, or not.Of those seven statements, the first statement is:“Perhaps God is – but perhaps. I cannot be absolute; neither can you be absolute. There is a possibility.” A relative statement – “Perhaps there is a God.” This is his first statement.His second statement: “Perhaps there is no God, because who knows? – there is every possibility that the atheist may be right. Nobody has ever seen him. So all that we can say is, perhaps there is no God.”But after hearing these two statements – “Perhaps there is God, perhaps there is no God…” one is bound to ask, then what am I going to believe? Hence comes his third statement: “Perhaps both are true.” But naturally, you are going to ask, “How can both be true?”Then comes his fourth statement: “Perhaps both are not true.” And this way he goes on – seven statements – and you will be so confused…”Perhaps it was not right to ask the question! I was better off before.” It is because of this multidimensional, relative approach that Mahavira could not get many followers. There can be very few crazy people who don’t care what it means, who simply fall in love with the personality of Mahavira. He is a beautiful man of immense presence and grandeur – so a few crazy people can fall in love with him. They don’t care what he says. They only care what he is: “Don’t be bothered with what he says; just look at his beauty, his light – his eyes with such grandeur and depth, and his whole life such a song, such an ecstasy. Don’t bother with what he says; it is none of our business. The man is right. His statements may be right, may not be right. He himself says ‘perhaps.’”But Bodhidharma’s statements that: Since icchantikas are incapable of belief, killing them would be blameless, while people who believe reach the state of buddhahood. I cannot support this statement.Icchantikas, the people who believe in absoluteness of truth have a right to exist and live according to their light – just as people who believe in a relative perception of truth have the right to live, and to live according to their own vision. Everybody has the right to live according to his own experience and find his way. Nobody has the right to kill anybody.But Bodhidharma is in a way very sincere. He is simply saying what he sincerely feels. His sincerity cannot be doubted – his statement can be denied, but his intention cannot be denied. Christians have been killing Mohammedans, Jews; Mohammedans have been killing Hindus; Hindus have been killing Buddhists. Although nobody says “Go and kill those who don’t believe in your philosophy,” that’s what has been happening all over the world. At least Bodhidharma is sincere. He has never killed anybody but he is saying his attitude in clear-cut terms, that his understanding is so valuable to him, so true, that even if a person who does not follow his understanding has to be killed, it is blameless. Although he has never killed anyone…he has a ferocious way of speaking, way of living, but he has a very soft heart.But religions have been doing the act without saying it. No religion in the world can be said to have behaved lovingly, respectfully, towards others. Every religion thinks they are the only right people; they have the monopoly on truth and everybody else is wrong.My own approach is that everybody has the right to be right or to be wrong. And if somebody decides to be wrong, still he has to be given every respect and every love. It is his decision, and if he wants to live his decision, it is nobody’s business to interfere in his life and in his philosophy.People who see that their no-minds are the buddha don’t need to shave their heads.There I can agree with Bodhidharma totally. If you see your nature, then there is no need to do any stupid thing: shaving your head or being naked or standing on your head or doing all kinds of contortions of your body which are good in a circus but not in the search of truth, in the search of your own nature, in the search of God.Laymen are buddhas too.There I can agree with Bodhidharma with absoluteness. It is not only for the monks to find the truth. Even a layman – if he finds a little time to be silent and to be meditative and discovers his self nature in his own home, in the marketplace, he will become the buddha. There is no problem that he has to be in a monastery, or that he has to renounce the world. This is my emphasis too, that nobody needs to renounce the world.The world is not the problem, the problem is your unawareness. Renounce your unawareness, don’t be bothered with the world. What can the world do to you? You can live in a palace, the palace cannot prevent your enlightenment. You can live in absolute poverty, poverty cannot help your enlightenment. In poverty or in richness, in a poor man’s hut or in a palace, the basic thing is your meditativeness, your awareness. Wherever it happens, you will become enlightened. You don’t have to renounce anything.It is absolutely true:Laymen are buddhas too. Unless they see their nature, people who shave their heads are simply fanatics.It is something to be understood that Bodhidharma is himself making statements which are statements of a fanatic – but it is always easy to see a small straw in somebody else’s eye, and it is very difficult to see even a camel in your own eye. People never think about their own statements, about their own behavior, about their own life. They are always looking at others – they are very artful, articulate in finding what is wrong with somebody else – and they may be carrying thousands of wrongs themselves and they remain completely unaware. But this is human nature, this is human frailty.The disciple asks Bodhidharma:But since married laymen don’t give up sex, how can they become buddhas?And here I can support Bodhidharma with my total being. What he says is of tremendous importance, because he was saying it fourteen hundred years ago. Sigmund Freud was not born yet; Alfred Adler was still far away in the future; Havelock Ellis or Carl Gustav Jung or Assagioli or Masters and Johnson – people who have been working deeply in the study of man’s sexuality had not come into existence yet. But what Bodhidharma says is so luminous, so grand and so great that even this simple statement could have made him a pioneer.He says:I only talk about seeing your nature. I don’t talk about sex simply because you don’t see your nature. Once you see your nature, sex is basically immaterial.This is great insight, and from a man who was considered to be one of the greatest saints of Buddhism. The moment you become enlightened, sex is immaterial. It is just the same stuff dreams are made of; it will disappear on its own accord. You don’t have to repress it, you don’t have to go against it.It ends along with your delight in it.As you become more and more mature in your meditation, sex becomes less and less interesting. The day you become fully attuned with existence, sex disappears just like a dewdrop in the early morning sun.And unless sex disappears on its own accord, it is very dangerous to drop it, to force it, because then you will create all kinds of perversions. And all the religions of the world have created perverted human beings: homosexuality, lesbianism, sodomy…and people go on inventing strange, perverted expressions for their sexual energy because their religion condemns sex.Sex is something natural, biological. Unless you transcend your biology, unless you transcend your body, unless you become attuned with something beyond mind, sex is going to remain there in some form or other. And if it is going to remain there, it is better that it remains natural, biological, because perverted sex is getting into a worse condition. Natural sex can be sublimated, perverted sex becomes more difficult to transform.I have never heard of any homosexual ever becoming enlightened, I have never heard of any impotent man becoming enlightened. This cannot be just coincidental. In fact, the impotent man should become enlightened sooner than anybody else, because he is a born celibate! All other celibates are just lousy celibates, leaking from here, leaking from there – the impotent person is absolutely certain to be celibate. But the impotent person has never become enlightened.In fact, it is the sexual energy itself that transforms into your enlightenment. Because the impotent man has no sexual energy, he is in the worst condition; he cannot go higher, he does not have the energy to fly like an eagle across the sun. He cannot become a Gautam Buddha or a Bodhidharma.Bodhidharma is saying that sex is immaterial; what is important is to know your self-nature, to know your being. And then everything that is needed will happen on its own accord.Even if some habits remain, they can’t harm you.This is a very significant statement from a man of enlightenment. Even if some habits remain, they can’t harm you.For example, if you go on smoking…I don’t see that an enlightened man can in any way be disturbed by smoking. Enlightenment that gets disturbed by smoking or drinking tea or coffee will not be of much value. Your small habits – playing cards…I don’t see that there is any possibility it can harm your enlightenment.Bodhidharma here is immensely compassionate and understanding:Because your nature is essentially pure.What you do does not make any difference. Once you know your essential pure nature then everything is allowed to you. Then you are capable to decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong. Because of this there have been such problems, so many difficulties in understanding each other. Small differences of habit have become such great barriers to understanding.Mohammed used to eat in the night. In fact, Mohammedans fast in the day and eat in the night. On their religious days, the whole day they will fast from sunrise to sunset and in the night they will have a good feast. Now, Jainas cannot understand that at all. In the day you can eat, but in the night? And that too, on a religious day?When Jainas fast they don’t eat for days, and even water they drink only during the daytime, not in the night. Naturally, they think that Mohammedans are doing something wrong. But they don’t know the situation in which Mohammed lived, in which Mohammedanism was born. It is a desert religion, where the day is so hot that it is easier to fast during the day. It is easier to feast during the night when things become cooler and when the sky becomes full of stars and the desert becomes a beautiful, silent place. In the day, it is just burning hot.Ramakrishna continued to eat fish. Now, Jainas cannot accept Ramakrishna as enlightened. Can an enlightened man eat fish? But if you understand Bodhidharma’s statement, you can forgive Ramakrishna…just an old habit, just living in Bengal where rice and fish are the only food. From his very childhood he has been eating rice and fish, and everybody else is eating it too. Even when he became enlightened, the old habit continued. It becomes immaterial.In this whole world, situations are different, climates are different. There are cold climates where alcohol may be an essential need. For example, in Russia it may be impossible even for the enlightened person not to drink vodka. It is so cold, it is freezing even your very blood – a little warmth is needed.A truly religious man is very understanding – understanding of different people, of different conditions, different geographical situations, different climates, different ages, different patterns, different habits. And small things cannot disturb a great experience like enlightenment.Despite dwelling in an immaterial body of five aggregates, your nature is basically pure. It can’t be corrupted.Nothing can corrupt your consciousness. It is intrinsically incorruptible.Once you stop clinging and let things be, you’ll be free, even of birth and death. You’ll transform everything. You’ll possess spiritual powers that can’t be obstructed. And you’ll be at peace wherever you are. If you doubt this, you’ll never see through anything. You’re better off doing nothing. Once you act, you can’t avoid the cycle of birth and death. But once you see your nature, you’re a buddha, even if you work as a butcher.In fact, it has happened: In Japan a butcher became enlightened. He was the butcher of the emperor, and when he became enlightened, even the emperor came to pay his respects. The emperor could not believe, because he had seen the butcher cutting animals just behind his palace…and he asked him, “What about my kitchen? You have become enlightened, obviously you are not going to do your old profession.”The master laughed. He said, “No, I will continue. Now I can butcher animals with more compassion, with more love, with more grace. And anyway they will be butchered by somebody else, who will not be so compassionate as I can be, who will not be so graceful with them as I can be. When they are going to be butchered, what difference does it make?“And as far as my enlightenment is concerned, it remains uncorrupted in any and every situation. My inner sky cannot be clouded again. I have come to a point from where one cannot fall back. So don’t be worried; I will be coming back tomorrow, to my profession.” And he remained alive for almost twenty years after his enlightenment. In the morning he would do his profession of killing animals and in the evening he would teach the disciples about enlightenment. And not only did he become enlightened, a few of his disciples also became enlightened.Bodhidharma is right: if you understand that you are a buddha, if you see your nature, then even if you work as a butcher it is immaterial.The disciple asked:But butchers create karma by slaughtering animals. How can they be buddhas?I only talk about seeing your nature. I don’t talk about creating karma. Regardless of what we do, our karma has no hold on us.Once you know yourself, nothing has any hold on you. Your freedom is absolutely incorruptible. You cannot do anything that can go against your freedom.In India, the twenty-seven patriarchs only transmitted the imprint of the no-mind. And the only reason I have come to China is to transmit the instantaneous teaching of the Mahayana: this no-mind is the buddha. I don’t talk about precepts, devotions or ascetic practices.Language and behavior, perception and conception are all functions of the moving mind. All motion is the mind’s motion.The no-mind neither moves nor functions. Because the essence of its function is emptiness, and emptiness is essentially motionless.Hence, the sutras tell us to move without moving, to travel without traveling, to see without seeing, to laugh without laughing, to hear without hearing, to know without knowing, to be happy without being happy, to walk without walking, to stand without standing. And the sutras say, “Go beyond language. Go beyond thought.” I could go on, but this brief sermon will have to do.This statement seems to be difficult – walk without walking, hear without hearing, speak without speaking – but it is not difficult at all, just a little understanding…. If you are speaking spontaneously – unprepared, not knowing what word is going to be uttered by you – you are speaking without speaking. Spontaneous action is without any activity on your part. You are simply allowing existence to sing its own song.For example, right now I am speaking without speaking. I am simply allowing my whole being to respond to Bodhidharma’s sutras, without knowing at all what is going to be my next word. Just as you hear it, I also hear it. Just as you are sitting there, I am also sitting there. This chair is empty. There is a way of speaking when you prepare, when you speak not with your moment-to-moment responsibility, but just repeat something parrot-like which you have rehearsed, which you have been practicing.All the actions that are enumerated here and many more in your life, you can do in two ways. One is out of awareness, in the present moment – unprepared, spontaneous, allowing existence to possess you, to speak through you or act through you. Then you are absolutely out of the trap of your actions or your words. You are just a watcher. You are not acting, you are simply watching whatever is happening.This watchfulness, this witnessing is the ultimate secret of creating a religious life, of creating a life of transcendence, a life of spirituality, of enlightenment, of buddhahood.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Bodhidharma’s “Wake-up Sermon”.The essence of the way is detachment. And the goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances. The sutras say, “Detachment is enlightenment because it negates appearances.” …The three realms are greed, anger and delusion. To leave the three realms means to go from greed, anger and delusion back to mortality, meditation and wisdom. … The sutras say, “Buddhas have only become buddhas while living with the three poisons and nourishing themselves on the pure dharma.” The three poisons are greed, anger and delusion.The great vehicle is the greatest of all vehicles. It’s the conveyance of bodhisattvas, who use everything without using anything, and who travel all day without traveling. Such is the vehicle of buddhas. The sutras say, “No vehicle is the vehicle of buddhas.” …The sutras say, “The cave of five aggregates is the hall of Zen, the opening of the inner eye is the door of the great vehicle.” What could be clearer?Not thinking about anything is Zen. Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting or lying down, everything you do is Zen. To know that the mind is empty is to see the buddha. The buddhas of the ten directions have no mind. To see no mind is to see the buddha.To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity. To transcend motion and stillness is the highest meditation. Mortals keep moving while arhats stay still. But the highest meditation surpasses that of both mortals and arhats. People who reach such understanding free themselves from all appearances without effort and cure all illnesses without treatment. Such is the power of great Zen.Bodhidharma is more clear and transparent than any other enlightened person. But the experience of enlightenment is such that you can still commit mistakes. This is something to be understood. People ordinarily think that the man of enlightenment cannot commit mistakes. That is their expectation, but it is not true to reality.The same has been the expectation of other religions, that their prophets cannot commit mistakes. Although the Koran is full of mistakes, Mohammedans are not ready to accept that their prophet Mohammed can commit any mistake. The Bible is so full of mistakes, but still the popes go on declaring for twenty centuries continuously that they are infallible. And their fallibility is so apparent.Just as an example, Joan of Arc was declared a witch by the pope of that time. And the pope defined a witch – which is not the meaning of the word witch – as someone who has sexual intercourse with the devil. The meaning of the word witch is a wise woman. And it has always been the meaning up to the Middle Ages, when the popes started declaring wise women as being in the grip of the devil. It was easy; first they would torture those women to such an extent that it became unbearable. Day after day they were tortured.Finally the woman had to accept that yes, she is a witch. That was the only way to stop her being tortured. And once she accepted and confessed that she was a witch, she had to go to the court – a special court appointed by the pope – to declare that she has been having intercourse with the devil, which is sheer nonsense, because never before had it been known, and never afterwards – nobody has seen the devil. And these poor women were having intercourse with the devil, and they had to describe the whole ugly thing in every detail. And once they confessed, the court ordered them to be burned alive. Thousands of women in Europe were in danger and thousands had already been burned alive.Joan of Arc fought for the freedom of her country. She was a young woman of tremendous courage and she won freedom for the country. Hence, there was immense respect for Joan of Arc. And the jealous pope could not allow Joan of Arc to be left alone. It became a competition – who is more respectable, Joan of Arc or the pope. The easiest way was to declare her a witch. He declared her a witch and they tortured the poor young woman until finally she had to accept. There was no way out and she was burned alive.But this created a very different result than that expected by the pope. He fell more in people’s eyes, and Joan of Arc became a martyr. She was loved more, she gained more sympathy. People almost started worshipping her. So after three hundred years another pope realized that it had been a mistake on the part of the previous pope. He had unnecessarily created a martyr; he should have been more careful. It was easy to destroy ordinary women but to destroy a woman like Joan of Arc…he had not been cautious enough.After three hundred years, another pope declared that Joan of Arc was not a witch, she was a saint, and her bones were dragged out of the grave and worshipped. A great memorial was made, because now she had become “Saint Joan of Arc.” You can see, at least one of the popes was fallible – most probably both. But one thing is certain: both cannot be right. And the popes are not enlightened people; they know nothing of enlightenment.The East has been very concerned for ten thousand years with the phenomenon of enlightenment. It certainly brings you great light, great clarity, great ecstasy and the feeling of immortality. But even though it brings so much, existence is so vast that your enlightenment is just a dewdrop in the ocean of existence. However transparent and clear your understanding may be, there is always a possibility to commit mistakes. And this has been recognized by the East.Even Gautam Buddha is reported to have said that existence is so vast, so infinite in all dimensions, that even an enlightened man may commit mistakes. This is true religiousness and humbleness. The idea of infallibility is nothing but ugly ego.Hence, when I say that Bodhidharma has missed the point, don’t misunderstand me. Don’t start thinking that Bodhidharma is not enlightened. There is no contradiction. He is enlightened – one of the greatest enlightened people on the earth. But enlightenment makes you blossom, come to spring with your whole potentiality becoming actual; it does not mean that you become incapable of committing any mistake.In fact the enlightened man becomes so humble that if you point out his mistakes he will accept them. He is so detached from his own personality, it does not matter. He has no ego; he is not hurt. And he accepts that there are possibilities where he may become too one-sided, may lean into this multidimensional existence more towards certain dimensions, may become averse to the dimensions which are against his own experiences and feelings. Existence contains all contradictions, and even at the highest point of enlightenment it is very difficult to contain contradictions.Man, after all, is man, asleep or awake. It is very difficult to conceive contradictions existing together not as contradictions but as complementaries. The easier thing seems to be to choose one side and go against the other. But that does not mean that the enlightenment is not complete; it simply means even an enlightened man can have a partiality. And it is because of the vastness of the universe.When Gautam Buddha was asked…. He was a contemporary of Mahavira, and the followers of Mahavira were saying about Mahavira that he knows past, present, future; that he knows all that has ever been, that is and that will ever be. They were making him synonymous with the idea of God – omnipotent, omniscient, omnipresent. And it is worth remembering that Gautam Buddha laughed. He said, “I have heard once that Mahavira was begging before a house where nobody has lived for a long time, and there was nobody inside the house. And the people say that he knows everything of the past, of the present, of the future, and he does not know that he is standing before a house and there is nobody in the house!”And Gautam Buddha joked about Mahavira that once he had heard Mahavira was walking early in the morning…. It was in the hot summer, so he had started to move very early, before the sunrise, and he stepped on the tail of a dog. When the dog started barking, then he became aware that there was a dog. The darkness was there…. This man knows past, present and future and he does not know the tail of a dog is under his foot. And I certainly agree with Gautam Buddha.Mahavira never claimed this – it was the claim of his disciples. People like Mahavira don’t claim anything. The disciples of Gautam Buddha asked, “What is your position about knowing past, present and future?” And the humbleness of Gautam Buddha is so great, he said, “I am not omnipotent or omniscient or omnipresent. I have a clear vision, but compared to the vastness of existence it is a very small phenomenon.“Yes, I can know about the past if I focus on the past; I can know about the future if I focus on the future; I can know about the present if I focus on the present. But focusing becomes impossible as you become enlightened, because focusing is another name for concentration. That is a quality of the mind, and enlightenment is the quality of no-mind.” No-mind cannot focus. It cannot have any boundaries.So there is a possibility that sometimes an enlightened man may commit subtle mistakes, but that does not go against his enlightenment. I wanted to make it clear to you because in today’s sutras he is saying things which are right for a bodhisattva, because he does not know the way of the arhatas, but he is mistaken. He should have rather said, “I don’t know the experiences of the arhatas because I am not an arhata.” He is bragging about the Mahayana, the “great vehicle.” And he is in some way condemning the Hinayana, the “small vehicle” of the arhatas.I will not agree with that because I am not a party to any group. It makes my work in one way simple, in one way very difficult – simple because I can see from far away both sides of the coin, which people who are involved cannot see. But on the other hand, it makes my work more difficult because it starts taking a multidimensionality, and I have sometimes to speak against the people I have loved immensely. But love is not a higher quality than truth.When it comes to deciding between your love and your truth, truth has to be the decisive factor.The sutras:The essence of the way is detachment.It is true. All of our miseries are nothing but attachment. Our whole ignorance and darkness is a strange combination of a thousand and one attachments. And we are attached to things which will be taken away by the time of death, or even perhaps before. You may be very much attached to money but you can go bankrupt tomorrow. You may be very much attached to your power and position, your presidency, your prime-ministership, but they are like soap bubbles. Today they are here, tomorrow not even a trace will be left.It happened before the Russian revolution, the prime minister of Russia was Kerensky. During the time of the chaos of revolution when the czar and his whole family were butchered – nineteen persons in all – the revolutionaries were so revengeful that they did not leave even a six-month-old baby. They did not want any trace of the family of the czars left in the world. But Kerensky escaped in time. He died in 1960, and for a half century nobody had any idea what had happened to Kerensky. He was a grocer, running a grocery store in New York, in disguise.The Russian empire was one of the greatest empires that has ever existed, spreading from one continent to another continent. And the prime minister, who has had great power, one day becomes the owner of a grocery store in New York, and becomes so afraid that he changes his name, he changes his identity. Only when he died was it found in his papers and in his diaries that he was Kerensky, the missing prime minister of the czars.All our positions, all our powers, our money, our prestige, respectability, they are all soap bubbles. And certainly, The essence of the way is detachment. Don’t get attached to the soap bubbles; otherwise you will be continuously in misery and agony. Those soap bubbles don’t care that you are attached to them; they go on bursting and disappearing into the air and leaving you behind with a wounded heart, with a failure, with a deep destruction of your ego. They make you sour, bitter, irritated, frustrated. They make your life a hell.Just to understand that life is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of is the essence of the way. Detachment: live in the world but don’t be of the world. Live in the world but don’t let the world live within you. Remember that it is all a beautiful dream, because everything is changing and disappearing. Don’t cling to anything. Clinging is the cause of our being unconscious.If you start unclinging a tremendous release of energy will happen within you. And that energy that was involved in clinging to things will bring a new dawn to your being, a new light, a new understanding, a tremendous unburdening – no possibility of any misery, agony, anguish.On the contrary, when all these things disappear you find yourself serene, calm and quiet, in a subtle joyfulness. There is a laughter in your being. That’s what Bodhidharma says, that a buddha laughs without laughing. Nobody has seen any statue of Buddha laughing – there is no need for him to laugh; his whole being is feeling the laugh.You have to understand the psychology of laughter. You laugh very easily, but your laughter has a different quality than the laughter of the buddha. You laugh because your life is so miserable that any moment, any incident which looks ridiculous helps you to forget your misery for a moment. All your tensions disappear and there is a laughter. Hence laughter is a great relaxing phenomenon. It is tremendously healthy. Within a second it takes you beyond all your tensions, but only for a moment…and you are back again in your dark cave.A buddha laughs without laughing because he has no tensions. He does not accumulate the energy in tensions that can explode in laughter. And he knows that life is ridiculous. Here people are doing things which are all laughable. Laughter becomes something ingrained in the very cells of his being; it does not come just to his lips. His clarity makes him see things which perhaps you go on missing seeing.I have heard:A woman suddenly said to the man who was in bed with her, “Get up, quick! I heard the noise of my husband’s car, which is so rotten that you can hear it from half a mile away. He has just braked in the driveway. You just get up!”The man got up and he said, “But where am I to go?”She said, “Jump out of the window!” Fortunately it was not a sixty story building – it was just the ground floor – so he jumped out. But he was naked and it was raining. But fortunately a group of joggers was passing by so he joined them, finding no other way; otherwise, standing there naked, he would be caught.He mixed with the two dozen joggers, and in the darkness of the early morning he managed well. Just one jogger by his side saw that this man looked naked. He could not resist his temptation. He asked, “Do you always jog naked?”The man said, “Yes.” Then as darkness was disappearing and a little light was coming up, the jogger recognized that the naked man was nobody else but the bishop. And in that small light he saw that he was not just naked, he was wearing a condom.He said, “Father, do you always wear a condom when jogging?”The bishop said, “No, not always; only when it is raining.”The more watchful you become, the more you will find life such a comedy. So much is happening all around – so much stupidity, so much ridiculousness. But a buddha does not laugh because twenty-four hours a day, in his clarity and transparent vision, each cell of his being is laughing. There is no need to laugh loudly – silently he is in laughter. That is laughing without laughter.If you become detached you will be able to see how people are attached to trivia, and how much they are suffering. And you will laugh at yourself because you were also in the same boat before. Detachment is certainly the essence of the way.And the goal of those who practice is freedom from appearances.What you see in the world is not the reality, but only an appearance. Deep behind the appearance, the mask, is the reality. To know the reality you have to be free from appearances. And all your attachments prevent you; you become attached to the mask. We rarely grow and become mature. We just go on changing our toys. We remain children; we go on changing our teddy bears.You must have seen in railway stations, in airports, small children dragging their teddy bears with them, ugly, dirty, but to them they are very essential. Without them they cannot sleep; the teddy bear is their companion. They will become older and they will drop the teddy bear but they will drop it only when they have found another teddy bear. It does not matter what the shape of the teddy bear is – it can be money.I used to know in my village…and I have never forgotten that man and I don’t think I will ever forget him. He was a goldsmith, but very rich, and he had a way of speaking which was very hilarious. He was continuously stuttering and he was attached to a strange idea and he used to brag about it: “Unless I have one hundred rupees in my pocket I don’t urinate.” He was famous all over the village. What a great idea – one hundred rupees have to be in his pocket, then only can he urinate! He was showing his richness, but a strange way he found; I don’t think anybody has ever had that idea, it was so original. But it was hilarious.In those days there were no notes, so he was carrying one hundred rupees in gold coins – such a weight in his pockets. And people used to ask him, “Where are you going? Have you counted your rupees? – because if there are ninety-nine and suddenly you feel like going to the urinal, you will be stuck.” And he would immediately count his money and he would say, “There is no problem. One hundred rupees is a must. Without it I cannot do even such a small thing as pissing – what to say about great things?” That was his teddy bear. He used to sleep with those one hundred rupees.You may not be aware – because you are not aware – but if you look a little bit, you can find what your teddy bear is.All appearances in the world are preventing you from knowing the reality of the world and of your own being. What appears is not the reality. Reality is hidden behind appearances, and unless you become attuned with reality, those appearances which are just dream stuff are going to torture you continuously. And everybody is feeling the agony, the misery, but goes on living it because there seems to be no way to drop it.Bodhidharma is telling you the way, and it is the essential way of all the religions: detachment, freedom from appearances.The sutras say, “Detachment is enlightenment because it negates appearances.”The three realms are greed, anger and delusion.You have to watch these three realms because these are the barriers, the three barriers to your enlightenment.Bodhidharma is very short, condensed; he does not go in for philosophical discussions, he simply states the fact. And that’s his beauty. He has reduced the whole religion and the way out of it into very few words. Greed is your aggression. It is the desire always for more.It never stops; it goes on asking for more. And because it goes on asking for more, you are always miserable. Whatever you may have, you cannot enjoy it because you don’t have more. By the time you have more, your greed has gone ahead of you. It is always ahead of you asking for more.I used to stay in Calcutta in a very rich family and the husband and wife used to come to pick me up from the airport. The husband was always a very cheerful person, but one time I found he was very sad – driving the car, but very sad.I asked his wife, “What is the matter?” – because he had always been chitchatting and was always cheerful. The wife laughed and the husband looked at her very seriously, very angrily.The wife said, “You are asking, so I am saying the whole responsibility is yours. I am not to be looked at as if I am committing a sin.” And laughingly she said to me, “He is sad because he has lost five lakh rupees.”I said, “But you are laughing and your husband has lost five lakh rupees?”She said, “I am laughing because in fact he has gained five lakh rupees – but he was expecting ten lakhs, and the trouble is, he cannot understand that he has earned five lakhs out of a business. He’s sad because he was counting on ten lakhs. What about the remaining five lakhs? So although he has profited enough, he is not happy.”His misery is that he has lost five lakhs – and he has not lost a single paisa. I asked the man, “What is the matter?”He said, “In a way she is right, but I am really feeling sad. Ten lakhs were absolutely certain in the business. Even more was possible but only five lakhs turned up, and I cannot forget the five lakhs that I have missed.”Now can you think that a man who is thinking in terms of expectations can be happy, joyous? Your expectations are always more than the reality allows. Hence, there is always a feeling of failure. There is always a sadness lurking somewhere in your being.Greed is an aggressive attitude towards existence: grab as much as you can and go on grabbing more and more and more. Waste your whole life and your whole intelligence in grabbing more and more and what is the point? Death will not be late, not even for a single minute. It always comes at the right time, and all that you have grabbed and wasted your life for, you will have to leave here.Bodhidharma has said:One man was so greedy that when his wife was almost dying, his friends told him, “It is time…you should call a physician.”But he said, “It costs too much.”They said, “It is going to be really ugly, inhuman. Your wife is dying and you are thinking about paying some fee to the physician!”He said, “Wives don’t count much. If she dies I can get married again. And death and life are not in the hands of man, they are decided by fate. If she’s going to die, she will die whether I call the physician or not. Why waste money? If she is going to live, she will live. Either way, a physician is absolutely unnecessary.”The friends said, “We have never thought that you are so greedy. We have always heard that you are greedy – but so much! Do you think you are going to take all your money with you when you die?”He said, “Of course. I have a plan.” They could not believe him.They said, “What plan?”He said, “Before I die I will take all the money in a boat, go deep into the ocean and jump with all my money, into the ocean.”The friends could not believe their ears. They said, “Are you mad or something? Still your money will be left in the ocean and you will have to go alone.”At least there would be a satisfaction that nobody else was enjoying his money.You will find all kinds of greedy people and you will find all sorts of greed within yourself. And when greed is not fulfilled, anger arises, frustration arises. You become angry with the world, you become angry with yourself, you become angry with everybody.You can see it in all old people. Why are they so irritated? Why is it so difficult to stand them? They are frustrated people; they have wasted their life in grabbing more and more. But the more is never satisfied. Now they are feeling angry at life, so any excuse is enough and they will become angry. Greed is the root cause and when it is not fulfilled, it leaves you with great anger, frustration, irritation, failure.And in your anger and frustration and failure a third thing arises: delusion. Delusion is a consolation. Delusion is a way somehow to keep yourself together.When Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the prime minister of India, there were at least ten persons who believed that they were Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru. At least one I knew personally because he lived in the nearby district, and I used to go to that city to lecture in their colleges. I loved that man because he used exactly the same clothes as Jawaharlal Nehru – with the Gandhi cap, with the hand-woven khadi, with a Jawahar jacket. And he talked like Jawaharlal.He was a laughingstock but he never cared. He said to me, “These people are idiots.” And he used to send telegrams if he was going to visit a beautiful place which was nearby, Kanha Kisli, a beautiful forest with thousands of deer. He would just send a telegram – “Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is arriving” – to the collector of that district, signed by the secretary of Jawaharlal.And he deceived people many times. Circuit houses were emptied, cleaned – Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru is coming! And later on they would find that this man is bogus. Finally he was put in a madhouse.It was not a new phenomenon. In England, when Winston Churchill was alive, there were at least three more Winston Churchills in England, believing absolutely that they were Winston Churchill.There is on record a case in the life of Caliph Omar. A man was brought to him who was declaring that he had come from God with a new message: “Now the message Mohammed brought is out of date. It is time, because almost one thousand years have passed. Everything has changed and God has sent me as his prophet with a new message.”Mohammedans are very fanatic. Omar ordered that this man be tortured for seven days. “Tie him to a pillar, naked, and beat him and don’t give him anything to eat. And after seven days I will come and see.”So after seven days he went there. The man was almost dying; so much blood had flowed, because they were beating him continuously, and without giving him food. Omar said, “What do you think now? Have you changed your mind or not?”The man laughed and said, “Changed my mind? When I was leaving God, he said to me, ‘Remember, my prophets are always tortured.’ Your torture has proved perfectly that I am the prophet.”At that very point another man, who had been tied to another pillar for almost one month because he was declaring that he himself was God, shouted to Omar, “Don’t listen to that idiot. I have never sent any prophet after Mohammed. Mohammed is my only prophet and this man is a cheat!”Now what to say about these people? And they are not exceptions. Everybody has some kind of delusion. Everybody is thinking things which he is not. But these delusions are helpful as a lubricating system. It helps your life somehow to move on.Great consolations – if you cannot become the prime minister, at least you can create a delusion that you are. If you cannot become the richest man you can still believe that you are. You can make your delusions so solid that nobody can change them.A madman was brought to a psychiatrist. His madness was very special; his madness was that he had been thinking that he had died. So when his family would tell him to go to the shop, tend the shop, he would say, “You don’t understand. Dead people don’t go to the shop. They don’t tend shops.”They tried hard in every way to persuade him that he was perfectly alive, and he would say, “How can I believe you when I know that I’m dead?”Finally they brought him to the psychiatrist and the psychiatrist said, “Don’t be worried. I will put him right.” And he asked the madman, “Do you think dead people bleed?”The madman said, “No, dead people never bleed.”So the psychiatrist said, “There is a simple experiment to be done.” And he took his knife and cut the dead man’s finger just a little bit, and blood came running out. The family was very happy that this man, within a minute, had changed the whole situation. But they never knew that delusions are not so easily dispelled.The madman laughed. The psychiatrist said, “That blood shows that you are not dead.”He said, “No, that blood shows that the proverb that ‘dead men don’t bleed’ is wrong; they do bleed. I am the proof. Now what can you do? The proverb is wrong and I am the proof of its being wrong. Dead men do bleed!”Delusions settle so deeply in you, and the reason for those delusions is that to live continuously in frustration is a difficult task. You start believing in things which you have not got. You should look into your own mind to see how many things are only delusions.Bodhidharma says:The three realms are greed, anger and delusion. To leave the three realms means to go from greed, anger and delusion back to morality, meditation and wisdom.Morality, meditation and wisdom are in fact not three things but only three names.The exact thing is meditation. On one side it brings morality in your life; on another side it brings wisdom in your life. But you cannot do anything to attain wisdom directly; neither can you do anything to be moral directly. But you can do something for meditation; you can meditate directly, and morality and wisdom both are by-products. Morality will be in your actions and wisdom will be your intelligence, your awareness, your final enlightenment.The sutras say, “Buddhas have only become buddhas while living with the three poisons and nourishing themselves on the pure dharma.”Bodhidharma is saying not to be worried about the three poisons of greed, anger and delusion. Even buddhas have lived through the same experience as you all are passing through; but because they started nourishing themselves through meditation and started becoming aware of their self-nature, all these poisons disappeared. They have found the antidote.Meditation is the antidote to all the poisons of your life. It is the nourishment of your authentic nature.The three poisons are greed, anger and delusion.The great vehicle is the greatest of all vehicles.This I call a prejudice. He is continuously insisting and emphasizing that Mahayana….The great vehicle is the greatest of all vehicles. It is the conveyance of bodhisattvas, who use everything without using anything. And who travel all day without traveling. Such is the vehicle of buddhas. The sutras say, “No vehicle is the vehicle of buddhas.”To an ordinary, logical mind, to anybody who is looking at life with rationality, this will look a very absurd statement. First he says, The great vehicle is the greatest of all vehicles. It is the conveyance of bodhisattvas, who use everything without using anything, and who travel all day without traveling. Such is the vehicle of buddhas.And then, The sutras say, “No vehicle is the vehicle of buddhas.” It is the same as his other statement. Walking without walking, acting without acting, speaking without speaking…so there is no contradiction. He is using the same expression for “vehicle” – the greatest vehicle is a “no-vehicle.”The sutras say, “The cave of five aggregates is the hall of Zen…”The five aggregates are the five elements the body is made of: earth, air, fire, water, and the sky. These five are the aggregates – skandhas – elements of which your body is made. Just behind these five elements is hidden your treasure, the hall of Zen. Just inside the temple made by these five elements, is the fire of your awareness.This body is a temple, and your consciousness is the god of the temple.“…the opening of the inner eye is the door of the great vehicle.” What could be clearer?As you become more and more aware, you start having a third eye. These two eyes look outwards; that third eye looks inwards.And to see yourself is the greatest experience, because once you have seen your beauty, then all beauties of the outside world fade away.Once you have seen your purity, then everything outside becomes polluted. Once you have seen your inner splendor, then even a beautiful sunrise, or a grand sunset, or a night sky full of stars, are nothing compared to the splendor of your being. You are the highest peak of evolution, of light, of consciousness.Not thinking about anything is Zen.Just being silent without any thought is what is meant by meditation.Once you know this, walking, standing, sitting, or lying down, everything you do is Zen.This is a significant statement. Perhaps there is no other religion that has made your whole life, twenty-four hours a day, a meditative experience. Zen does not believe in meditating one hour in the morning, or one hour in the night. It does not make meditation a separate, particular act. It wants meditation to become a quality of your being.So whatever you are doing – walking, sitting, standing, lying down, chopping wood, carrying water from the well, it does not matter. Whatever you are doing, you are doing it so silently, so peacefully, without any stirring of thoughts in your mind.Then your whole life has become meditation. You go to bed silently, you wake up silently, and one day you will realize that you also sleep silently – as thoughts disappear, dreams also disappear. Then the circle is complete.For Zen, meditation has to be a twenty-four-hour affair. It is not some extra act that you have to do. It is not a Sunday religion – for six days do everything you want to do, but at least on the seventh day, on Sunday, go to the church for one hour and you are a great Christian. It is absolutely illogical, and absurd. Just going to the church for one hour, and then living your mundane life with greed, with anger, with delusion, is not going to transform you. And no Jesus can save you.My people in the commune made a small placard for cars. It said, “Jesus saves, Moses invests, Osho spends.” I like that. What is the point of saving? Jesus seems to be like a banker. And of course, Moses invests. For Moses, everything is business. And for me, certainly, everything is going to be taken away. Before it is taken away, use it, spend it, enjoy it. Why wait for death to snatch it away? Certainly it is absolutely right. A one-hour religion, or even a Mohammedan who prays five times a day, is not going to help.Religion has to become something like your heartbeat.Meditation has to become something like your breathing. Whatever you are doing, you are breathing; it is not a separate action. And only then are you saturated, in every fiber of your being, with meditativeness.To know that the mind is empty is to see the buddha. The buddhas of the ten directions have no mind. To see no mind is to see the buddha.Now you can see why I have been insisting that the disciple was taking wrong notes. This is the right statement, by Bodhidharma. The buddhas have no-mind. To see no mind is to see the buddha.But it is very strange that these sutras have existed for one thousand years, and nobody has seen the contradiction. Perhaps religious people are so blind, such believers, that they will not see any contradiction, even if it is there – so apparent.To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity.But the Indian constitution will not believe in it. The Indian constitution believes in charity according to the Christian idea. It is a very strange constitution. It is a hodgepodge.In Hindi we call it khichri, humbug. What the people who made the constitution have done…they have collected all the constitutions of the world, and taken beautiful passages from every constitution, without knowing that those beautiful passages were alive in a certain context, in their constitution. When you take them out, they become dead.The Indian constitution is the most dead constitution in the world, because everything has been taken and borrowed from others. It is not a growth, it is simply a combination. Take everything good…somebody’s eyes are good, take them out; somebody’s ears are really beautiful, take them out; somebody’s mustache – pull it out.You can make a man just by taking beautiful things from everywhere – the eyes of Cleopatra, and the nose of Amrapali, the body of Alexander the Great and the mind of Albert Einstein. But remember, although you have taken all the best parts from the best people, you have collected only a corpse – it won’t have any life.What Bodhidharma is saying about charity…. We have been fighting with the Indian government and the Indian courts for almost ten years, that their conception of charity is very poor, their conception is very limited. Give to the poor, make hospitals, make schools…this is charity. There is nothing sublime in their idea of charity. Bodhidharma’s single statement is far more significant. He says: To give up yourself without regret is the greatest charity. To give up yourself to whom? To the universe.Don’t be a separate entity. Just drop into the ocean of existence and become one with it. This is the greatest charity. What else can you give? You came empty-handed into the world, and you will go empty-handed out of the world.Everything that you have is not yours. Your house is nothing but a caravanserai. Your money is not your money; you have exploited for it. Your land is not your land; it was always there before you came and it will remain there after you are gone.What is yours? You can only give that which is yours, you cannot give that which is not yours. You cannot contribute all the stars to the poor; you cannot contribute the sun to the poor; you cannot contribute the moon to the poor. It does not belong to you in the first place.All that you can contribute is your own being. Hence, Bodhidharma is absolutely right that there is only one charity and that is to give yourself without regret, in fact with great joy and rejoicing, to existence. Become part of the whole.To transcend motion and stillness is the highest meditation.Whether you are sitting silently, or you are walking silently, you have to transcend all form, motion and stillness, action and inaction, day and night, life and death. Transcend all, and you will have the highest fragrance of meditation in you.Mortals keep moving…And again he comes to his prejudice.…while arhats stay still. But the highest meditation surpasses that of both mortals and arhats.He does not know anything about arhatas. Arhatas don’t say anything, but they have also transcended motion and stillness. Just because they don’t say anything does not mean that they have not transcended. In fact, their transcendence is so great that it cannot be said or conveyed in words. So I will not agree with Bodhidharma. He has to forgive me. With every apology, I want to say to him that his understanding about arhatas is absolutely zero. Instead of arhatas, he should have used the word ascetics. Mortals and ascetics don’t know this transcending.People who reach such understanding free themselves from all appearances without effort and cure all illnesses without treatment. Such is the power of great Zen.Such is the power of great meditation. Such is the power of knowing yourself. All illnesses disappear; illnesses of the spirit, all wounds are suddenly cured – wounds of the spirit. And all appearances, delusions, greed and anger are found no more, not even their footprints. Such is the power of knowing oneself in deep meditation.He is perfectly right about everything, except what he says about arhatas. That has to be changed. In fact I am not against Bodhidharma, I am doing him a great favor. I am taking out his mistakes; I am making him almost infallible. His prejudice against arhatas drags him down from the great sunlit peak which is his home.If you meet Bodhidharma somewhere, in some life, just remind him that a few corrections are needed. And certainly he cannot make me afraid by his big eyes. I can also make him afraid with my big eyes.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness. Freeing oneself from words is liberation. Remaining unblemished by the dust of sensation is guarding the dharma. Transcending life and death is leaving home. Not suffering another existence is reaching the way. Not creating delusions is enlightenment. Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom. No affliction is nirvana. And no appearance of the mind is the other shore. …In the light of the impartial dharma, mortals look no different from sages. The sutras say that the impartial dharma is something that mortals can’t penetrate and sages can’t practice. The impartial dharma is only practiced by great bodhisattvas and buddhas. To look on life as different from death or on motion as different from stillness is to be partial. To be impartial means to look on suffering as no different from nirvana because the nature of both is emptiness. By imagining they’re putting an end to suffering and entering nirvana, arhatas end up trapped by nirvana. But bodhisattvas know that suffering is essentially empty. And by remaining in emptiness, they remain in nirvana. Nirvana means no birth and no death. It’s beyond birth and death and beyond nirvana. When the mind stops moving, it enters nirvana. Nirvana is an empty mind. …An uninhabited place is one without greed, anger or delusion. …Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor doesn’t exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming it exists. And arhats keep negating the mind, claiming it doesn’t exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. This is what’s meant by the mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist. The mind that neither exists nor doesn’t exist is called the middle way. …When your mind doesn’t stir inside, the world doesn’t arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding. …These sutras of Bodhidharma are pure gold except on one point: wherever he mentions the arhatas he suddenly becomes absolutely blind. His conception about the arhatas is the only flaw that he cannot drop. I will remind you whenever he falls below the ultimate wisdom and becomes attached to his opinion. It is extremely surprising that a man of the caliber of Bodhidharma can behave just like any ignorant person in certain situations. But this reminds us of the frailty of human beings and this can be helpful to you not to become too much attached to your opinions, because every opinion is going to make you blind, blind to the opposite opinion.A man of pure understanding is available to all the contradictions without any choice. He remains choiceless, just silently aware, knowing that they are contradictions but that ultimately they meet somewhere. Life meets death, day meets night, love meets hate, yes meets no. For the man who is beyond all opinions, for him yes is partial just as no is partial. In fact, when they both meet and merge into each other, when yes is no longer yes, and no is no longer no, when it is absolutely indefinable because where yes and no meet, it is going beyond conceivability – this is the transcendence – going beyond the mind.But even people like Bodhidharma have certain blind spots. It is something like the scientists say: at least ten percent of people in the world are color blind although they are not aware of it. It is a big percentage; it means out of ten people, one person is going to be color blind. And by color blind they mean that the person cannot see a certain color at all.Rarely does one come to discover one’s color blindness. It happened in George Bernard Shaw’s life. For sixty years he was not aware that he was color blind. On his sixtieth birthday a friend sent a gift of a beautiful suit, but he must have forgotten to send a matching tie with the suit. And Bernard Shaw loved the suit and he told his secretary that they should go immediately to find a matching tie, “Because this evening many friends will be coming to celebrate my birthday and I would like to use this suit for the evening.”They went to the shop where the best quality ties were available and he looked at many ties and finally he chose one. The shopkeeper was shocked, his secretary was shocked; they could not believe what he was doing. It looked very ridiculous; the suit was green and he had chosen a yellow tie. Simultaneously the secretary and the shopkeeper both said to him, “It will look very odd. You have chosen a very strange color. With green, this yellow will not look good.”George Bernard Shaw said, “What do you mean? They are the same color.” He had no eye for yellow; yellow looked to him like green. He could not see the yellow at all. But it was just coincidental. Perhaps millions of people live and die without knowing that they are color blind. If this certain circumstance had not happened, George Bernard Shaw would have died – sixty years he had lived, forty years more he could have lived, he could have made the whole century – and remained unaware of a certain blind spot in his eyes.Something similar happens to people. Even though they may be of great awareness, there are points where they are blind, and unless these blind spots disappear, a man’s enlightenment cannot be called perfect. It remains imperfect, incomplete. And the surprising thing is, when Bodhidharma talks about great things he is so accurate, so impeccably perfect, but just on a few points he simply forgets everything and falls down into an ordinary state of mind where people become opinionated, prejudiced.You have to remember him and learn one secret from him, so that this does not happen to you.The sutra:Using the mind to look for reality is delusion.And all philosophers have been doing that and all theologians have been doing that. The great thinkers are doing nothing but playing games with words. Using the mind to look for reality is delusion. Mind cannot know reality. It is something like: if you want to hear music with the eyes, you will not be able to, because eyes are not meant to hear. Or if you want to see the light through the ears you will not be able to, because ears are not meant to see the light. Ears are meant for sound, eyes are meant for light. They each have a certain dimension of functioning.Mind’s functioning is to create thoughts, dreams, imaginations, illusions, hallucinations, mirages of all kinds. Its function is not to find the reality.Not using the mind to look for reality is awareness.Not using the mind is the way to find reality. Becoming utterly silent, without any thought, just a clean slate, a tabula rasa – in that clarity, in that perceptivity, one comes to know what is real, both within and without, because the reality is one.It is the mind that divides it into within and without. When the mind is withdrawn, the division is dropped. Then you are the reality; then, even the farthest star is connected with you and even the smallest blade of grass is connected with you. It is all one existence. Suddenly you are no longer separate, you have fallen into the whole. All the walls have disappeared between you and existence.This experience in the Upanishads, the seers have declared as aham brahmasmi – I am God. It was not out of an ego; it was out of utter humbleness. But what can be done? The moment mind disappears you are one with the whole. It has to be said.Freeing oneself from words is liberation.In a small statement there are hidden scriptures. He’s a simple man; he does not use learned jargon, big words. He simply states in simple and ordinary words the extraordinary truth and the ultimate experience.Freeing oneself from words is liberation… not freeing yourself from the world, not freeing yourself from your wife or your husband, not freeing yourself from your money or your house but just freeing yourself from words. And certainly your real world is nothing but words.What is a wife other than a word? Once she was not your wife; suddenly one day some stupid priest starts chanting mantras that he does not understand – nor do the people who are being married know what is meant by the whole ritual that is going on.One sannyasin got married a few days ago and she was telling me that she was surprised by the priest. The ritual was going to be one and a half hours long, but her husband gave five rupees to the priest and told him to be quick. The whole ritual went so fast; the priest started chanting so quickly and ended the whole thing within fifteen minutes. And in those fifteen minutes were included all those moments when the photographer said, “Just a moment!” And the priest would stop for the photograph to be taken and when the photograph was taken, he again started the ritual. What is a wife or what is a husband except a game of words?You come into the world without any possessions and you go out of the world without any possessions. One day the whole thing becomes just like a dream that you had once seen. At the moment of your death you may remember all those things as if they had been seen in a dream. At the time of happening they were so real, but at the time of death everything will become unreal – just words in the mind.The real renunciation is not of the world. It is meaningless to renounce the world and escape to the Himalayas or to the monasteries. The real thing is to drop the words from your mind so you can become a silent observer, a pure witness. And this is what Bodhidharma calls liberation.Remaining unblemished by the dust of sensations is guarding the dharma.All that is needed of you to be authentically religious, is to be on guard that you are not carried by emotions, sentiments, moods; that you remain above and beyond any strategies of the mind to pull you down. To be aware and alert is all that is needed to be authentically religious.You don’t have to go to any church or to any synagogue or to any temple. You simply have to go within and be alert.Transcending life and death is leaving home.I would like to add two words to this sutra, otherwise this sutra can be misleading. I would like to say: Transcending life and death is leaving this world, not the home, because your real home is where you are going. This world is not your real home. It is only a so-called home. It is just a consolation to call it home.I have told you the story of a Sufi mystic.One night in Baghdad, the king heard somebody walking on the roof of his palace. He shouted, “Who is there? And what are you doing there?”The man was not a thief. Without any fear he said, “Don’t shout, that may disturb other people’s sleep. It is none of your business. I am looking for my camel. My camel is lost and it is time for you to go to sleep.”The king could not believe what kind of madman could be on the roof of a palace searching for his camel. He called the guards and they searched all over the place but could not find the man. And the next day when he was sitting in his court he heard the same voice again; he recognized it.The king immediately said, “Bring that man in,” because he was arguing with the guard in front of the gate that he wanted to stay in the caravanserai.And the guard said, “You will be getting into problems unnecessarily. This is the palace of the king; this is not a caravanserai.”The man said, “I know it is a caravanserai and you are just a guard. Don’t bother me. Just let me go in. I want to discuss the matter with the king himself. If I can convince him that this is a caravanserai then I will stay. If he can convince me it is not a caravanserai, then of course I will leave. But I won’t listen to you; you are just a guard.”And just at that moment the message came from inside, “Don’t stop that man. We are in search of him; bring him in.”The Sufi mystic was called in and the king said, “You seem to be a very strange fellow. I recognize your voice. You were the man on the roof searching for your camel and now you are calling my place, my home, a caravanserai.”The man laughed and said, “You seem to be a man of some understanding. It is possible to talk with you. Yes, it was me who was looking for the camel on the roof of the palace. Don’t think that I’m insane. If you can look for blissfulness sitting on a golden throne, if you can look for God while continuously conquering and butchering and burning living human beings, what is wrong in searching for a camel on the roof of the palace? You tell me!“If I am inconsistent you are also not consistent. And what right have you got to call this place your home, because I have been here before and on the same golden throne I have seen another man sitting. He looked just like you – a little older.”The king said, “He was my father. Now he’s dead.” And the mystic said, “I was here even before that and I found another man. He also looked a little bit like you but very old.” The king said, “You are right, he was my grandfather.” And the mystic said, “What happened to him?” The king said, “He is dead.”And the mystic said, “When are you going to die? They also believed that this is their home. I have argued with your grandfather. Now the poor fellow is in the grave. I have argued with your father; that poor fellow is also in the grave. Now I am arguing with you and someday I will come back again and I will be arguing with your son and you will be in a grave. So what kind of home is this where people go on changing? It is a caravanserai. It is just an overnight stay, and then one has to go.”The king was shocked but was silent. The whole court was silent. The man was right. And the mystic finally said, “If you really want to know where your home is, go to the graveyard where finally you will have to settle, where your grandfather is, where your father is. That is the real place that you can call your home, but not this palace. Here I am going to stay as if it is a caravanserai.”The king was certainly not an ordinary man. He stood up and told the mystic, “Forgive me, I was wrong. You are right. You can stay as long as you want. I am going in search of my real home. This is not my real home.”This world is only a caravanserai.In the sutra it says: Transcending life and death is leaving home. I would like: Transcending life and death is leaving for home – leaving the world, leaving for the home, for the real home from where you will not have to go anywhere else again – which will be your eternal, ultimate and absolute refuge.Not suffering another existence is reaching the way. Not creating delusions is enlightenment.Reduced to a single statement: Not to be in the mind is everything – liberation, finding the real home, enlightenment, finding the way.Not engaging in ignorance is wisdom.This statement is a little strange because people don’t engage in ignorance. Nobody wants to be ignorant; why should they engage in ignorance? Hence I would like to change it, although the meaning will remain the same. The word will not be ignorance, the word will be: Not engaging in knowledge is wisdom.Engaging in knowledge is really hiding your ignorance. That is really engaging, indulging in ignorance. But on the surface you are engaged in being more knowledgeable, more erudite, more learned – a scholar, a pundit. And to be so much involved in knowledge is a barrier to wisdom. Wisdom comes to those who are innocent of all knowledge.The moment you drop all knowledge you have also dropped all ignorance. They exist together as two sides of a coin. And then what remains is pure innocence.No affliction is nirvana.Not to be afflicted – by any suffering, by any anguish, by any anger, by any greed – not to be afflicted is nirvana. You have arrived home. The name of the home is nirvana.And no appearance of the mind is the other shore.When the mind disappears, with the mind this whole world disappears. With the mind, disappears this whole ignorance, this whole knowledgeability, all these nightmares of life. Mind is the creator of this whole drama that you go on seeing. Once mind disappears the other shore appears immediately – coming closer and closer. The other shore is your real home. The other shore is your immortality, your eternity.This shore consists of death, disease, old age and all kinds of miseries. The other shore is the hope, the hope of being liberated, the hope of being saved, the hope of being redeemed from the nightmare in which we are all living. And the secret is simple: not to be a mind, but just to be a pure consciousness, a consciousness without thoughts, a sky without clouds.In the light of the impartial dharma mortals look no different from sages. The sutras say that the impartial dharma is something that mortals can’t penetrate and sages can’t practice. The impartial dharma is only practiced by great bodhisattvas and buddhas.But he’s not including the arhatas. That’s his blind spot. Although Bodhidharma has very big eyes, he cannot see one simple thing: the great arhatas belong to the same category as the great bodhisattvas and the buddhas.To look on life as different from death or on motion as different from stillness is to be partial. To be impartial means to look on suffering as no different from nirvana because the nature of both is emptiness. By imagining they are putting an end to suffering and entering nirvana, arhatas end up trapped by nirvana.That is absolutely wrong. The arhatas attain to the same height as the bodhisattvas. Their paths are different, but one can reach to the peak of the mountain from different paths. He could have said that the so-called sages and saints end up trapped by nirvana – but not arhatas. Arhatas are buddhas as authentically as bodhisattvas. Their only difference is that arhatas don’t care about anybody else – that they have to be helped, that they have to be supported for their enlightenment. Arhatas are simply concerned with their own enlightenment. Bodhisattvas are concerned with others’ enlightenment too. That is the only difference. Otherwise their experience is the same, their height is the same, their position has the same ultimateness.But there are many so-called sages and saints who are neither arhatas or bodhisattvas, who have practiced ascetic disciplines, who have tortured themselves, who have done everything that is within the capacity of man to do, but it is all being done by their mind. That makes all the difference. It has not been a spontaneous and natural growth; they have forced it. They have managed, disciplined, practiced. They always do the right thing, but their right doing is not spontaneous. It is deliberately thought out. They are continuously weighing pros and cons – what is right and what is wrong. They are always consulting the scriptures – what is right, what is wrong. They don’t have their own insight.I call them so-called saints and sages. They look almost like buddhas, but deep inside there is great darkness. Their own self-nature is not yet realized. They have not attained samadhi. They are still wandering in the puzzling mind and its millions of ways. Their great practices, their asceticism, their disciplines, are nothing but their mind projection.So it can be said that the so-called saints and sages end up trapped by nirvana. Their whole desire is to become enlightened. But that is the problem: you cannot desire to be enlightened. Desire is the barrier. You can become enlightened, but you cannot desire to become enlightened. The moment you desire you are trapped. You are trapped by your own desire.You cannot make enlightenment an object of your greed. You cannot make it an object of your ambition.And that is where the so-called sages and saints come in. They have made enlightenment, liberation, moksha, nirvana, a goal – an achievement. Then it becomes an ego trip. They are trapped, badly trapped.Nirvana has to flower within you. When you have dropped the mind with all its desire, with all its ambitions, with all its program for achievements, when you have dropped your whole mind full of greed…. Whether the greed concerns money, or the greed concerns enlightenment, it does not make any difference. Mind can go on changing from object to object. But it remains the same mind full of greed. The moment mind is completely dropped, you suddenly find enlightenment is not a goal. It is your self-nature. Suddenly the lotus blossoms open their petals and you are full of fragrance. And this fragrance is not different in the arhatas or in the bodhisattvas. They both are buddhas; they both are enlightened people.Because I don’t belong to any religion, I don’t belong to any particular sect – I simply don’t belong to anybody, I just belong to myself – I can see clearly where people get trapped in their own ideologies. Even a man like Bodhidharma cannot tolerate the idea that arhatas are the same as bodhisattvas. He belongs to the category of bodhisattvas.And it is not the case only with him. There have been arhatas who condemn bodhisattvas in the same way. But to me it does not matter whether somebody is of one category or of another category. I can be absolutely impartial. And my being impartial has been my problem because I say things without bothering about who is going to be pleased by my statements, who is going to be displeased by my statements.It is a very strange world. If I say something that pleases you, you will forget all about it. But if I say something that displeases you, you are not going to forget it, and you are not going to forgive me.I have said things about Jesus that no Christian has ever said. I have appreciated the man more than any Christian in two thousand years. But when I criticized a few things about Jesus, immediately the whole Christian world turned against me. They were silent when I was saying and appreciating great statements of Jesus. They were happy, but nobody even said a single word. But when I criticized a few things, the whole Christian world, which means almost half the world, immediately turned to destroying my movement.My books have been banned by the pope. A few Christian associations have published my books on Jesus, but when I criticized Jesus they even burnt my books in which I have praised Jesus.People are very touchy. If you appreciate something they will not say anything. They will simply enjoy the fact that their mind is being appreciated. It is not a question of Jesus; it is a question of a Christian mind. But when I say something that I see clearly is wrong in Jesus, then it hurts the Christian mind.For example, I am saying a few things against Bodhidharma, but I am saying many more things in his favor – they will be forgotten. But what I am saying against him…the countries which belong to Mahayana Buddhism will immediately get upset.My whole life, my whole life’s work has been how to influence people and create enemies.Again:But bodhisattvas know that suffering is essentially empty. And by remaining in emptiness they remain in nirvana. Nirvana means no birth and no death. It is beyond birth and death and beyond nirvana.But this is said only about bodhisattvas, not about arhatas. I would like to make it clear that it refers as much to arhatas as to bodhisattvas.When the mind stops moving it enters nirvana. Nirvana is an empty mind.Empty mind can be misinterpreted. I would suggest it is better to call it “no-mind”, because mind is never empty. The moment mind is empty, it is no longer there. Empty mind is a contradictory use of words – a contradiction in terms. There is nothing like an empty mind; mind is always thought processes. It is always a traffic of thoughts, emotions, dreams, imaginations.When the mind is empty, there is no mind. It is better to use the word no-mind than to use the word empty mind. Empty mind can be misleading. People can start thinking that all that they have to do is to empty the mind.And you cannot empty the mind even if you go on working for eternity. You have to drop it – wholesale. You cannot go emptying it in installments, because here you will be emptying it, and from all directions, things will go on coming into it. You cannot empty the mind. Either you cling to it or you simply drop it. There is no middle way.An uninhabited place is one without greed, anger or delusion.Whoever knows that the mind is a fiction and devoid of anything real knows that his own mind neither exists nor does not exist. Mortals keep creating the mind, claiming it exists. And arhatas keep negating the mind, claiming it does not exist. But bodhisattvas and buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. This is what is meant by the mind that neither exists nor does not exist. The mind that neither exists nor does not exist is called the middle way.He can never forget to condemn the arhatas. It seems to be as if something is constantly hurting him. The situation is again the same: instead of arhatas, he should have said the so-called sages and saints keep negating the mind. But bodhisattvas, arhatas and the buddhas neither create nor negate the mind. They simply go beyond it; they don’t fight with it, because to fight with the mind is to give it reality, to recognize its power. There is no need to fight. One has just to be a witness.Without any fight, just being a witness, mind disappears.Before the fire of witnessing, there is no possibility of mind remaining within you even for a single second. Create the fire of witnessing, create the flame of awareness. This is done by the arhatas, bodhisattvas and the buddhas without any distinction.When your mind does not stir inside, the world does not arise outside.This is a beautiful statement, immensely pregnant. It is saying the world outside is nothing but your projection. When your mind stirs inside, the world is created outside.Once it happened that a German poet, Heinrich Heine, got lost in the forest. He had gone hunting, but lost his way and lost his companion. And for three days he did not come across any human being. He was utterly tired, hungry and continuously worried about the wild animals.In the night he used to climb a tree to somehow protect himself from the wild animals. The third night was a full-moon night and he was sitting up in a tree. Three days of hunger and tiredness…he had not slept. And he saw the beautiful moon. He had written so many beautiful poems about the moon, but this day was different because his mind was in a different situation.Instead of seeing the moon, he saw a loaf of bread moving in the sky. In his diary he wrote, “I could not believe my eyes. I have always seen my beloved’s face in the moon. I have never even thought that a loaf of bread…!”But a man who has been hungry for three days…his mind is projecting one thing, and that is food. The moon disappeared and a loaf of bread was floating in the sky. What you see is not what is there. What you see is what your mind projects.I have told you a story about Mulla Nasruddin.He had a beautiful house in the mountains and he hired one of the ugliest women possible to take care of the house. All his friends asked, “Mulla, there must be some reason – why have you chosen the ugliest woman?” Mulla said, “There is a reason. And when the time comes, I will tell you.”And this created even more temptation to know. And again and again they were asking. It became a continuous temptation for them to inquire about the ugly woman. Mulla used to go to the mountain once in a while to rest, and he would say to his friends, “I am going for three weeks,” and he would be back in one week.And they would ask, “You went for three weeks…?” He said, “Yes, I went for three weeks, but something happened and I had to come back.”And this happened again and again. He would go for six weeks and within two weeks he was back. Finally they said, “You are creating a mystery. You are keeping that ugly woman there, you go there for three weeks, you come back in one week. You never keep your word.”Mulla said, “It is better now that I tell you the truth. The truth is, I have kept that ugly woman for a particular reason. And the reason is that when I go to the mountain house, the woman looks ugly. She is so repulsive, not just ugly. But without another woman, after seven or eight days, she does not look so repulsive. After two weeks, she does not even look ugly. After four weeks, she starts looking even beautiful. That is the time when I leave – now the danger is near. Whenever that woman starts looking beautiful, that is the point to immediately leave the mountains because now there is danger.”Mind has started creating its own reality. Now it does not care at all what is actually fact; now it is creating its own fiction. Because it has not been with a woman for four weeks, there is a certain hunger, biological hunger, and that hunger is creating a loaf of bread.It is not coincidental that people call beautiful woman “dishes,” “delicious dishes.” Why is a woman, a beautiful woman, in almost all languages, called a “beautiful dish”?Perhaps because, just as food is a hunger and biological, so is sex a hunger and biological. Both are different hungers, but both are hungers. The world that you see all around you is mostly a projection of your mind. When the mind disappears completely, you will see a totally different world. With all projections gone, then only the real – the objectively real – remains.And with the objectively real, there is no attachment. The attachment arises only with your projecting mind.When your mind does not stir inside, the world does not arise outside. When the world and the mind are both transparent, this is true vision. And such understanding is true understanding.Bodhidharma is right on all basic points, and should be understood as deeply as possible, because he can help you tremendously on the way – but remember his blind spots.Avoid those blind spots, because those blind spots make his grandeur a little less than it would have been without them. It makes his wisdom a little tainted, a little damaged. It is no longer impeccable; it is no longer absolute and perfect. Something is missing; he is prejudiced. He has joined a party.A man of true understanding remains alone; he does not join any party, any organization, any church, any religion. He is available to every form of understanding, but he remains impartial. To me this impartiality is one of the fundamentals of religion.A Christian is not religious just because he is a Christian. A Hindu is not religious just because he has become part of an organized doctrine. A Jaina is not religious because he has chosen a certain party line. An authentically religious man is individual.He is alone, and in his aloneness there is great beauty, great splendor.I teach you that aloneness. I teach you the beauty, and the grandeur, and the fragrance of aloneness.In your aloneness you will reach to the heights of Everest. In your aloneness you will be able to touch the farthest star. In your aloneness you will blossom to your total potential.Never become a believer, never become a follower, never become a part of any organization. Remain authentically true to yourself. Don’t betray yourself.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The sutras say, “Not to let go of wisdom is stupidity.” When the mind doesn’t exist, understanding and not understanding are both true. When the mind exists, understanding and not understanding are both false.When you understand, reality depends on you. When you don’t understand, you depend on reality.When reality depends on you, that which isn’t real becomes real. When you depend on reality, that which is real becomes false. When you depend on reality, everything is false. When reality depends on you, everything is true. … Thus, the sage doesn’t use his mind to look for reality, or reality to look for his mind, or his mind to look for his mind, or reality to look for reality. His mind doesn’t give rise to reality. And reality doesn’t give rise to his mind. And because both his mind and reality are still, he’s always in samadhi. …The sutras say, “Nothing has a nature of its own.” Act. Don’t question. When you question, you’re wrong. … When you’re deluded, the six senses and five shades are constructs of suffering and mortality. When you wake up, the six senses and five shades are constructs of nirvana and immortality.Someone who seeks the way doesn’t look beyond himself. He knows that the mind is the way. But when he finds the mind, he finds nothing. And when he finds the way, he finds nothing. If you think you can use the mind to find the way, you’re deluded. When you’re deluded, buddhahood exists. When you’re aware, it doesn’t exist. Because awareness is buddhahood. … Don’t hate life and death or love life and death. Keep your every thought free of delusion, and in life you’ll witness the beginning of nirvana, and in death you’ll experience the assurance of no rebirth.To see form but not be corrupted by form or to hear sound but not be corrupted by sound is liberation. Eyes that aren’t attached to form are the gates of Zen. Ears that aren’t attached to sound are also the gates of Zen. In short, those who perceive the existence of phenomena and remain unattached are liberated. …When delusions are absent, the mind is the land of buddhas. When delusions are present, the mind is hell.The understanding of Bodhidharma’s teachings will be easier if you understand a few points. First is the hypothesis of reincarnation. All the religions born outside of India believe in only one life. The religions born in India differ on every point, but not on reincarnation. They all insist that you don’t have only one life. You have had thousands of lives before and you will go on having lives again and again until you realize your self-nature.Life is only a school and unless you learn enlightenment, you will go on moving into the circle of life and death. This is something very essential.If there is only one life of seventy years on average, then you don’t have much time left for meditation, for exploration of your being – searching for the path. Seventy years is such a small span that one-third of it is wasted in sleep; one-third of it is wasted in educating you to earn your livelihood. And the remaining one-third, you waste in many ways because you don’t know what to do with it.I have seen people playing cards or chess and I have asked them, “Can’t you find anything better to do?” And their answer has consistently been the same…they are killing time. Such is the unawareness of man. You don’t have much time. You cannot afford to kill time.Moreover time is killing you; you cannot kill time. Each moment, time is bringing your death closer and closer.If you count all your activities…. Shaving your beard twice a day – how much time you put into it! Listening to the radio or watching the television – how much time you waste on it. An American survey shows that each American wastes seven and a half hours every day watching television. That is one third of his life he is just sitting, glued to his chair, watching all kinds of nonsense.How much time do you waste smoking cigarettes, cigars? There are people who are chain smokers…. How much time you waste in reading newspapers which never bring any news! All that they bring is simply sick – murders, rapes, suicides, wars. They make you believe that this is the world and this is our life. They relieve you from your responsibility. They convince you that the whole world is like this. Nothing is wrong, everybody is doing it….They never bring you any news of somebody becoming enlightened. Perhaps that is not news. Somebody is entering deeper realms of meditation – perhaps that is not news. Somebody has become calm and quiet and gone beyond anger, greed, agony. That is not news!Once Bernard Shaw was asked, “What is news?” He said, “When a dog bites a man, it is not news. When a man bites a dog, it is news.”How much time you are wasting in reading about how many men are biting dogs! If you count carefully, you will be surprised that you don’t have, in your seventy years of life, even seven minutes for yourself. This is such an idiotic situation.And then because there is only one life, there is great speed. Why has the West become so addicted to speed? The idea of one life given by Judaism, Christianity and Islam, has made people speedy. They are always running – on the run – because time is short and there are so many ambitions to be fulfilled. They have to become the richest man, they have to attain great power, they have to become a celebrity. They have to do a thousand and one things and life is so short. The only way is to do everything as quickly as possible.Most of the housewives in the West don’t know what cooking is. The best housewife is the one who knows how to open cans. Everything has to be done quickly and fast. Why bother about cooking?Nobody is in a state of stillness; they cannot be. That seems to be a waste of time. Sitting silently, doing nothing is the foundation of meditation. In the West, meditation is not possible for the simple reason that one life span is too short. And death comes too quickly. It does not give you enough time.The Eastern concept takes care of your spiritual growth. The hypothesis of reincarnation, a continuous eternal cycle of birth and re-birth, gives you enough time. You can sit silently for hours; there is no hurry. There is no need to be speedy. There is an eternity available to you – not only seventy years.The West is very poor. They have only seventy years for each person. The East may look poor from the outside, but its inner arrangement is very rich. Eternity behind – eternity ahead.Secondly, just one life is not enough to make you bored. Seventy years goes so fast that boredom is not possible. But life after life, running after money. Life after life, running after power. Life after life, running after men or women. As you become aware of this long series of the same stupidities – in which you have succeeded many times, but you have not gained anything….Each life you have to begin again from ABC. Just visualize millions of lives behind you…. You have loved so many women and you have told every woman, “I will love you forever and forever.” And you have told every woman, “You are the most beautiful woman in the world.” And you have been saying that for millions of lives to millions of women, to millions of men. It is tiring – just the very idea.It brings a certain maturity to you that now it is time to stop being childish. You have been playing these games so long that it is time to grow up; to do something else that you have never done before.Meditation fits perfectly well in the Eastern vision of life. That is the only thing you have never done before. You have earned money, you have become rich, you have been in politics, you have become ministers and prime ministers and presidents. You have become great celebrities. You have done everything, because in so many lives there was so much opportunity – so much time.And once you understand it…that you are still doing the same things, again and again and again. It is good to commit a mistake once, but to go on committing the same mistake again and again proves your stupidity.And there is a great and urgent need to do something that you have never done before – a search for your own self. You have run after everything in the world and it has not led anywhere. All roads in the world go round and round; they never reach any goal. They don’t have any goal.Visualizing this long perspective, one suddenly becomes sick of the whole action; love affairs, fights, anger, greed, jealousy. And one starts thinking for the first time, “Now I should find a new dimension in which I will not be running after anybody; in which I will be coming back home. I have gone too far away in these millions of lives.”This is the foundation of the Eastern wisdom. It creates a great boredom with life, death and the continuous vicious circle. That is the original meaning of the word, samsara; it means the wheel that goes on moving, on and on; it knows no stopping. You can jump out of it, but you are clinging to it.This is the basic device to bring you to your senses. You have fooled around enough.Now stop it, and do something that you have been avoiding for centuries, that you have been postponing for tomorrow.These are very beautiful sutras. In the East people have never spoken unless they have understood. It is the greatest dishonesty, the greatest crime to speak, either for or against something that you don’t know.In the East, even people who have known – who have come to the ultimate flowering of their being – many of them have not spoken because they were not able to find the right words. They were not articulate, hence, they decided to remain silent. It is better to be silent rather than give wrong ideas to people. Only a very few people have spoken. And they have spoken, only when they were absolutely certain that what they were saying may help millions of people down the ages.The East has never been interested in the daily newspaper. It has been interested in statements which have the quality of eternity, which will remain valid in every age, in every time. As long as man remains on the earth, the validity of these statements will not be challenged.A newspaper becomes useless by evening. In the West, there are morning editions and afternoon editions because by the afternoon, the morning edition has become useless. Evening editions, because by the evening the afternoon edition has become useless. Night editions, because by the night the evening edition has become useless.These sutras will remain as fresh and as young as when they were uttered for the first time – but only for those who can experience what is contained in them. Otherwise, it is so much prose. Once you experience it, the prose starts turning into poetry. The words start turning into silence. The statements prove to be only devices to give you the feel of an eternal dance of existence.No Western book, and I have gone through all the philosophers and all the theologians – it was a tedious journey – no Western book has anything parallel to the Eastern sutras because they are only mind stuff. The Eastern sutras have a qualitative difference. They have nothing to do with mind. They have something to do with your innermost being and its experiences of blissfulness, ecstasy, the universal joy that pervades this vast existence. Only man is missing it. And man is missing it because of his knowledgeability.The trees are not missing it because they are innocent. The oceans are not missing it. The mountains are not missing it. The stars are not missing it. They are absolutely innocent, they are not trapped in knowledge.The first sutra of Bodhidharma says:“Not to let go of wisdom is stupidity.”Your so-called wisdom is all borrowed. It is not wisdom at all; instead, being wise, you are otherwise. You go on repeating things that you don’t understand; things that have not grown up in your own being, things that are absolutely foreign to your own existence, to your own life. You have been collecting, just like small children, sea shells on the beach and thinking that you are creating a great treasure. Yes it is possible to deceive others, and to deceive yourself.One of my professors has a doctorate on a strange thesis from the University of London – very prestigious. His subject matter was the ways of the growth of consciousness. I was his student. He presented his book to me when it was published, and said, “I would love very much to know your opinion.”I said, “I don’t have to read the book. I know you.”He said, “What do you mean?”I said, “I simply know, that you know nothing about any growth of consciousness. So everything that you have written in this book is borrowed. You deceived yourself, you deceived the professors of London University who have examined it, and now you have published the book, millions will read it and be deceived. Rather than presenting the book on consciousness to me, show some consciousness.”He was very much shocked and he knew what I was saying was right. He was a drunkard. Without drinking alcohol every evening, he could not live.I said, “Just drop this addiction with unconsciousness, because alcohol is doing nothing but creating more unconsciousness. And you have some nerve to write a thesis on the subject matter of consciousness.”But he was a very learned man; he knew many languages. He had collected materials just sitting in the library and he had managed to write a very beautiful thesis. But I said, “I will not read it because it is simply the work of a clerk. Anybody who has a little intelligence could have taken the information from the many sources which are available and collected it. I will read your book, only when you show me, something as a growing consciousness in you.”I returned the book to him. He said, “I am fortunate that you have not been an examiner of my book. Otherwise, I would have never got the doctorate.”I said, “Between you and me, you will never get it. You can befool the world but not yourself.”People go on collecting knowledge and get mixed up and start thinking that this knowledge is wisdom. Knowledge is not wisdom.Wisdom comes through your growth of consciousness, and knowledge comes through collecting from the scriptures, from learned people, and making some sort of a system. But you remain the same; you don’t go through any transformation.Hence, the first sutra: Not to let go of wisdom is stupidity. Just drop your wisdom and with your wisdom gone, your stupidity will also be gone. If you cling to your knowledge, which you think is wisdom, you will remain stupid forever.When the mind does not exist understanding and not understanding are both true.The moment the mind is silent, nonfunctioning, everything is true. It is the mind that distorts everything and makes everything untrue. Knowledge comes through the mind, and wisdom comes when there is no-mind. This is a distinction which has not been made by the great philosophers of the world, except by the mystics of the East.The dictionaries will say wisdom is knowledge, but actual reality and the experience of it, is not a dictionary. It makes a clear-cut distinction that knowledge and wisdom are not only, not synonymous, they are antagonistic. If your mind is full of knowledge you will remain unwise, stupid.And if your mind is dropped and you go beyond it, you enter into the world of wisdom – into the world of awakening. In that awakening everything is true. Because you are true, everything is authentic because you are authentic.In the mind you are untrue, you are false. That’s why whatever happens through the mind turns into a falsity, a hypocrisy.Mind is the greatest enemy of man.When the mind exists, understanding and not understanding are both false.When you understand, reality depends on you.This is such a pregnant statement that you should try to feel it, not just to hear it: When you understand, reality depends on you. And when do you understand? When the mind is put aside and your being encounters reality directly, without the mediator, mind, then reality depends on you. You have risen higher than reality. You have risen to the ultimate reality. Otherwise reality is relative reality.When you don’t understand you depend on reality.When you don’t understand – when you are in the mind – you are a victim of this mundane reality that you see all around. Money deceives you, power deceives you, prestige deceives you, anything….You are living in so many misunderstandings that if you come to see, you will be surprised at how articulate you are in creating falsehoods.Everything that passes through the mind, is almost as if you have taken a straight staff and put it into the water. You will suddenly see the straight staff is no longer straight. It has become bent at the place where it is in the water because water functions differently. You take it out; it is again straight. You put it back into water; it loses its straightness. The same is the situation with mind. Mind has only one capacity – to falsify things.Unfortunately we are educated only as minds. And if the world lives in hypocrisy, in misery, in anguish, it is not a wonder. If the world goes on fighting and killing and goes on preparing for a global suicide, it is not a surprise. Mind cannot do anything else. It poisons everything.The whole message is to get beyond the mind and then everything is crystal clear. Then you don’t ask any questions. You simply act out of your clarity, out of your transparent vision. And each of your acts has a beauty – tremendous beauty of its own. It has a grace. And it has a power of blessings to shower over the whole world.When reality depends on you, that which is not real becomes real.Right now, it is a weird situation. Everything is real which is not real. And everything that is real, is unreal. Have you ever thought: Is your soul a reality to you? It is not a reality to you. You have only heard about it, but you don’t have any experience of it.But thousands of false things are real. A stone statue in the temple is real to you. Your own consciousness is unreal. Your own buddha nature is unreal. And a statue of marble is real to you. Before the false, you bow down, you worship the false not knowing what you are doing. You are insulting yourself and you are insulting all the buddhas of the past, of the present, of the future.You are a buddha. You don’t have to worship. There is nobody higher than you; there is nobody lower than you. You don’t have to worship anybody and you don’t have to accept anybody’s worship. This whole existence is equally divine.When you depend on reality, that which is real becomes false. When you depend on reality, everything is false.Everything that you have known up to now, as real….I have heard:In a great city, one man had the best palace. People used to come to see it. It was a miracle of architecture. But one night, suddenly, it caught fire. The man had gone to a friend’s house. Somebody informed him, “What are you doing? Your palace is burning.” He ran; nothing could be more shocking to him. Without his knowing, tears were running from his eyes. His most precious thing, his greatest attachment was being destroyed before his eyes and nothing could be done. The fire had gone too far.Just then, his youngest son came running to him, telling him, “Father, don’t be worried. Yesterday I sold the house. The king was continually saying that it was embarrassing to him that you have a better palace. Finally I decided to sell it – and he was ready to give any price.”Suddenly the tears dried and the man started smiling. Nothing had changed. The house was burning but it was no longer his. So who cares? So it was not the house that was hurting him, it was the ego, his house. And then his younger son came and said, “Father, what are you doing here? Although we had agreed to sell the palace, no sale deed has been written yet. And of course the king is not going to pay the money. I have every suspicion that he is behind the fire.”And again the tears started coming. And the situation was the same; nothing had changed. Only the idea had changed; the house became his, then there was great misery. The house was no longer his, all misery disappeared.And then the king himself came in his chariot and he said, “You need not be worried. I am a man of my word. If I have purchased it, I have purchased it. No sale deed has been written, no money has been advanced, but because yesterday we agreed verbally, that is enough. It is my house that is burning. You need not be worried.”And suddenly, instead of tears, the man was smiling.When reality depends on you, everything is true. Thus, the sage doesn’t use his mind to look for reality, or reality to look for his mind, or his mind to look for his mind, or reality to look for reality.It is a vicious circle: mind and reality, mind and the world. Mind creates a certain world which is nothing but your projection. And then, that certain projection creates your mind. And this way, this vicious circle goes on supporting the other; your mind supports your projections, your projections support your mind. And you go on living in a hallucination.Thus, the sage doesn’t use his mind to look for reality, or reality to look for his mind, or his mind to look for his mind, or reality to look for reality. His mind doesn’t give rise to reality. And reality doesn’t give rise to his mind. And because both his mind and reality are still, he’s always in samadhi.This is a beautiful definition of samadhi. When the mind is still and the reality is still – when you are out of the vicious circle – all is silence, profound silence.The word samadhi has to be understood. It means coming to a state of absolute equilibrium, coming to a state of absolute balance. The word comes from Sanskrit. And Sanskrit is one of the languages in the world which has words with profound meaning. Not just dictionary meaning, but with existential meaning. Other languages have only dictionary meanings.Sanskrit is the only language in the whole world which was created by enlightened people. It is a created language. It has never been a language of the people. There was no time when the whole country was speaking Sanskrit. All other languages of the world have been used by people at some time or other. Many have become dead languages, like Latin or Hebrew or Pali or Prakrit. Many languages which were once living languages, have become dead ones. But Sanskrit has never been a language of the people.This is a very strange phenomenon. It has been the language of enlightened people, hence every word has two meanings; one, a dictionary meaning for the scholar and one, the existential meaning for those who are in search of truth.Sanskrit has two words vyadhi and samadhi. Vyadhi means “sickness of the soul” and samadhi means “health and wholeness of the soul.” But these are existential meanings. A man who has not experienced samadhi is spiritually sick. He may be bodily fit, but he is not spiritually fit. It is possible a man may be bodily sick, but he can attain to samadhi. Even at the last moment of your life, you can attain to samadhi. Your spiritual being comes in all its health, wholesomeness. Even if for a single moment you have known samadhi, you have known the greatest secret in existence.There is no word in any language synonymous to samadhi. Only one word in Japanese comes a little close to it, but it is not synonymous. That word is satori. And unfortunately, the Japanese have stopped at satori thinking that it is samadhi.Satori is only a glimpse of samadhi – a faraway glimpse. For example, you can see the Himalayan peaks from hundreds of miles away, but to see the peak when sitting on it, is a totally different experience. Satori is only a faraway vision of samadhi; a glimpse, beautiful in itself but not equivalent to samadhi.Samadhi is your very nature in its absolute clarity, in its absolute purity, in its absolute awareness. Samadhi is your real home.And the people who don’t know samadhi are wandering without a home. They are homeless people, rootless people and their whole life is nothing but a tragedy. Samadhi gives you roots in existence, and it opens the doors of your home. Samadhi is the ultimate actualization of your potential.And the way to samadhi is simple. Drop the mind – go beyond the mind and you will enter into samadhi. Mind is the only barrier and strangely we are continuously educating the mind to become more and more powerful. Our whole educational systems around the world, are nursing the mind – your enemy, making it stronger, more informative, more knowledgeable.In a more intelligent world, meditation should become absolutely mandatory in every school, in every college, in every university. And unless a person has some taste of samadhi, he will not be allowed to leave the university. He will not be given the certificates to leave.And if we can make meditation an intrinsic part of all education systems, then naturally these people are going to be politicians, these people are going to be business men, these people are going to be industrialists, these people are going to be musicians, these people are going to be painters, actors, dancers. But they will all have one thing in common and that will be their experience of meditation. And that will be the common element joining the whole of humanity into one whole.A man of meditation functions differently. Whatever profession he chooses, it does not matter. He will bring to his profession some quality of sacredness. He may be making shoes, or he may be cleaning the roads, but he will bring to his work some quality, some grace, some beauty, which is not possible without samadhi.We can fill the whole world with ecstatic people. Just a simple thing has to be accepted…. Whether you are going to be a doctor or an engineer or a scientist, whatever you are going to be, that does not matter. Meditation should be the foundation for every profession, for every dimension of education.Wars will disappear on their own. You will not have to protest against nuclear weapons. Population will start declining on its own, because a man of meditation functions with awareness. If he sees that the world is overpopulated, he cannot produce children. Nobody has to tell him. Why should he bring his children into a world which is going down every day towards a disaster? Who wants his children to go through a third world war? Who wants his children to die hungry and starving on the streets?Meditation is the only cure for all sicknesses that man is prone to; a single medicine. And I should remind you that the word meditation and medicine come from the same root. Medicine for the body and meditation for the soul. They both bring health.The sutras say, “Nothing has a nature of its own.”This is one of the greatest contributions of Gautam Buddha and his disciples like Bodhidharma. Nothing has a nature of its own.It means, your consciousness is a pure space. It does not have any attributes. It is utterly empty, yet full – full of joy, full of light, full of fragrance – but utterly empty.There is no self-nature which makes people different. The moment you are in samadhi, you will see trees are also in samadhi. The mountains are in samadhi. The stars are in samadhi. The whole existence is in samadhi. Only you had gone astray. You have come back, merged and melted into the wholeness of the universe. Nothing has a nature of its own.Act. Don’t question.Bodhidharma is not a philosopher and he is not interested in any kind of philosophizing. He is a simple man of action. He says, Act. Don’t question – because questions lead nowhere. Every answer will create ten more questions. And you can go on asking, life after life, and you will not be able to find the answer. Act.When you question, you are wrong.It does not matter what question you are asking. When you question, you are wrong. And when you don’t question and silently act, samadhi is not far away. Questions come from the mind and whatever answers are given, your mind rejoices in becoming more and more knowledgeable. It becomes more and more powerful. Bodhidharma said, “Please don’t ask anything. If you want to know the answer, don’t ask the question. Act.”Act, transcend the mind and you will find you are the answer. Your very being is the answer.When you are deluded, the six senses and five shades are constructs of suffering and mortality.He has great acumen in saying tremendously meaningful things in small sutras. He is saying when you are deluded, when you are in the mind in other words, then the five elements create the world and your six senses.It is a very strange thing, because it is only just in this century that science has discovered the sixth sense. Otherwise, all old scriptures talk about five senses. It is only Bodhidharma alone, who talks about six senses. And the sixth sense is such, that it is a miracle he came to know about it. It has just been discovered.It is inside your ear. The ear has always been accepted as one of the five senses, but we didn’t know that inside the ear there are two senses. One is the sense of hearing and another is the sense of balance. If you are hit strongly on your ear you will immediately lose balance. When you see a drunkard coming home in the late night, you cannot believe how he manages. He has lost all control and all balance because alcohol affects the sixth sense. Every drug affects the sixth sense and immediately you lose balance.A drunkard came home late in the night and was trying to open the lock. But his hand was shaking and the lock was shaking; his other hand was shaking and he could not manage to enter the key into the lock. Both were shaking. He said, “My God, what is happening? It must be an earthquake. Everything is shaking.”A policeman watching him from the road felt compassion for him. He was a good man but had fallen into wrong company…just like you. You are all good men fallen into wrong company. Soon you will be walking like a drunkard. The policeman came to him and said, “Can I help you?” He said, “Yes, it would be very kind of you, if you could hold the house for a moment so that I can put my key into the hole. Just hold the house. There seems to be a great earthquake.”It is very strange because that sixth sense is hidden inside the ear. Hence, nobody has ever talked about it because nobody was ever aware of it. It was only in this century, surgeons became aware that in the ear there is also another sense that keeps your body balanced.But Bodhidharma says six senses and five shades are constructs of suffering and mortality. When you are deluded, when you are in the mind, the five elements and the six senses of your body create for you, suffering, death and nothing else.But:When you wake up, that is, when you go beyond the mind, the six senses and five shades are constructs of nirvana and immortality.Everything is the same; the same six senses and the same five aggregates – the elements that constitute the world. Once you are beyond the mind, they create nirvana and immortality.So Bodhidharma is not against the body and he is not against the world. He is against your sleep. He does not want you to renounce the world. He does not want you to torture the body, because this body and this world will behave absolutely differently. You just have to be awake. So the whole answer is:Renounce sleeping, renounce the mind which is the citadel of your sleep.Go into silence, which will release your dormant awareness. And your whole being will become luminous with consciousness.Then the same body, the same senses and the same world has a totally different significance. It becomes nirvana. It becomes immortality.Someone who seeks the way doesn’t look beyond himself. He knows that the mind is the way. But when he finds the mind, he finds nothing. And when he finds the way, he finds nothing. If you think you can use the mind to find the way, you are deluded. When you are deluded, buddhahood exists.This is a very beautiful statement. It is very rare to come across such a statement. When you are deluded, buddhahood exists because when you are aware, it does not exist.It is a very strange statement. You would have thought otherwise. You would have thought that when you are deluded, buddhahood does not exist, and when you are aware, it does exist. But Bodhidharma is saying just the opposite. And he is right.When you are deluded… When you are wandering in all kinds of illusions in the world, there is a desire in you, deep down. Sometimes you become aware of it; sometimes you forget all about it. The longing to be a buddha, the longing to become aware, the longing for enlightenment….Even in the deepest sleep, somewhere in the corner of your darkness, a small longing goes on continuing to be alert – to be awakened, to be enlightened because nobody can be satisfied with misery, agony, anguish, forever. One wants to get out of it. That’s why Bodhidharma says:When you are deluded, buddhahood exists. When you are aware, it does not exist. Because awareness is buddhahood.When you are aware, you are a buddha and the longing for buddhahood disappears. And when you are a buddha, you are not aware that you are a buddha. Awareness cannot be aware of itself. Innocence cannot be aware of itself. So the buddhahood exists only for those who are far away from it. Buddhahood disappears for those who have reached home. A buddha does not know that he is a buddha. Knowledge is always about the other. The mirror can reflect everything in the world except itself. The mirror does not know that he is.Don’t hate life and death or love life and death. Keep your every thought free of delusion, and in life you will witness the beginning of nirvana, and in death you will experience the assurance of no rebirth.It fills me with great surprise that the whole Western sphere has never thought about rebirth. Great philosophers from Plato to Kant, to Feuerbach, to Bertrand Russell, to Jean Paul Sartre – a great line of immensely intelligent geniuses, but not a single person has ever thought about rebirth. Their whole idea has remained…just one life. It is too miserly.Existence is not miserly; it is overflowing with abundance.Every death is a beginning of a new life, except only rarely, when somebody becomes enlightened. Then his death is the ultimate death. He will not be born again. He will not be engaged in a body again; he will not suffer the agony of another mind again. His consciousness will melt, just like an ice cube melting in the ocean and becoming one with it. He will be all over, but he will not be in any particular place, in a particular form. He will be all over, but formless. He will be the very universe.Each time a man becomes enlightened, the whole universe gets a little higher in consciousness, because this man’s consciousness spreads all over the existence. The more people become enlightened, the more existence will be richer. So it is not only a question of a single person becoming enlightened. In his enlightenment, the whole universe gains immensely. It becomes richer, more beautiful, more joyous, more celebrated.To see form but not be corrupted by form or to hear sound but not be corrupted by sound is liberation. Eyes that are not attached to form are the gates of Zen. Ears that aren’t attached to sound are also the gates of Zen. In short, those who perceive the existence of phenomena and remain unattached are liberated.When delusions are absent, the mind is the land of buddhas. When delusions are present, the mind is hell.I am reminded of a great Zen master. The emperor of Japan had come to see him and he had been wanting to come to see him but the path to his monastery was dangerous, going through wild forests, dangerous mountainous parts. But finally, the emperor decided he had to go. His death was coming near and he couldn’t take the risk…. Before death came he must have some understanding that death cannot destroy.He reached the Zen master who was sitting under a tree. He touched his feet and said, “I have come to ask one question. Is there really a hell or heaven? Because my death is coming close and my only concern is: where am I going; to hell or to heaven?” The master laughed and said, “I have never thought that our emperor is such an idiot.”To say to the emperor, “an idiot”…! For a split second, the emperor forgot and pulled out his sword, and he was going to cut off the head of the Zen master.The Zen master laughed and said, “This is the gate of hell.”The emperor stopped, put his sword back in the sheath, and the master said, “You have entered into heaven. Now you can go. Just remember: anger, violence, destructiveness. These are the gates of hell. And the hell is in your mind.“But understanding, compassion, silence, are the doors of heaven. They are beyond your mind. And I have given you the experience of both. Forgive me that I called you an idiot. I had to. It was just a response to your question, because I am not a thinker and I don’t answer the way thinkers answer questions. I am a mystic. I simply create the device so that you can have some taste of the answer. Now get lost.”And the emperor touched his feet with tears of gratitude, because no other answer would have been of much help. It would have remained just a hypothesis. But the man was a tremendously insightful master. He created the situation immediately, just by calling him an idiot. And he showed him both: the doors of hell and the doors of heaven. Your mind is hell. Going beyond your mind is heaven.Go beyond the mind. That is the essence of the whole teaching of all the awakened ones.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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“Without the mind there’s no buddha” means that the buddha comes from the mind. … Whoever wants to see a buddha sees the mind before he sees the buddha. … Once you’ve seen the buddha, you forget about the mind. If you don’t forget about the mind, the mind will confuse you. …Mortality and buddhahood are like water and ice. To be afflicted by the three poisons is mortality. To be purified by the three releases is buddhahood. That which freezes into ice in winter melts into water in summer. Eliminate ice, and there’s no more water. Get rid of mortality, and there’s no more buddhahood. Clearly, the nature of ice is the nature of water. …Mortals liberate buddhas and buddhas liberate mortals. This is what’s meant by impartiality. Mortals liberate buddhas because affliction creates awareness. And buddhas liberate mortals because awareness negates affliction. There can’t help but be affliction. And there can’t help but be awareness. If not for affliction, there would be nothing to create awareness. And if not for awareness, there would be nothing to negate affliction. When you’re deluded, buddhas liberate mortals. When you’re aware, mortals liberate buddhas. Buddhas don’t become buddhas on their own. They’re liberated by mortals. Buddhas regard delusion as their father and greed as their mother. Delusion and greed are different names for mortality. …When you’re deluded, you’re on this shore. When you’re aware, you’re on the other shore. But once you know your mind is empty and you see no appearances, you’re beyond delusion and awareness. And once you’re beyond delusion and awareness, the other shore doesn’t exist. The tathagata isn’t on this shore or the other shore. And he isn’t in midstream. Arhats are in midstream, and mortals are on this shore. On the other shore is buddhahood.Bodhidharma has insights which are unparalleled. There have been many disciples of Gautam Buddha who have attained to enlightenment, but nobody has shown such great insightfulness. Either they have remained silent or they have spoken, but neither their silence nor their speaking has reached to the heights and to the depths of consciousness.Perhaps the reason is that Bodhidharma is unafraid of what he is saying. He knows no fear. He has no concern with what people will think about his statements. He does not take into account anybody else when he is speaking. It is almost as if he is speaking to himself.For nine years he was sitting before a wall and when people would come, they would have to sit behind him. They could ask questions but Bodhidharma would answer only to the wall. He was not at all concerned about who was asking the question; he was more concerned with his own insight.Just last night I received the last book of J. Krishnamurti, in which he is not speaking to anybody – he is speaking just to himself. The words are recorded but there was no audience, and perhaps in this book he comes closer to truth than in any of his other books. The audience is a limitation.This has been my experience too. If I am speaking to my own people, then there is no limitation; then I don’t feel that I have to say something, or not to say something. Then I simply speak as if I am speaking to myself. When I am speaking to people who don’t know me, who don’t understand me – moreover they misunderstand me – there is a great limitation. Then I am not at freedom to speak. Their very faces, their eyes, their gestures prevent me from saying something that may hurt them.Just a few days ago, seventy people from the Times of India group of papers came to have an exclusive interview with me. The owners were also present – Samir Jain, Nandita Jain and their mother Indu Jain were also present. But the strangest thing that I immediately felt as I entered the auditorium…so ugly, so inhuman and so uncultured. When I was giving my greetings with folded hands to everybody, those seventy people, including Indu Jain, could not even respond. That is, in India, a simple thing. Even a stranger on the street folds his hands. It need not be known to you who he is, but you respond because a folded-hands greeting has a spiritual meaning.Shaking hands has no spiritual meaning; shaking hands has a very mundane meaning. You have to shake with your right hand. It was a device created by the West to show that you are not keeping any weapon in your right hand. It was not a greeting – it was a search. It was being alert that the man is not an enemy, that he cannot do any harm because his right hand is empty. The reason for shaking hands and its psychology is totally different; in a way very mean, political.But greeting somebody with folded hands has a spiritual meaning: first, that I bow down to your godliness. Whether you are a stranger, friend or enemy, it does not matter; still you are a temple of god, of a living god. Those folded hands are showing respect for the living god. These things are immaterial – whether you are a friend or a stranger or an enemy.And secondly, the folded hands show that I am not halfhearted in my greeting. I am total. Both hands, my left hemisphere, my right hemisphere both, are greeting you together. I am greeting you as one organic unity.But I was surprised that the Times of India press people – who are well-educated, who own the biggest newspapers, magazines, weeklies, fortnightlies who are all journalists – they could not respond to me. They sat there like stone statues, even Indu Jain.The only man who responded to me was Samir Jain, who is now in charge of the Times of India publications, and his sister, Nandita Jain. But she could not come to the full greeting. She was hesitating, so she came halfway. She could not come to the full greeting, but she could not remain a wooden statue. She looked to both sides. Even her mother, Indu Jain, who in private touches my feet, but in public…she remained just a wooden statue. So she looked at her mother and she looked at her brother and she chose the middle way. She just came halfway.To speak to such people is almost worse than speaking to a wall. I took the initiative of greeting them and they were not even human enough to respond to the greeting, and particularly in the East, such ugliness is unforgivable. And they have been insisting on the interview. I was reluctant – reluctant for the simple reason that they would ask stupid questions, then they would distort what I say. But when I saw that they had come with the whole staff of the Times Of India press, I agreed.But I really agreed for Samir Jain. He is a young man, he has been to the ashram before, he has meditated. He wanted to become a sannyasin but his father was absolutely against it, so much against it that if he became a sannyasin, his father would disown him. Now they are some of the richest people of the country. He has not the guts to say to the father, “It is perfectly okay, you can disown me,” but he has a sympathetic heart – and he was the only man who raised his hands.Now to talk to such people becomes impossible, unless you completely forget them, and whether they exist or not. And that’s what I had to do. I did not look at them at all, I just looked at my people and talked to my people. And I made a condition to them that they could not distort any statement; they had to publish my whole statement as I have given it. But they don’t even have the guts to publish their own questions and my answers, because my answers expose the dirty politics and the dirty journalism that follows politics.Bodhidharma speaks as if he’s speaking to himself. Then he can open his heart totally, without any limitation. He is absolutely unconcerned about who is going to listen to him, who is going to read him. Perhaps this is the reason why he reaches tremendously deep insights into human nature. You will see statements that have never been made before, but Bodhidharma has made them so clearly that they cannot be refuted either.These sutras have been in existence for at least one thousand years, but no Buddhist scholar has commented on them. The book was kept hidden in the Buddhist pagodas, temples. It has just been discovered a few years ago by some Western scholars, and they could not believe that Buddhists have not been allowing the world to know what such a tremendously significant book contains. I can understand the fear of the Buddhists. They have translated thousands of books into English and into German and into other international languages, but Bodhidharma has been neglected completely.It is a strange world. Here, to be sincere and truthful is the most dangerous thing.Just a few days ago, here in Pune, the Shankaracharya of Jyotirmath, Swami Svarupanand, declared in a press conference that “Osho is unparalleled, the most dangerous man in the whole history of mankind.”I don’t go out of my house. I am not a terrorist. I am not interested in any power politics. I don’t have any nuclear weapons. On what grounds is this man saying that I am unparalleled the most dangerous man in the whole history of mankind? What danger is there?The danger is that I don’t care about anybody when it comes to asserting the truth. It is not that I am dangerous. It is the truth that is dangerous.Just console people with lies. Go on giving them hope so they can manage to drag themselves towards their graves; just go on giving them opium so they don’t feel the pain, the agony, the stupidity of their lives.And that’s what all the religions have been doing. Whenever somebody has said the truth, he immediately becomes a dangerous man. Otherwise Jesus was not a dangerous man; he was only thirty-three when he was crucified – a young man, uneducated, doing no harm to anybody, but stating the truth. The rabbis of Israel could not tolerate that man. He was disturbing all their fabrication of lies. They crucified that young man. Socrates never harmed anybody, but his great crime was to speak the truth. He was poisoned and killed.Bodhidharma was also poisoned. Although the people who poisoned him thought that he was killed, he was not. He was made of a different kind of matter. He simply went into a coma and in the night disappeared, leaving one of his shoes in the tomb and the other shoe hanging on his staff.After three years, when people completely believed that he was dead, he was seen by a high government official passing the boundaries of China and entering into the Himalayas. The official could not believe his eyes. He had heard that Bodhidharma had been poisoned and killed. He asked Bodhidharma, who said, “I was in a coma and I waited for the night. When the coma disappeared a little and I was able to get up, I escaped from the tomb. I have left one of my shoes there in the tomb as proof that I have been there and another shoe I am taking, hanging on my staff to prove that I am Bodhidharma – my identity card.”The official immediately rushed to the mountain where Bodhidharma had been poisoned and he told the disciples. They showed the tomb and the official said, “I would like it to be opened because I have seen the man with his sandal hanging on his staff, and he has told me that he left the other sandal as a signature in the tomb. I would like to open the tomb and see whether that man was really Bodhidharma or somebody else who was playing a trick on me.” The tomb was opened and only one shoe was there, nothing else.What was the need to poison Bodhidharma? One cannot conceive how human beings have behaved with such people…they are making every effort to awaken you, and you respond by killing them. Who is insane? Is Socrates insane? Is Jesus insane? Is Mansoor insane? Is Sarmad insane? Is Bodhidharma insane? Or the people who have killed them…?Here are a few sutras for this morning, of great importance for those who want to understand the truth and who are ready to drop all kinds of lies.“Without the mind there is no buddha” means that the buddha comes from the mind.But the buddha is not the mind. The mind is the bondage of a buddha, and as he goes beyond the mind and enters into the state of no-mind, he becomes the buddha. But he comes from the mind – and you all have the mind, so you have fulfilled at least half the journey already!The other half is to get out of the mind and declare your buddhahood. You need not shout it, you need not even whisper it. It will declare itself in your presence, in your words, in your silence, in the depth of your eyes, in the grace and beauty of your individuality, in the fragrance that will surround you…you will be like a cool breeze.The word tathagata used for Gautam Buddha has two meanings. One meaning I have explained to you: it means the man who trusts existence and its suchness. Whatever happens, good or bad, misery or blissfulness, he remains unperturbed. He says it is the suchness of things. There is no need to be disturbed by suffering and there is no need to be disturbed by blissfulness. All these are natural phenomena. You have to remain aloof. That is one meaning of tathagata.There is another meaning also, and that other meaning is significant in understanding these sutras. Tathagata means a man who comes like a breeze and goes like a breeze. Literally it means, “thus came, thus gone” – he does not wait for your invitation. Suddenly he comes, and he does not wait for you to prevent him; suddenly he is gone, but he has left behind an experience of coolness and calmness and tranquility.That calmness, coolness, serenity, silence, declare more loudly than anything else to the whole existence that a buddha has arrived, that now all the priests are in danger, that all the politicians are trembling inside. All those who are living on lies are scared to death. Truth has such power. It never harms anybody but it makes the whole fabrication of lies around the world tremble. A single man of truth is enough.I am reminded of a Jewish story.In the Old Testament it is said God became very angry – the Jewish god is a very angry God. He became angry about two cities, Gomorrah and Sodom, because they were practicing perverted sexual things, and he was ready to destroy them. In the Old Testament he actually did destroy them. It reminds one of Hiroshima and Nagasaki…total destruction, and the cities were almost exactly of the same size as Nagasaki and Hiroshima. They were great cities in those days, with populations almost equal to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. And God destroyed them completely because they were becoming perverted.But in Judaism there is a small stream of authentic mystics – that is the only beautiful thing that Judaism has contributed to the world. They are called Hassids. They are not accepted by orthodox Judaism, they are condemned, but they are people of truth. They cannot conceive of a God who can get angry, so they have written their own story. They don’t care what the Old Testament says.Their story is that one Hassid mystic, hearing that God is going to destroy Sodom and Gomorrah, approached God and said, “Before you destroy them, you have to answer a few of my questions. First, if there are two hundred people who are not perverted in those two cities – who are good, who are pure of soul, who are sincere, who are people of realization – are you still going to destroy those cities and those good people?”God was taken aback. He could not say that he could destroy two hundred self-realized people. He said, “I was not aware of it; it is very kind of you to inform me. I will not destroy them. Those two hundred people are going to save two hundred thousand people.”The Hassid said, “The second question: if there are not two hundred people, but only twenty, are you going to destroy them? Do you consider quantity more significant than quality?”And God was again defeated. Certainly quality is of higher value than quantity. What does it matter whether there are two hundred self-realized people or twenty? God said, “I accept your argument. Even if there are twenty people…if you can prove there are twenty people, those cities will be saved.”The Hassid laughed and said, “My last argument: If there are not twenty people but only one self-realized man, who lives six months in Sodom and six months in Gomorrah, are you going to destroy the cities? Do you still think quantity means much – or quality?”God became very fed up with the man; he was a real Jew. He was bringing him down, haggling, and now he had brought him down to one man from two hundred. He said, “Okay, but then you will have to present that one man!”The Hassid said, “I am that man!”Jews don’t allow this beautiful story. They say it is fiction, but to me their idea of God being angry and destroying Gomorrah and Sodom is a fiction. To me, the Hassid story seems to be more authentic.Just one man of truth is enough to save the world. But the world does not want to be saved. God need not kill that one man, the world kills that man. The people whom he was going to save are the people who destroy him.“Without the mind there’s no buddha” means that the buddha comes from the mind – but he is not the mind. It is just like a lotus flower. It comes from mud, but it is not mud. Can you think of two things as different as mud and a lotus flower? But the lotus flower comes from the mud and rises above the waters…the lotus flower is such a transformation, but without the mud there will be no lotus flowers.Without lotus flowers, mud can exist…this is something to be understood. The higher is very fragile, the lower is very solid. The lower is like a rock and the higher is like a rose flower. The higher you move, the more fragile you become. These people, Socrates or Jesus or Bodhidharma, could be poisoned. These were the lotus flowers. But the muddy minds became very angry. Seeing the lotus flowers coming out of them, their anger is understandable. The lotus flower is such a beauty – there is no other flower in the world compared to the beauty of the lotus; hence Buddha has called his paradise “a lotus paradise.” To make it the ultimate in beauty, he has used the word lotus.But this is the strangest thing about the world – that the mud can exist without any lotuses, but no lotus can exist without the mud. Minds can exist in millions without there being a single buddha, but a buddha cannot exist if all the minds are absent. Minds function like the mud. He has to transcend the mud and the water, and rise above to meet the sun, to see the sun. So remember: the buddha comes from the mind, but he is not the mind.Whoever wants to see a buddha sees the mind…Because the buddha is invisible. It is not a flower that blossoms for the outward eyes. It is a flower that blossoms only for the inner eye. Unless your inner eye is open, you will not recognize the buddha.The no-mind is needed before one can see the buddha.A tremendously beautiful story is that when Buddha became enlightened, his first thought was to go back to his kingdom; his father must be old if he was not dead. If he was still alive, then Buddha owed something to him; he was his only son and he had given him immense suffering. Buddha had been going to be his support in his old age, and he was going to be his successor – and then he escaped. So his first thought was to reach the kingdom and to impart his own ecstasy, his own blissfulness, to his father.But he was not aware of the fact that his father would not be able to recognize him as a buddha. His inner eye was not open. He thought only through the mind; he did not know any approach through the no-mind. So when he faced the old man, the old man was really angry. And you could not complain about his anger.The father said, “You deceived me in my old age. Where have you been for twelve years? What have you been doing? What is all this nonsense…? An emperor’s son carrying a begging bowl! You are born to be one of the greatest emperors in the world. Perhaps, as the astrologers said when you were born, you have the capacity to become a world conqueror, and you have chosen this stupid life.”Buddha stood silently, not saying a single word. He first wanted to let the man release his anger. But the old man recognized, after half an hour had passed, that while he had been shouting and he had been abusing and he had been condemning, his son was simply standing there with such silence, absolutely unperturbed. He looked closely.Buddha said, “This is a right gesture, look closely. I am not the man who left you; that man died long ago. Yes, I am in the same continuity but before it was the mud; now I am the lotus. So don’t take revenge against the lotus because you are angry with the mud. Just let me wash your tears,” – because the old man was full of tears – “and clean your eyes. Just cool down and just have another look – I am not the same man who left the palace. A great transformation has happened; I left the palace as a mortal, I am coming back to the palace as an immortal. I left the palace as an ordinary human being, I am coming back to the palace divine. Just have a little look.”The father looked at him – certainly there had been a great change. For a few moments there was utter silence – the father simply went on looking at him. Something transpired between the father and the son, and the father said, “Forgive me. In my anger, with my tears, with my old eyes, I could not recognize the transformation. Now my only desire is that you initiate me on the same path which transforms mud into a lotus. You have certainly become a lotus. I have never seen you so beautiful, so graceful.” Nothing had been said, and the father was being initiated.The moment you know, you don’t have to declare it. It declares itself. But only those who have a certain sensitivity, a certain music in their heart, a certain poetry in their being, will be able to recognize you. Those who are simply accountants, bankers, running after money, running after power, will be absolutely blind when it comes to recognizing a buddha.Once you have seen the buddha, you forget about the mind.Once you have seen the lotus flower you forget all about the mud.If you don’t forget about the mind, the mind will confuse you.It will not allow you to recognize the great transmutation, the great transformation that has happened – perhaps in your son, perhaps in your friend, perhaps in a stranger. You need a certain sympathetic attitude and an opening of the heart to allow the transformed man to leave his imprint within you.And your recognition is going to be a seed of transformation within you: then you cannot remain in the mind anymore; then you cannot remain contented with your muddy world; then you would like to become another lotus. You have heard the challenge and you have seen the reality that you contain the lotus, but you have been unaware of it, it has remained dormant.Everybody is a buddha, but only in the seed, hidden in the mud. Recognizing a lotus flower is recognizing your own future, your own possibilities, your own grandeur.Mortality and buddhahood are like water and ice.There is not much difference between the mortals and the immortals. The difference is just like water and ice.To be afflicted by the three poisons is mortality. To be purified by the three releases is buddhahood.The three poisons, Bodhidharma says, are greed, anger, delusion. With these three poisons you remain a mortal. Once you are purified of these three poisons, you have become an immortal. You have attained to the eternity. Now there is no death for you.That which freezes into ice in winter melts into water in summer.There is no qualitative difference between water and ice or vapor. The difference is only of temperature. Every human being – the greatest criminal, even an Adolf Hitler – has the potential to be a buddha. However unconscious you may be, however deep may be your sleep, you can be awakened.Awakening is not a difference of quality. It is a difference only of degree. The sleeping man is less awake and the awake man is less asleep. Remember, the difference between people is only of degree – and that is not much of a difference. A slight understanding and the difference can be dissolved.Get rid of mortality, and there is no more buddhahood.This is how Bodhidharma is special. He says, Get rid of mortality, and there is no more buddhahood. It is only in the eyes of the mortals that buddhas appear so high. When their mortality is finished, their own buddhahood is attained. And the essential quality of awareness is that it is there, but you are not aware of it. You cannot be aware of awareness. You cannot be conscious of consciousness.You cannot be a knower when you really know. Then you are one with it. The buddhahood happens only to you because you are a mortal and Buddha looks so far away. You are only in the mud, just a seed, and the lotus looks so far away, so different. You cannot conceive any connection between you and the lotus. But when you become a lotus yourself, all differences disappear. And the lotus is not aware of its beauty, is not aware of its fragrance; it is simply its nature.Except for Bodhidharma, nobody else has been able to make these kinds of statements for the simple reason that they are so strange, they look so illogical, irrational. But existence is illogical. It is irrational. If you are only thinking in the mind, then it is one thing, but if you are experiencing the process of mud transforming into a lotus flower, you will understand Bodhidharma without any difficulty. You will rejoice in his strange statements.Mortals – again, a very strange statement:Mortals liberate buddhas and buddhas liberate mortals.I can understand why Buddhists have been hiding these sutras for one thousand years, because the very idea is outrageous that Mortals liberate buddhas and buddhas liberate mortals. But Bodhidharma is right.Every buddha comes from the mortals and seeing the agony, the suffering, the misery, the continuous meaninglessness of mortals is the cause of his liberation. If there were no mortals, there would be no buddhas.When I came back from the university, naturally my parents were anxious that I should get married. They were afraid that I was not the sort and my father was very alert that once I say no to something, then there is no way to make it yes. So he asked his friends, “Just find out what’s on his mind, if it is possible that he would say yes. Only then, I will ask him. Once he has said no to me, it is finished.”So his friends started asking me. One of his friends was the best physician of that area. He called me to have a dinner with him and along the way he mentioned, “What do you think about marriage?”I said, “Uncle, I am unmarried; I don’t have any experience. You have been married thrice. You have three times more experience than anybody else. You tell me, what do you think?”He looked very miserable and he said, “My experience – I am a fool! I should have stopped when my first wife died. But fools are fools. I married again thinking that not every woman is going to be the same. But within a few days…the woman was different but the problems were the same. And God has been so kind to me, even the second wife died. But my stupidity is such, I married again and now I am suffering. And you are asking me, ‘What do you think about marriage’!”I said, “That’s enough. Just tell my father your experience. You have liberated me from marriage.”He said, “What do you mean by that? I have done just the opposite of what your father asked me. I was going to convince you.”I said, “You have convinced me! Just tell my father the whole thing that happened…I will get married only if you say yes.”He said, “I cannot. No, I will not drag you into the same hell in which I have lived. I cannot say yes.”“Then,” I said, “tell my father that you have convinced me that I should not get married.”He said, “You have put me in such trouble. Your father is depending on me.”He reported to my father. My father said, “You should have been a little more cautious. Instead of convincing him about marriage, you have spoiled the whole thing.”He said, “What can I do? He managed in such a way that I forgot completely what the purpose of the dinner was.”Mortals liberate buddhas – just look around at mortals and you cannot resist being a buddha – the sooner the better! And buddhas liberate mortals. That is just repaying the debt. When they become buddhas they start hammering the mortals. That’s what I have been doing my whole life: first mortals liberated me, now I am trying to liberate mortals.The statement is very strange. Perhaps Buddhist scholars could not find how to explain it, so they thought it better to keep it in oblivion, not to bring it out. Otherwise it is perfectly okay that buddhas liberate mortals, but mortals liberating buddhas? The learned, the scholarly, cannot understand it.This is what is meant by impartiality.Mortals liberating buddhas, buddhas liberating mortals – this is called impartiality. Now everything is balanced. Nobody owes anything to anybody else; neither the buddhas are obliging you, nor are you obliging buddhas. You have come to a state where both have paid their debts to each other.Mortals liberate buddhas because affliction creates awareness.Seeing the mortals and their afflictions…if you are intelligent enough you will not follow their path. So many are following that path and everybody is falling in a ditch. And everybody is suffering.When my father failed with the physician, he approached another friend of his. He thought that would be the last resort, because he was a supreme court advocate and it was known that he had never lost any case. So my father told him, “If you can win this case, then we will accept that you are really a great advocate of the supreme court.”The judge said, “This is nothing. Just with my left hand I can do it. I will be coming tomorrow to your home.”My father told him, “Come prepared!”He said, “Don’t be worried. I know your son. And do you think he can defeat me in arguments?”My father said, “I don’t think he can defeat you in arguments, but he has strange ways. The physician who is known to be the wisest man in the area…he managed to manipulate him. Now he is in his favor.”The advocate was very egoistic and he had reason to be an egoist. He said, “Don’t you be worried.”But my father said, “Still, you do the homework. Don’t come unprepared. I warn you. You may lose the case. My boy is strange.”The advocate said, “You calm down and don’t be worried. Tomorrow I will settle everything.”So the next day he came. I welcomed him and I asked him, “I know what you have come for. And I think my father must have told you, ‘Be prepared, do the homework.’”He looked at me and said, “How do you know?”I said, “That’s what he told the physician, so I know he must have told the same things to you. And you are his last resort. So if you are defeated, then the whole question of marriage is finished.”But he said, “Who said I am going to be defeated?”I said, “I am not saying that, I just want to make it clear that if I get defeated, I will be married – but if you get defeated, are you ready to divorce your wife?”He said, “My God, your father was right. I have never thought about it…that it could be a question. Certainly you are right. I should also put something at stake. But listen, I have children, and you know my wife. She even beats me. I cannot even utter the word divorce before her.”So I said, “You have not come with preparedness. And I don’t need any judge. I trust you, although you will be a party in argument and you will also be the judge.”He said, “I don’t want to argue at all!”I said, “What you are going to answer to my father?”He said, “That’s what I am thinking.”The argument never started. And I used to go to his house every day, knocking on the door, and he would simply say, “I don’t want to quarrel with you. I am already tortured too much.”And one day his wife came out and she said, “Why is he so afraid of you?”I said, “Because of you.”He started hiding in the bathroom and he would not come out. His wife said, “This is strange. He is never afraid of anybody. He hides, he says to me that he is not at home. What is the matter? What is cooking?”I said, “Nothing is cooking. He is afraid of being defeated. And you are my great support.”She said, “I don’t understand. What is going on? What is the problem? In what way am I the support?”I said, “You ask him. He is thinking of divorcing you.”And he immediately came out of the bathroom. He said, “Don’t lie! I am never going to divorce her. I love her. I will love her my whole life.”I said, “It is up to you. But what about the argument?”He said, “Finished. I don’t want to see you at all. You have made me so shaky that even in the court, the moment I remember you I feel afraid. Don’t disturb my family life.”I said, “You were going to disturb my whole life!”Mortals liberate buddhas because affliction creates awareness. And buddhas liberate mortals because awareness negates affliction.All the buddhas come from the mortals. They are just more watchful than you are. They look all around – the whole scene is tragic, pathetic. That creates great awareness in them. And when they have come to the highest peak of their awareness, they make every effort to help you to be aware so that you can also get out of these afflictions.It is not only that man is in misery. The woman is in more misery. It seems there is a strange conspiracy going on where everybody is creating misery for everybody else. Many times I have been asked why I have not married. I said, “Because of the married people. I have known so many and they warned me.”And now my whole work is somehow to get you out of your trap, to make you more alert, more aware, whether you are a husband or a wife. With your awareness your misery will disappear. Just as light dispels darkness, awareness dispels misery.There can’t help but be affliction.Because people are unconscious.And there can’t help but be awareness.Once in a while somebody is going to be alert enough to see all around. And the person who becomes aware, feels to share with people who are unaware.If not for affliction there would be nothing to create awareness. And if not for awareness, there would be nothing to negate affliction. When you are deluded, buddhas liberate mortals. When you are aware, mortals liberate buddhas. Buddhas don’t become buddhas on their own.This is the greatness of Bodhidharma. He can say it exactly, however hard it hits. He is saying, Buddhas don’t become buddhas on their own. Without this whole world of misery around them, they would never become buddhas. They should be grateful to all these people who are miserable because these are the people who impel them not to get trapped, as they themselves are trapped.Buddhas regard delusion as their father and greed as their mother.Only a Bodhidharma can say such things, seeing the greed of people and the anguish and the anxiety that greed creates, seeing the delusions of people. Everybody is thinking of himself, not of exactly what he is. Everybody is multiplying his personality, his ego, his knowledge. He is pretending things that he knows nothing of.One of my professors, I found, never read anything after he had left the university thirty years before. Everything that he said was out of date. Psychology was his subject – and psychology is a very fast-growing subject; in thirty years, everything that was right has gone down the drain. But he was still quoting books which he read in his post-graduation courses.He had a difficulty with me, because I was reading the latest and I would quote from the latest researches. He was a poor soul, he could not even say, “Forgive me, I am not aware of these researches.” To keep his ego, he would say, “Yes, I have seen those papers.” But if he had seen those papers or those books, which had just come out, then he should not have been teaching outdated theories about human mind and consciousness.I reported to the vice-chancellor. I said, “It should be made compulsory for every professor to spend at least two hours in the library every day.”He said, “In no university is anything like that in existence. And all the professors will protest against it. Why are you saying that?”I said, “All your professors were taught twenty years, thirty years ago and all that they know is no longer relevant. I have been checking in the library, who the professors are who take the books from the library. And this particular professor I am mentioning has never taken a single book from the library. He has never come to the library.” And the library of the university was very rich, very up-to-date, because the man who founded the university was a man of tremendous learning and he loved books above anything else.So I told the vice-chancellor, “Call this professor in front of me and I will show you why I am demanding this. And if you don’t listen to me, then I am going to the students’ union to talk to all the students, to boycott all those professors who don’t go to the library for at least two hours.”He knew me – that I can manage this, so he said, “Don’t go that far. Bring that professor here.”I said, “I will not bring him. You call him. I am sitting here.”He called the professor, the professor came in. And I just invented two fictitious names of psychologists and two fictitious names of books which have never been written and will never be written. And I asked the professor, “Have you read these books?”He said, “My God, how have you found out? They are on my desk in my room. I have been reading them; they are the latest contribution.”And I told the vice-chancellor, “Both these names are fictitious, both these books are fictitious; they don’t exist. Now tell this man to bring those two books into your office. They are lying on his table.”Then he became afraid. From where was he going to get those two books which are fictitious? And he had said they were lying on his table, he was reading them, and they were great.I said, “This is the situation: these are the people who are teaching and their students will become professors tomorrow. And they will continue fifty-year-old, rotten experiments which have failed and have been replaced by new ideologies.”The vice-chancellor said, “I concede to you.” And he made it a compulsory rule that every professor had to go to the library, study the latest journals, books, magazines and be up-to-date.Professors were angry, they were all angry at me. But I said, “Anger is not going to help. I am checking every day in the library, who is coming and who is not coming. For those who are not coming, I will bring a procession of protest of all the students to their department. Then don’t tell me, ‘You are creating chaos.’ You are the cause of it!”The librarian was surprised. All the professors were coming, reading, taking books home. But the day I left the university, I was informed, the rule was removed. After seven or eight years, I went to that university to deliver a lecture. I went to the library. The same librarian was still there and the library was empty. There was nobody. I asked him, “What happened?”“Those professors no longer come,” he said. “The day you left the university, the rule was removed; it was just out of fear that you might create trouble. Even the vice-chancellor had started coming to the library. Now nobody comes.”People go on creating delusions, magnifying them, exaggerating them. Bodhidharma says greed is the father of the buddhas and delusion is the mother.Delusion and greed are different names for mortality.When you are deluded, you are on this shore. When you are aware, you are on the other shore.These are only symbolic ways of saying you are here…deluded, you are in misery; aware, you are in blissfulness.But once you know your mind is empty and you see no appearances, you are beyond delusion and awareness.Each statement is difficult for scholars to explain. Only a buddha can explain these statements. He is saying, when you are in the know that your mind is empty – in other words, when you encounter your no-mind and you see no appearances – you are beyond delusion and awareness.I have never come across any statement that says that you are beyond awareness. But he is absolutely rational, logical and existentially true because when you don’t have the disease, I don’t think you will go on carrying the medicine with you. The moment you are healthier, your disease has gone, you donate your medicine that remains to the Lions Club. What are you going to do with it? The Lions need it to show to the world that they are a great charitable institution. It is useless to you, you were going to throw it; why not enjoy donating it to the Lions Club? A good gain – you donate something useless to the Lions Club. And the Lions Club gives it to the poor people, and without spending anything the Lions Club becomes a charitable institution.The same is the situation with misery and awareness. The moment there is no delusion, what is the need of awareness? That does not mean you fall asleep. That simply means awareness becomes your very nature; you are no longer aware of it.And once you are beyond delusion and awareness, the other shore does not exist.What is the need of the other shore? The other shore was only a symbolic concept. This shore is the world, the other shore is the paradise. When the world and the attachment with the world is gone, who cares about paradise? You are already in it, wherever you are. A Sufi saying is, “Wherever the enlightened person is, there is paradise.” The paradise is something within your being.The tathagata is not on this shore or the other shore. And he is not in midstream.These are the only possibilities – either on this shore, or on the other shore, or in midstream. The tathagata is nowhere. One who has understood himself can be said to be either everywhere, or nowhere; both are equivalent.But in the last sutra he remembers again his antagonism to the arhatas: and mortals are on this shore. On the other shore are arhatas and the mortals.Arhats are in midstream……going to the other shore – which does not exist. They are still carrying a counter-delusion.…and the mortals are on this shore. On the other shore is buddhahood.But the moment you are on the other shore, the other shore disappears. You are simply a light unto yourself.But about arhatas, he cannot forget. He puts them in midstream, neither on this shore nor on that shore. Arhatas are also on the other shore, just as bodhisattvas are, as buddhas are. The moment they reach the other shore, both the shores disappear simultaneously. Suddenly they are awake and they find themselves part of the whole, a great shower of blessings coming over them.If Bodhidharma could have forgotten his antagonism with arhatas and used instead of “mind,” “no-mind,” his sutras would have been perfect, without any flaw. But even with these two flaws, they are great. And anybody who understands can make you aware of these two flaws.Don’t carry any antagonism. And use, as far as possible, the closest word to reality. Mind is not the closest word to meditation; no-mind is.Arhatas may have angered him because they become enlightened and they never care about anybody. They don’t even speak. It is very difficult to get anything out of the arhatas. But my own feeling is, everybody has to be his own self, his own individuality, his own uniqueness. Arhatas have their own uniqueness. After becoming enlightened, they become utterly silent.This is the antagonism of Bodhidharma, that they should be more compassionate. They should help others to become enlightened. And if you see the arguments from both sides, you will see that both are right in their own way. Arhatas say, “It is interference into somebody’s life. If he wants to remain unenlightened, it is his right.” Arhatas say, “This is our compassion that we don’t interfere into anybody’s life.”Bodhisattvas say, “This is our compassion that we make every effort to make others enlightened. This is our compassion.”I think both have beautiful arguments, and there is nothing wrong in either of the arguments. Existence is multidimensional, it has so many aspects.A man of ultimate understanding will not see any contradiction anywhere. In his understanding and clarity, all contradictions become complementary to each other.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Buddhas have three bodies: a transformation body, a reward body and a real body. The transformation body is also called the incarnation body. The transformation body appears when mortals do good deeds, the reward body when they cultivate wisdom and the real body when they become aware of the sublime. … But actually, there’s not even one buddha-body, much less three. This talk of three bodies is simply based on human understanding, which can be shallow, moderate or deep.People of shallow understanding imagine they’re piling up blessings and mistake the transformation body as the buddha. People of moderate understanding imagine they’re putting an end to suffering and mistake the reward body as the buddha. And people of deep understanding imagine they’re experiencing buddhahood and mistake the real body as the buddha. But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind is the buddha, they attain the understanding of a buddha without using the mind. …Individuals create karma. Karma doesn’t create individuals. … Only someone who’s perfect creates no karma in this life and receives no reward. The sutras say, “Who creates no karma obtains the dharma.” … When you create karma, you’re reborn along with your karma. When you don’t create karma, you vanish along with your karma. …Someone who understands the teaching of sages is a sage. Someone who understands the teaching of mortals is a mortal. A mortal who can give up the teaching of mortals and follow the teaching of sages becomes a sage. But the fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. They don’t believe that the wisdom of their own mind is the sage.The sutras say, “Among men of no understanding, don’t preach this sutra.” …The sutras say, “When you see that all appearances are not appearances, you see the tathagata.” The myriad doors to the truth all come from the mind. When appearances of the mind are as transparent as space, they’re gone. …When mortals are alive they worry about death. When they’re full, they worry about hunger. Theirs is the great uncertainty. But sages don’t consider the past. And they don’t worry about the future. Nor do they cling to the present. From moment to moment they follow the way. …Bodhidharma, for the first time in these sutras, looks at the people who are not enlightened and who are bound to misunderstand him. Hence, he talks about the possibility of the ordinary, unenlightened mind, and how it looks at things. He himself talks about it, so that he can make it clear that all these so-called understandings of the mind – either shallow or deep, or even very deep – all are wrong.This is very rare, because Bodhidharma never thought about the people who would be his audience. He only thought about the truth. And he talked about it without any consideration of those who were listening to it, or reading it. This is part of his compassion; this is the part that makes the arhatas and the bodhisattvas separate.Arhatas never, never think about anybody else. If they speak, they are just speaking to themselves. Most probably they remain silent. They have a profound respect for others, but they know that to tell them about the ultimate is to disturb their ordinariness. It is an interference in their mundane minds – although it is for their own benefit. But they are not asking for it, and unless they invite the truth, the truth is not going to knock on their doors.The truth is almost like the sun in the morning. It rises…it does not knock on your doors saying, “I am here and the night is over and you can wake.” It does not go to every nest of the birds, to tell them, “Now it is time to sing, I have come,” nor does it go to every flower to open its petals and release its fragrance. It simply comes. Those who are receptive will receive it. Those who are not receptive will not receive it. Those who are awake will know that the morning has arrived, but those who are fast asleep will not know, even in their dreams, that the night is over. But the sun does not interfere.The understanding of the arhatas is that compassion means not to interfere, not to trespass, even though it is for the benefit of those against whom you are trespassing. Trespassing in itself is against the dignity of individuals and it is a humiliation. To say to someone, “You are asleep,” means you are putting yourself on a higher pedestal. You are saying, “I am awake and you are asleep,” you are saying “I am holier than thou, higher than thou; I have arrived to the ultimate peak of my consciousness and you are still wandering in the world of darkness, groping everywhere, stumbling, falling and finding no way out.”Even to advise anyone is to take a certain position: “I know and you do not know.” The arhatas’ standpoint is that it is against compassion, it is against reverence for life; hence they remain silent. If anybody feels their presence on his own accord and comes close to them to drink the living waters of their experience, they are available – just like the river passing by. You can quench your thirst, but it is absolutely up to you; the river will not do anything on its own part. It is a beautiful approach. But the approach of the bodhisattvas, to whom Bodhidharma belongs, has its own beauty.The bodhisattvas make every effort to awaken people, knowing perfectly well that out of a million people, perhaps one may understand them and the remaining will either be indifferent, or most probably will misunderstand. Bodhisattvas know perfectly well that speaking the truth is a very shortcut way to create enemies in the world, because the whole world is full of lies. All the vested interests are based on lies. The so-called religions, the so-called nations – all are fabrications of cunning minds.An authentically religious man belongs to no religion and belongs to no nation and to no race and to no color. He belongs to the whole humanity. All the nations are his. He does not believe in political boundaries created by the cunning and dirty politicians. And he does not believe in the discriminations created by the priests, by the popes, by the archbishops, by the shankaracharyas, by the rabbis. He believes that every human being has a divine nature, and every human being has the potential to grow into a beautiful lotus flower – a lotus flower that belongs to eternity, a fragrance that comes but never goes.Knowing all this, the bodhisattva still makes every effort; it does not matter even if he is crucified. Jesus is a bodhisattva, so is Socrates a bodhisattva, so is al-Hillaj Mansoor. Even if it means crucifixion, it does not matter if it can help somebody, somewhere, to get out of his sleep. A bodhisattva is ready to accept all condemnation from the whole world, but he cannot remain silent and unsharing. That is impossible for him.As far as I am concerned, both are absolutely right. There is no contradiction. They are both representing two sides of the same phenomenon. Their expression of compassion is different, but it IS the expression of compassion. Both are expressing it in their own unique ways.The sutra:Buddhas have three bodies: a transformation body, a reward body and a real body. The transformation body is also called the incarnation body. The transformation body appears when mortals do good deeds, the reward body when they cultivate wisdom and the real body when they become aware of the sublime. But actually, there’s not even one buddha-body, much less three. This talk of three bodies is simply based on human understanding, which can be shallow, moderate or deep.People of shallow understanding imagine they’re piling up blessings and mistake the transformation body as the buddha. People of moderate understanding imagine they’re putting an end to suffering and mistake the reward body as the buddha. And people of deep understanding imagine they’re experiencing buddhahood and mistake the real body as the buddha.It needs some explanation. It is possible you may pass a Gautam Buddha without recognizing him because the recognition of a buddha, of an awakened being, needs some insight on your part. It depends on you, your understanding. If you don’t have any understanding of the awakened one, you may pass by his side and you may not even feel anything. You are closed. The sun is there but your doors and windows are all closed. The sun is there but you are standing with closed eyes.The first recognition comes from people who are trying to do good according to their small understanding. Whatever they feel – helpful to humanity, helpful to the animals – they are trying to do something to beautify existence. They don’t want to be just a burden on the earth. They want to contribute something; they want to leave the world a little better than they found it when they came into existence.These people will see Buddha’s first body, the transformation body. They will see Buddha surrounded with an aura of light. You have seen pictures of Jesus, of Krishna, of Buddha with a surrounding aura. That is an actual phenomenon and now it has a scientific basis to support it.In Russia, a great scientist and philosopher, Kirlian, developed a special camera and specially sensitive films, so sensitive that they can see things which your eyes cannot see. His first experience was of tremendous wonder because his photographs showed auras around everybody, not only around human beings but around animals and around trees, around a roseflower. The roseflower was there in the picture and just by the side, a small light-aura.He was surprised to know that the more silent, peaceful a man was, the bigger was the aura. And the more angry, anxiety-ridden, sad, miserable, full of anguish a man was, the smaller was the aura. And before a man was going to die, six months before, the aura completely disappeared; then his photographs came without any aura, just like ordinary photographs.This aura has been seen by sensitive people, just as Kirlian’s sensitive films photograph it. The sensitive disciples of Jesus will see something which others will not be able to see. The sensitive disciples of Gautam Buddha who have lived in deep love with him, who have been showered by his blessings, who are completely drowned in his being, will be able to see something which an ordinary spectator will not be able to see. The more they become receptive, the more they become sensitive, the more Buddha’s reality becomes apparent to them.The first experience is of the transformation body: a thin light body, just four inches bigger than your body…just around your body a four-inch aura of light, very soft light. This is the body that transmigrates. That’s why, before death – as Kirlian discovered – six months before, this body starts disappearing, it starts becoming condensed inside the being of man. It takes six months for it to come back to the center and become just a point of light instead of a big aura. And this small point of light transmigrates while your whole body remains here.Scientists have been trying to prove that there is no soul on the grounds that when they weigh a living man just a moment before he dies, and when they weigh him a moment after, his weight is the same – absolutely the same. Naturally their conclusion is that nothing has gone out and; hence, that there is no soul. If something goes out and, then the weight will be less. But now it can be told to the scientists that light has no weight; that’s why if a point of light transmigrates it won’t make any difference on your weighing scales.Light is absolutely weightless and the transmigration body is nothing but pure light. This is experienced by people even of shallow understanding. Those who don’t understand much, but still have a little consciousness – just a shallow consciousness – even they can see this light.But the people of moderate understanding can see a deeper body, hidden behind this thin layer of light, a thicker layer of light known in the Buddhist scriptures as the reward body. It arises only when one has been meditating so much that one is earning immense reward. In this world the greatest treasure and the greatest reward is to learn to be silent, to be utterly silent. This is a silence body. But it is possible to be seen only by those who have come very close to Gautam Buddha.I have always divided people into three categories. The first is the student who comes to the awakened one. The student is capable of seeing the first body, the transformation body.The second is the disciple, who is not there with the buddha or any awakened human being out of curiosity – who is not there just to accumulate knowledge – but who himself wants to come to the same space, to the same blissfulness, to the same benediction. The disciple has taken a quantum leap from the student. The student is interested in collecting more and more information; the disciple is interested not in information but in transformation. He wants to change into a different being, a being which is beyond the mind. He is capable of seeing the second body, the reward body.The reward body is really existence recognizing your meditation, your silence, and showering flowers on you. Existence is immensely happy when someone becomes enlightened, because the enlightenment of one person is really the triggering of enlightenment for many people. It can become a long chain, which can go for centuries. For example, what was triggered by Gautam Buddha’s enlightenment is still triggering people into enlightenment. Twenty-five centuries have passed, but the chain has continued. It is a chain reaction.There are very few religions in the world which are still alive. Zen is still alive. There are still people who can be called contemporaries of Gautam Buddha; they are connected so deeply that you cannot separate them, by time or by space.In Mohammedanism, only a small school of Sufis is a living part; the whole of the rest of that religion has died. But Sufism is still continuing a chain reaction. Still there are people who are awakened.In Judaism, the whole religion is dead except for a small school of the Hassids. Those Hassids have been carrying the torch for centuries. They are still creating more and more enlightened people.Strangely, Hinduism and Christianity are completely dead religions. They don’t have even a small stream of living masters. And they are very important religions. Hinduism is the oldest religion of the world and Christianity is the biggest religion of the world, but both are completely dead. They are just an ugly weight on humanity. Nothing blossoms in their gardens; no flower comes to release its fragrance. They are lamps without any flame in them.It is said of Diogenes, a man of the same caliber as Bodhidharma…. If they had met, it would have been a great meeting. Diogenes was in Greece. He lived naked; he had such a beautiful body that to hide it behind clothes would have been a crime. It is perfectly good to hide an ugly body behind clothes but a beautiful body needs to be available for anybody who wants to see the beauty, the proportion. Diogenes was one of the most beautiful men. Even when Alexander the Great met him, he felt a little embarrassed – although he was a world conqueror, compared to Diogenes he was utterly poor.Diogenes had nothing, but his richness was radiating from his naked body. Diogenes used to carry a lamp, even in the daytime. He was thought to be a little crazy – obviously. In a world of insane people, anybody who is sane is bound to be thought a little crazy. And he was doing something which you will also feel looks a little crazy. Whomever he would meet on the way, he would take up his lamp and look at his face. And when asked, “What are you doing, Diogenes? It is full daylight; you don’t need to keep your lamp burning,” he would say, “No, I have to keep it burning. I am searching for an authentic man.”When he was dying, his lamp by his side, somebody asked, “Diogenes, your whole life you have been searching for an authentic man. What happened? Did you meet any authentic man or not?” He said, “Thank God, although I never met any authentic man I have saved my lamp.”Because the world is so cunning, so full of thieves, even to save one’s lamp is to be fortunate. This Diogenes was an awakened man. In fact, he was not looking in your eyes when he raised his lamp, he was showing his eyes, so that you could see clearly into his eyes, and there was an authentic man. And if you had looked into his eyes, you would have changed totally into a new being.A disciple looks into the eyes of the master. He looks into the very depth of his eyes. A disciple is not interested in what the master is saying, he is interested in what the master is.Then he comes to know the second body of the master; his treasure, his reward body. The whole existence has been showering millions of rewards on the master. But there is still a third step. The man of the deepest understanding comes to know the third body, the deepest body.The student comes to know the first body, the disciple comes to know the second body and the devotee comes to know the third body, the real body, the buddha’s real being. Again there is a quantum leap – from disciple to devotee. Disciple comes very close, very, very close, but even closeness is a distance. The devotee simply melts and merges into the master. He is not close, he becomes one. And in this oneness he comes to know the real body of the awakened being.But Bodhidharma says: these three bodies and the experiences of these three bodies are of the normal mind. Actually, there is not even one buddha-body. A man of enlightenment is utterly nobody – or no body. That’s what the meaning of nobody is. He is pure emptiness. He is just pure sky without any limitations. This infinitude is known only when one becomes a buddha.The devotee merges with the buddha, but in a subtle way he still carries his idea, “I am a devotee, a lover. I have surrendered everything.” A very subtle “I” – almost on the verge of disappearing, but it is there. He has not yet experienced the emptiness of the master.There is a story about a great Zen master, Lin Chi. The day one of his disciples was going to become enlightened…he had come a long way and the master had been watching his progress, and he knew that as the sun set that day, before that time, the disciple was going to become enlightened. He had come so close, it was just like a moth flying closer and closer to the flame of a candle. One could say that it was not going to take much time. The moth has come so close that soon it will be falling into the flame and disappear for ever.Lin Chi called his disciple and told him, “Listen, I have been beating you for years.” That is part of Zen tradition. That is the only tradition where the master is allowed to beat the disciple…for strange reasons, or for no reason at all. Only he knows why he is beating him: sometimes he brings a wrong answer to a question, then the master slaps him.But sometimes disciples are simply amazed. They have not even spoken a word and the master starts slapping them and they say, “This is too much because we have not said anything.” The master says, “That does not matter. We know what you were going to say, we could read it on your face. We knew the way you entered the room…so why waste time? First, you will have to say things and then we will have to beat. Make it short. Get a good beating and go away. Find out the right answer.”And it is a well-known fact that when the disciple finds the right answer he has nothing to say, because the right answer cannot be said. Only wrong answers can be said.So Lin Chi had been beating the disciple on and off, and suddenly he called him. He was sitting outside in the garden meditating on the koan for which he had been getting beatings. The disciple said, “Why has he called me? because I don’t have anything to say.” And before entering the door of the master’s room he said clearly, “I don’t have anything to say, so don’t start slapping me. And I have not come of my own accord; you have called me.”Lin Chi said, “That’s true. You have not come, I have called you, but I will slap all the same for a totally different reason today. Just come close.”The disciple said, “This is going too far. I have been told that when you don’t have anything to say, you cannot be slapped. You are breaking even that rule.” The master said, “Don’t waste time. Just come close. I am going to slap you because after today I will not be able to slap you again. This day you are going to become enlightened, so this is the last chance. Let me have a good…. Tomorrow you can slap me – you will have the right – but today is my last chance.” And he slapped him.This is a beautiful tradition. It shows great love. A master beating the disciple for no reason at all, just because he is going to become enlightened today and from tomorrow he will not be able to beat him…! The disciple became enlightened that day and the next day when he came to see the master, the master closed the doors. He said, “You can say anything you want to say from outside the room, because I am an old man. You must understand that slapping me is not right, so from now on doors will remain closed for you. You can say anything you want to say a little loudly from outside.”The moment a devotee forgets even that he is, that no idea of I am arises in him, then he comes to know that the buddha has no body at all. That buddha is a nobody; he is simply pure silence, emptiness, a total zero.But actually, there’s not even one buddha-body much less three. This talk of three bodies is simply based on human understanding, which can be shallow, moderate or deep.People of shallow understanding imagine they’re piling up blessings and mistake the transformation body as the buddha. People of moderate understanding imagine they’re putting an end to suffering and mistake the reward body as the buddha. And people of deep understanding imagine they’re experiencing buddhahood and mistake the real body as the buddha. But people of the deepest understanding look within, distracted by nothing. Since a clear mind or better, no-mind, is the buddha, they attain the understanding of a buddha without using the mind.Individuals create karma.Before we enter into this sutra, you have to understand this word karma. It means action. But action can be of two types: either it can be a reaction or it can be a response.Somebody insults you. You become angry – he has pushed your button. In fact he is the master, you are behaving like a slave. He has managed to create anger in you. He is in control. If he wants to change the situation he can say, “I am sorry,” and things will be different. You are just a victim; you don’t have any control of the situation. When somebody insults you, you are immediately reacting out of your past experiences. This reaction is really karma. It is a binding force; it creates chains for you.But a response is a totally different thing from reaction. A response is not produced by the other person. He insults you, he abuses you – you listen to him, he is making certain statements about you. A man of understanding, a man of awareness, a man of meditation will simply listen to it. He is making some statements…good or bad, that is not the concern of the moment. First you listen to him without immediately going into a reaction. You allow your awareness like a mirror to reflect whatever he is saying, or whatever he is doing. And out of your mirror-like, immediate, in the present, not-from-past-experience awareness, some response comes.He was telling you that you are greedy, he was telling you that you are ugly, he was telling you that you are dirty. And if you silently listen, there is nothing to be angry about. Either he is right or he is wrong. If he is right, you have to be grateful to him. You have to tell him, “Thank you, you have a great compassion. You have made me aware of things of which I was not aware. Please, always remember, whenever you see something in me, tell me. Don’t feel that I will be offended. I will always remain grateful.”Or if you find that he is wrong, you can simply say, “I have heard your statements but they are not true. And about something which is not true, why should I react? You will have to reconsider. Reconsider your statements and then we will see. But as far as I can see, there is nothing true in them and I need not be offended by lies.” There are only two alternatives.George Gurdjieff’s father died and at that time he was only nine years old. The father was poor but a very integrated man, a man of tremendous awareness. He called Gurdjieff and said, “Listen. You are too young to understand what I am saying, but remember it. Soon you will be able to understand it, and if you can start acting accordingly, start acting so that you don’t forget. I don’t have anything else to give to you; no money, no house, no land.” He was a nomad. “I am handing you over to my friends, but remember, this is the only treasure that I can give you as an inheritance. And listen carefully; these are the last words of your father – his whole life’s experience.”A nine-year-old boy…he came close to listen to the old father and the father said, “It is a very simple thing: If somebody insults you, listen silently, carefully, in detail to what he is saying – what are the implications. And then tell the person, ‘I am grateful that you have taken so much interest in me. After twenty-four hours I will come and reply to you. I cannot help it, because my dying father has made it a condition to me that only after twenty-four hours consideration am I allowed to answer.’”And in his own old age, Gurdjieff said to his disciples, “This simple principle helped me tremendously, because after twenty-four hours who remains angry? And after considering twenty-four hours, either one finds he is right – and if he is right there is no need to bother, it is better to change yourself – or he is wrong. Then too there is no need to be bothered. It is his problem, not your problem.”A man who is fully awakened remains undefiled by whatsoever he does, because it is a response. It is a pure reflection from a mirror, with no judgment. It does not come from the past, it comes from the present consciousness. But anything that comes from your past experiences is going to create a chain for you.In the East, for ten thousand years we have been thinking about it, experimenting with it. It is the only thing that the whole East and its genius has remained involved with: how a man can come to a stage where his actions don’t make any bondage for him, don’t create another birth for him – how a consciousness can be created where one can act without acting, and where nothing contaminates his being.Individuals create karma. Karma doesn’t create individuals.So it is in your hands. You are not a by-product of your actions. You are far bigger than your actions; good or bad, you are always bigger. And it is in your hands to change everything.The East has paid tremendous respect to the individual and has given him the greatest power over his own destiny ever given anywhere in the world. In the East there is no savior. You are the savior. Nobody else can do that for you.It would be really ugly if somebody else could save you. Then even your being, saved or redeemed, is a kind of slavery.And if somebody else can redeem you, somebody else can push you back into the wheel of birth and death, because you are just a puppet. All the religions that believe in saviors reduce man into a puppet. They take away the freedom and the dignity and the pride of individual beings.Bodhidharma is saying: Individuals create karma. You can create hell for yourself, you can create heaven, or you can go beyond both. This going beyond both, does not exist in Judaism, in Mohammedanism, in Christianity. That is the special contribution of the Eastern mystics. Hell and heaven exist as hypotheses in Christianity, in Mohammedanism, in Judaism. But moksha, being beyond heaven and hell…because hell is misery and heaven is happiness, but happiness too becomes boring after a time. No Western religious leader has ever thought about it, that happiness after a time becomes boring. How long can you tolerate happiness? Just as pain, after a long time, becomes a companion…without it you feel something is missing.I have known a man who had suffered from headache, migraines, for almost ten years. I used to go into the mountains and he was also a professor in the same university where I was a professor. Once he asked me, “Can I come along with you?” I never liked anybody else to go with me, because I was going out of the city just to avoid all the idiots – and this idiot was not only an idiot, he had a migraine! I said, “My God,” but I said, “Okay. It looks very unkind to say no to you. Just sit, but don’t talk about migraine because I have an allergy.”He said, “What kind of allergy?”I said, “If anybody talks to me of his disease, I become sick with the same disease.”He said, “I have never heard that such an allergy exists.”I said, “It is not a question of hearing, I am the example – it is not a bookish question. Just don’t talk about migraine!”So I took him to the mountains. It was the season of the mangoes, and the mountain was full of the sweetness of the mangoes. I have the habit of climbing trees from my very childhood. I had fallen from the trees so many times that my father used to tell me, “Now it is time you stop.” I used to say, “I have fallen so many times that I am almost an expert in falling. You don’t be worried. I am not a beginner. I fall with a certain method, that’s why I am surviving.”So I took him to a mango tree which had very ripe mangoes and many parrots – parrots love mangoes – and I told him, “You come along with me, up the tree.”He said, “What?”I said, “You come along.”He said, “I have never been climbing up a tree.”I said, “Try, it will be an adventure for you.”And he fell down from the tree. I had to rush, come back down the tree. He looked very amazed. He said, “It is strange. I had the migraine and by falling from the tree, it has disappeared.”I said, “Sometimes it happens, but don’t make it a practice. And don’t tell anybody, because it may not happen to somebody else. It is just coincidence.” But the migraine disappeared.And after seven days he met me and he said, “I miss my migraine.”I said, “First, you were continuously complaining about migraine, and now you miss it?”He said, “I never knew that I would miss it. Now I have nothing to talk about; migraine was my whole philosophy. And because of the migraine I was getting everybody else’s sympathy. Now nobody sympathizes with me!”I said, “Then the only thing is, we can go to the mountains again, climb the tree and fall. Perhaps – I can’t be certain because there is no science in it – perhaps the migraine will come back.”He said, “I will have to think about it because it was really very difficult. The suffering was bad.”But next day he told me, “I am ready because without migraine I cannot live. I feel so empty because I had lived ten years with migraine.”And you will not be surprised if you watch your own behavior!There are people who are smoking and they know they are burning their lungs. They know they are destroying their health…but it makes no difference. In a few countries the governments have even decided that the factories which produce cigarettes should also write on the packets that it is dangerous to health. First the cigarette companies were against any such law being passed, because this may destroy their whole business. Who is going to purchase cigarettes when it is written on the package that it is against your health? “The medical opinion is that it is dangerous for your health,” or something like that.But governments passed the law and the people who had been smoking are still smoking, and the number of smokers goes on increasing. It does not make any difference. The law has been absolutely meaningless. Man becomes accustomed to anything. Then it is very difficult, even if it is dangerous, even if it is killing him, even if it is proved that it is going to give you cancer…You would rather have cancer than change your habits.But Bodhidharma is saying: You are the master of your destiny. You can change every act, you can change every habit. You can change what you think has become your second nature and you can create a totally new individuality, fresh and young, with more awareness, with more understanding, with more blissfulness, with a great ecstasy.Only someone who is perfect creates no karma in this life and receives no reward.Who is perfect? The only person who is perfect is one whose consciousness has dispelled all unconsciousness from his being. Right now only one-tenth of your consciousness is conscious and nine-tenths is unconscious.The perfect man is one whose whole being, all ten parts, are absolutely conscious and full of light. There is no darkness in his heart. In the very depths and silences of his heart there is nothing but peace, silence, light, joy. Such a man is perfect and such a man can do anything. Nothing is binding on him. He creates no karma, he creates no chains, he creates no new life. He has come to the very end of the road.A perfect man, an awakened man, is not born again. What happens to his consciousness? It becomes part of the universe, just like a dewdrop slipping from a lotus leaf into the ocean. Either the dewdrop becomes the ocean, or the ocean becomes the dewdrop. You can say it either way. But this is the goal of all religiousness, the dropping of the dewdrop into the ocean.The sutras say, “Who creates no karma obtains the dharma.”One who is fully conscious knows his self-nature. That is the meaning of dharma.When you create karma, you are reborn along with your karma. When you don’t create karma, you vanish along with your karma….Someone who understands the teaching of the sages is a sage. Someone who understands the teaching of mortals is a mortal.You may be a student of a great philosopher, but he is not an immortal. He is as afraid of death as you are, or perhaps more, because he is thinking more about life, death, birth. The more he thinks, the more he creates a paranoia.Sigmund Freud was thinking more about death just because he was thinking about sex. Sex is one side of life, the beginning. And death is the other side of life, the end. A person who thinks about sex cannot avoid thinking about death. He has to. Sex and death are so deeply connected.You will be surprised that there are, in South Africa, a species of spiders: the male makes love only one time in his life because the next chance never arises. While he is making love, the female spider starts eating him. He has long legs and the female starts eating through his legs. And he is in such an ecstasy, he is not in his consciousness. By the time his orgasm is finished, he is also finished. Every spider knows that this is happening every day – but what to do? Sooner or later every spider finds himself trapped into the same thing. Sex and death have come very close in that species. It is not that close in human beings, but it is not very far either. Sex is the beginning of death.Sigmund Freud was so afraid of death that he prohibited anybody from creating any discussion about death in front of him. And he had hundreds of disciples. Perhaps in this whole century he was one of the greatest teachers. He created the great profession of psychoanalysis, and those who learned psychoanalysis from him brag about the fact that they are disciples of the original master, the founder of psychoanalysis itself.But they don’t know that Sigmund Freud was so much afraid of death that even at the mention of it, three times in his life, he fainted. He became unconscious just because somebody mentioned the word, death. Even the word reminded him of his own death. He never used to pass through any cemetery; even if he had to go around a few miles to avoid a cemetery he would go, but he would never go to a cemetery. He never went to the cemetery to say the last good-bye to a friend who had died, never! He went only once, but then he never came back!Bodhidharma is saying:Someone who understands the teaching of mortals is a mortal. A mortal who can give up the teaching of mortals and follow the teaching of sages becomes a sage.Drop the teachings of those who don’t know that there is life beyond death. Then they don’t know anything at all. All their knowledge is simply verbal, just so much prose. In fact, it is just rubbish and crap.If you want to be a disciple, at least choose someone who knows something beyond death. And the person who knows something beyond death is bound to be the person who knows something beyond mind, because they are the same experiences.But the fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away.It is a very significant statement. The fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. There are people who worship Gautam Buddha, twenty-five centuries far away. There is no fear; Buddha cannot do anything to you. To face a living buddha is dangerous. He can overwhelm you.But worshipping a Buddha who has been dead for twenty-five centuries…. You can carry the Buddha statue wherever you want and you can do with the statue whatever you want; the statue cannot do anything to you. But a living buddha is dangerous. To be in contact with him is to be constantly risking, because he is taking you towards the goal where you will disappear. You will be, but just pure consciousness, not an ego.The Upanishads say that the authentic master is a death. He kills the disciple as an ego. He makes the disciple just a nothingness.The fools love very much to worship Jesus, but the contemporaries of Jesus crucified him. It is a very strange world. There is not even a mention of the name of Jesus in his contemporary literature. Except for his own disciples, nobody had even taken note of him. It is strange …such a man, whom the contemporaries could not tolerate alive – when he was only thirty-three they crucified him – but they have not even mentioned his name. Yet after two thousand years, half the world is Christian …strange! And if Jesus Christ comes today, the same Christians will crucify him again.I have heard that in a New York church, on a Sunday morning, the bishop came a little early to see if all the arrangements were okay or not, because only on Sunday do Christians become religious. It is a Sunday religion. As the bishop entered he found a young man looking exactly like Jesus Christ. His heart sank. He felt he was going to die. “My God, why has he come here? He has not learned any lesson. When he came, what people did to him – and again he is back! But it is better to inquire who he is. Perhaps he is just a hippie who looks like Jesus.” So he went close to him and asked, “Who are you?”Jesus looked at him and he said, “This is a strange question. You represent me on the earth and you don’t recognize me? I am Jesus Christ.”The bishop immediately phoned the Vatican to the pope saying, “What do you think I should do? Jesus Christ is here in the church.”The pope said, “I am tortured so much with a thousand and one worries, and you bring another. Can’t you figure out what to do? The first thing is, inform the police. And the second thing is, look busy.”If Jesus Christ comes back, he is not going to be treated differently from how he was treated before. That’s why he is not coming back; otherwise he promised, “I will be coming back soon.” Two thousand years and the soon has not ended. Any intelligent man will not come back; it was enough. One experience is enough.Contemporaries have always misbehaved with the people of awareness, with the people who have enlightenment. And the same people have always worshipped the dead saints, dead sages, dead prophets, dead messiahs.There were at least five attempts made on the life of Gautam Buddha while he was alive. Now there are more statues of Gautam Buddha in the world than of anybody else. And the same people tried five times to kill him.But the fools of this world prefer to look for sages far away. Because to be close is dangerous, they can change you. And nobody wants to be changed.They don’t believe that the wisdom of their own no-mind is the sage.And the reality is, you don’t have to look far away in time or in space. You have just to look inwards, and this very moment you can find the awakened one. This very moment you can find the buddha…not twenty five centuries back; there is no need to go that far. And there is no way to go backwards. God has forgotten, when he made the world, to put in a reverse gear. You can simply go forward, just go forward.Even Henry Ford forgot to put the reverse gear in the first car that he made as a model. If God can forget, poor Henry Ford has to be allowed! And when he got into his car, then he realized that this was a very difficult problem. If you have gone five feet past your house, then you have to go around the whole city to get home, to come back. It was Henry Ford’s genius, to create a reverse gear. God has not learned, even now. But he must be meeting with Henry Ford there, to put in a reverse gear so you can go to see Jesus Christ, or Gautam Buddha, or Mahavira, or Krishna.But my feeling is that even if there is a reverse gear available, nobody is going to use it for the simple reason that to face such colossal individuals needs guts, needs courage. And the greatest courage in the world is to go through the transformation from being a mortal to being an immortal god.The sutras say, “Among men of no understanding, don’t preach this sutra.”But where can you preach it? If people have understanding, they don’t need the sutra. Only the people who don’t understand need the sutra. So I cannot agree with this sutra which says, “Among men of no understanding, don’t preach this sutra.”Be compassionate, preach to everybody. If they can understand, good. If they cannot understand, perhaps some seed may fall into their heart without their knowing. And then someday spring comes; it may sprout. Perhaps they may not hear you, but somebody again repeating the same thing…they may feel that they have heard it before, there must be something in it.No, one has to go on repeating continuously to people of no understanding, because if they are people of no understanding there is dormant in them the possibility of understanding. You just go on hitting. They need just a little more hitting, a little more repetition of the message to reach to their heart. They have thick skulls.But don’t listen to any sutra which teaches you unkindness, which teaches you to be uncompassionate.The sutras say, “When you see that all appearances are not appearances, you see the tathagata.”The moment mind disappears with all its illusions and dreams and thoughts and imaginations, you see within yourself the awakening, which you can call the buddha, you can call the Christ. These are simply names. But one thing is certain: the moment your mind disappears, something divine appears in you and starts growing into a huge tree with great foliage, with great flowers, with great fruit.The myriad doors to the truth all come from the mind. When appearances of the mind are as transparent as space, they are gone.When mortals are alive they worry about death. When they are full, they worry about hunger. Theirs is the great uncertainty. But sages don’t consider the past.Because the past is no more….And they don’t worry about the future.Because the future is not yet….Nor do they cling to the present.Because the present is fleeing every moment…what is the point of clinging? Clinging will bring you misery. So they don’t think of the past…it is gone. They don’t cling to the present…it is going. And they don’t think of the future…it has not come yet. There is no point in thinking about it. It may come, it may not come.From moment to moment they follow the way.Just in this single sentence is hidden the whole secret of religion – moment to moment they follow the way. In full awareness and spontaneity, moment to moment, they go on living joyously, peacefully, silently. Slowly, slowly, as their silence deepens, as their understanding deepens, as their awareness reaches to the highest climax, each moment becomes a paradise. Then they don’t think of a paradise somewhere in the clouds. Then the paradise is here. Then the paradise is now.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Bodhidharma’s “Breakthrough Sermon”.If someone is determined to reach enlightenment, what is the most essential method he can practice?The most essential method, which includes all other methods, is beholding the mind.But how can one method include all others?The mind is the root from which all things grow. If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like with a tree. All of its fruit and flowers, its branches and leaves, depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.But how can beholding the mind be called understanding?When a great bodhisattva delves deeply into perfect wisdom, he realizes … the activity of his mind has two aspects: pure and impure. … The pure mind delighting in good deeds, the impure mind thinking of evil. Those who aren’t affected by impurity are sages. They transcend suffering and experience the bliss of nirvana. All others, trapped by the impure mind and entangled by their own karma, are mortals. They drift through the three realms and suffer countless afflictions. And all because their impure mind obscures their real self.The sutra of the ten stages says, “In the body of mortals is the indestructible buddha-nature. Like the sun, its light fills endless space. But once veiled by the dark clouds of the five shades, it’s like a light inside a jar, hidden from view.” And the nirvana sutra says, “All mortals have the buddha-nature. But it’s covered by darkness from which they can’t escape. Our buddha-nature is awareness: to be aware and to make others aware. To realize awareness is liberation.” Everything good has awareness for its root. From this root of awareness grow the tree of all virtues and the fruit of nirvana. …The sutras this morning belong to a special sermon by Bodhidharma called the “Breakthrough Sermon.” I would like you to understand the word breakthrough.You know another word which is close to breakthrough, and that is breakdown. Mind has both the possibilities. Under tension, anxiety, anguish it can break down, but breakdown is not a breakthrough. Breakdown brings you below the mind; it is insanity. Breakthrough comes out of watching the mind in deep silence, in great awareness. Then you go beyond the mind and to go beyond the mind is to attain authentic sanity.Mind is just in the middle. You are nothing but a mess. If you can go beyond it, intelligence grows in you; if you go below it, any intelligence that you had disappears.But in either case, either in breakthrough or in breakdown, you are out of the mind. That’s why there is a certain similarity between the enlightened person and the madman. The madman has gone through a breakdown but he is out of the mind. The enlightened person has gone beyond the mind; it is a breakthrough. He is also out of the mind but because he has gone beyond mind, he attains to ultimate sanity, to great intelligence, to a clarity, mind cannot even conceive of.But the similarity is that both are out of the mind and the mind can interpret both either as enlightened or as insane. Hence a strange thing has been happening in the East and in the West. There are many enlightened people in the West inside insane asylums because Western psychology does not believe in any breakthrough. For anyone who goes out of the mind, only one interpretation is available: that he has gone mad.In the East there are many madmen who are worshipped as enlightened because the East interprets going out of the mind always as a breakthrough. I have come across a few madmen who were not enlightened but they were worshipped like God. In a place near Jabalpur there was one man who was half paralyzed and utterly mad, but thousands of people used to gather around him. He had nothing to say and there was no light in his eyes and there was no joy in his being.I used to go and simply sit there and watch the man and what people were doing. He was living almost by drinking only tea. It was difficult for him to drink tea because half his body was paralyzed, so only half of his mouth was able to move; the other half was not able to move. So even while drinking tea, his saliva was dripping into the tea. It was an ugly scene. And the followers would take away the cup of the tea when he had just taken a few sips out of it and they would distribute it to people as prasad, as a gift from God.I watched this whole nonsense…and the man was not able to even utter a single word. Anywhere else in the world he would have been in a mad asylum, but in India even the breakdown is misunderstood as a breakthrough. And in the West even the breakthrough is understood as a breakdown.A tremendous synthesis is needed between Western psychology and Eastern understanding of the mind. These are totally and diametrically opposite dimensions. Breakdown brings you back to the stage of the animals, and breakthrough brings you to your ultimate flowering, your buddhahood. And their happening is so different, so qualitatively different, that they can be easily distinguished. Breakthrough happens only to a meditator. Breakdown happens to anybody whose mind becomes too tense, unbearably tense, so that he loses all control of the mind mechanism, and falls down.The name of the sermon is immensely significant. The East has been aware for centuries that the madman and the enlightened man have a certain similarity. They both are out of the mind, but at that point the similarity ends. One has gone beyond, towards the stars; the other has gone down towards darker spaces. Breakthrough is the very science of meditation.The sutra:If someone is determined to reach enlightenment, what is the most essential method he can practice?The most essential method, which includes all other methods, is beholding the mind.To be aware of the mind is being a witness of the mind. As the witnessing grows stronger, you already start feeling yourself beyond the mind. Slowly, slowly the distance grows. Your witness reaches to a sunlit peak and the mind is left in the dark valleys, far away. You can still hear the echoes, but they don’t affect you at all. You are beyond their reach.The disciple asked:But how can one method include all others?And Bodhidharma says:The mind is the root from which all things grow.From madness to enlightenment.If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. It’s like with a tree. All of its fruit and flowers, its branches and leaves depend on its root. If you nourish its root, a tree multiplies. If you cut its root, it dies. Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. Everything good and bad comes from your own mind. To find something beyond the mind is impossible.Except yourself, the enlightenment – that is my addition to the sutra.Now there are a few important things that Bodhidharma is saying. The first is: If you can understand the mind, everything else is included. But the word understanding can be misunderstood, because the Western psychology is now the predominant psychology all over the world. West or East, the only psychology prevalent today is Western psychology. And the Western psychology tries to understand the mind by analysis. That is a futile effort.It is like peeling an onion. One layer is taken off and you find another layer, more fresh, waiting for you. You take that layer off and another layer is there. People have been under psychoanalysis for fifteen years continuously; still their psychoanalysis is not complete. The psychoanalysts themselves recognize that they have not yet been able to psychoanalyze a single man perfectly, totally – until nothing is left to be psychoanalyzed. But still, even the psychoanalysts do not have the insight to understand that perhaps they are doing something absurd.Mind can never be totally analyzed because while you are analyzing it, it goes on creating new things. It does not remain static. You go on analyzing every week twice or thrice, but the remaining time the mind is creating more ideas, more imaginations, more dreams. You can never come to an end – it is simply impossible. And if you cannot come to an end, the rock bottom, your understanding of the mind is very superficial.The East does not believe in analysis. It believes in awareness. In two ways the difference is of tremendous importance. First, for analysis you have to depend on somebody else; it creates a dependence, almost a kind of addiction. Once people have been in psychoanalysis, it is very difficult to get them out of it, because at least twice a week while in psychoanalysis they feel a little light, unburdened, a little relaxed. The mind will gather the tensions again because the roots have not been cut; you have been only pruning the leaves.And just when you prune a leaf watch what happens: three leaves will come in place of the one you have cut. The tree takes the challenge. You cannot destroy the tree; it is also a living being. It shows its effort to survive. You cannot destroy it by cutting its leaves; hence if you want a tree to have a thick foliage, you have to prune it. By pruning it, the foliage becomes thicker, not thinner.So first, in psychoanalysis you have to depend on somebody else. And you become addicted, just like with any drug. Yes, let me call the psychoanalysis prevalent in the West and borrowed by the East a very subtle drug. And to come out of it is almost impossible. You get tired with one psychoanalyst, then you move to another psychoanalyst. It is just like getting immune to one drug, then you move to another drug which is stronger and more dangerous. Soon you will become immune to that drug too. It won’t affect you. Then you will have to move ahead again.I have been in monasteries in Ladakh where they had been taming cobras, because there is a certain school in India which tries awareness through drugs. It is perfectly scientific. Its approach is scientific, but very dangerous. One can go wrong any moment, on any step. It has to be done under a master. One starts by taking small doses of a certain drug and getting immune to it; then a stronger drug, then an even stronger drug; and finally a moment comes when no drug affects the man.At that point only the poison of a cobra can affect him a little bit. He is not being killed by the cobra. You will be surprised to know – a man who is bitten by a cobra does not survive, but these ascetics I have seen in Ladakh…and they are in many places, in Assam, in Nagaland. The cobra has to bite them on their tongue so the poison immediately reaches to their bloodstream, and you will be immensely amazed that the cobra dies from biting them! Those people have become so full of poison that the poor cobra….This is the fire test. When a man can kill the cobra and not be killed by the cobra, he has become immune to all kinds of poisons in the world.But the basic method in that school is also awareness. You have to keep alert and aware; that’s why no drug affects you. That’s the whole process of a strange school – but the man attains to great awareness.Psychoanalysis is a very mild drug. You become accustomed, immune to one psychoanalyst. You go to somebody who is stronger, who goes deeper into your mind and finds stuff that the first one has not been able to find. This goes on and on. Psychoanalysts have been around for almost a century, but in one hundred years, they have not been able to bring a man to the understanding of his mind. Psychoanalysis has failed utterly.Awareness has a beauty: it does not depend on anybody else; it is just the arising of a new force that has been dormant in you. And you don’t analyze the mind. That is an absolutely futile exercise. You simply watch the mind without any analysis, any judgment, any appreciation, any condemnation, any evaluation – you simply watch, as if you have nothing to do with it. You are separate and you are watching the mind.But this separation creates the miracle, because the mind is a parasite; it lives on your blood, it lives on your energy. Because you are identified with the mind, it lives. You are nourishing its roots. So the whole process of psychoanalysis is simply stupid. You are not cutting the roots; you are nourishing the roots and you are simply cutting the leaves. The foliage will become thicker and thicker.It is no wonder that psychoanalysts go mad four times more than any other profession, and four times more psychoanalysts commit suicide than any other professions in the world. If this is the situation with psychoanalysts, what to think about their patients? The patients have fallen into wrong hands. But psychoanalysis is in fashion and it is one of the most highly paid professions in the West.It has been joked about around the world that the Jews missed Jesus; it was their own boy who created the greatest profession in the world – of the priests and the monks, Catholics and Protestants. They have never been able to forgive themselves. Now Catholics are the richest religious organization. The Jews cannot forgive themselves that they unnecessarily crucified their own boy who was creating a great profession.But they have taken revenge through Karl Marx, by creating another religion, communism. Karl Marx was a Jew. If half the world is Christian, then the other half of the world is communist. They are even. And they are even better off, because through Sigmund Freud, another Jew, they have created a highly paid profession in the world. But neither Christianity nor communism has been of any help; nor has psychoanalysis been of any help. They all have exploited men in different ways.Communism has taken away the whole dignity of man, his pride, his individuality, his freedom…. Christianity has destroyed the very possibility that you have a reality of your own. You are just a puppet in the hands of God. The strings are in his hand. If he wants you to dance, you dance; if he wants you to cry, you cry. You are not a master of your own destiny.And then finally psychoanalysis comes, and this also has not been able to give man back his dignity. Now patients in millions, around the world are in the hands of the psychoanalysts. And they depend on them as their father-figure and those father-figures themselves suffer from the same sickness, from the same schizophrenia, from the same split personality.The Eastern method given by the mystics in the first place gives dignity to man, gives him pride and makes him aware: you have a hidden source of awareness – just wake it up and become aware of the mind. You don’t have to do anything: just becoming aware of the mind, you are separate. And the moment you are separate, you are no longer nourishing the roots of the mind. The mind will soon wither away, without any analysis; what is the need of analyzing it?That’s why Bodhidharma is saying: Awareness, beholding the mind, is the most essential method to have a breakthrough. And once you have gone just a step beyond the mind, you have entered the world of nirvana, you have entered the world of light and eternal life. You have attained to spiritual integrity, freedom, and tremendous ecstasy which the mind cannot even dream about.Those who understand the mind reach enlightenment with minimal effort. Those who don’t understand the mind practice in vain. And psychoanalysts should be included with those who don’t understand the mind, and are practicing on themselves and on others something absolutely in vain. It is sheer wastage of time and life and energy. Psychoanalysis has to understand the mystical ways of the East, and then it will go through a transformation and it will be of tremendous help to people.But the trouble is the profession will be gone, and thousands of psychoanalysts who are earning so much money will not be ready for the whole profession to finish. This is a problem. It is such a deep problem that some way has to be found. Otherwise, even if somebody understands the fact intellectually, he will not be ready to do anything, because that will destroy his own vested interest.It is like the doctors: they help the patient to be cured, but deep down they want the patient to take as long a time to be cured as possible. They don’t want to kill him because that would not help their profession, but they would like him to hang between life and death as long as possible, because the longer he is hanging between life and death, the longer they are earning money. If he is cured, their earning is finished. If he dies, their earning is finished. So they neither want him to live nor do they want him to die. They want…and this is very unconscious, maybe no doctor is clearly aware of it.I have heard:A young man came home from the medical college after attaining all his degrees. His father was a doctor and he had sent his son also to become a doctor. On his first day in the practice he saw an old woman whom he used to see coming to his father when he was a child. He could not believe that she was not yet cured.He said to the father, “Now I am here, and you are old and must be tired. You rest. I will take care of the patients.”And after three days he told his old father, “You will be surprised: the woman that you could not cure in thirty years, I have cured in three days!”The father hit his head with his hand. He said, “You idiot! That woman has been providing money for your education! And you have cured her. She is so rich that she could have been able to provide for your other two brothers who are in college. And she is strong enough; she will not die, but we have to keep her just in the middle.”The boy could not understand. The old man said, “First learn the basic rule: if a poor man comes to you, cure him quickly. And if a rich man comes to you, then take your time; go slowly.”To avoid this situation in China, they have practiced for thousands of years a very different system. And I think that system should be the system for the future man too. In China the doctor is not paid for curing the patient, he is paid if his patient remains healthy. Every doctor has his patients and the patients pay him if they remain healthy. If they fall sick, then the payment to the doctor stops. Then he has to cure them at his own expense.This looks strange, but in Russia also they have started the same process – they are experimenting on a small scale. But the process is tremendously significant. Everybody should be given to a certain doctor; a certain area should be given to him. If the people are healthy in that area, they have to pay the doctor; they pay for their health. But if they fall sick, then the doctor has to cure them from his own pocket. Naturally he will cure them quickly and he will not want anybody to be sick. Obviously China has been a healthier country than any other country in the world. They have changed the whole pattern.The psychoanalyst should be paid only if the person who is his patient is becoming independent, alert, getting beyond the mind. But if he falls into the mind or below the mind, then the psychologist has to cure him from his own pocket. That will change the whole situation.Awareness is your own power.And to depend on your own power brings a great freedom and a great authority and a great integrity. The mind is cut from the roots; soon it withers away. And the space that mind was occupying is no longer occupied by anything; it is now pure space. That is your real, authentic being.Just in the last line I cannot agree with Bodhidharma. I don’t know – and there is no way to know – whether it is his own line or added by his disciples when they were writing the notes. But it does not matter. What matters is that I should make you aware that the last line is wrong when he says: To find something beyond the mind is impossible. No, it is not. That is the only possibility for human growth. That is the only possibility for enlightenment: going beyond the mind.So I want to add: To find something beyond the mind is impossible – except yourself, except enlightenment, which are different names of the same thing. To find yourself is enlightenment.Except for enlightenment, certainly you will not find anything beyond the mind. But without this addition the statement remains dangerous and can corrupt people’s minds. They can stop with the mind, thinking that there is nothing beyond it. And in fact, everything is beyond it. What is in your mind? Just soap bubbles, signatures on the water, or at the most, sand castles which just a little breeze may be able to demolish.Your mind is nothing but a fiction. But when you are living in the fiction it looks happier. Watch it from the outside, and the fiction disappears.But the disciple asks:But how can beholding the mind be called understanding?When a great bodhisattva delves deeply into perfect wisdom, he realizes … the activity of his mind has two aspects: pure and impure.There is no need to be a great bodhisattva to know this simple fact. You can look into your mind and you will find this distinction: that you have activities which are pure, and activities which are not pure. You have love, you have hate; you have peace, you have tensions; you have compassion, you have cruelty; you have creativity and you have destruction. No need to be a great bodhisattva; everybody who has a mind can know without any effort that it has two aspects: pure and impure.The pure mind delighting in good deeds, the impure mind thinking of evil. Those who aren’t affected by impurity are sages.Again I would like just a little addition, otherwise there is going to be misunderstanding. The sutra says: Those who aren’t affected by impurity are sages. Do they get affected by purity? In fact, the definition of a sage is one who is not affected by anything, pure or impure, because one who can be affected by purity cannot avoid being affected by impurity. They are not so different. So I would like to say: Those who are not affected by purity or impurity are sages.They transcend suffering and experience the bliss of nirvana. All others, trapped by the impure mind and entangled by their own karma, are mortals. They drift through the three realms and suffer countless afflictions. And all because their mind obscures their real self.The mind is just like a dark cloud around your self. It does not in fact damage your self, but because of the dark cloud you cannot see the sun. The sun is not affected by dark clouds. It is still shining in its grandeur, but the dark clouds can cover it so much that even the day starts looking like night.The sutra of the ten stages says, “In the body of mortals is the indestructible buddha-nature. Like the sun, its light fills endless space. But once veiled by the dark clouds of the five shades, it’s like a light inside a jar, hidden from view.” And the nirvana sutra says, “All mortals have the buddha-nature. But it’s covered by darkness from which they can’t escape. Our buddha-nature is awareness: to be aware and to make others aware. To realize awareness is liberation.”Liberation from the mind, liberation from all afflictions, liberation from purity and impurity, liberation from good and evil, liberation from God and devil, liberation from all dualities and entering into oneness with existence.Everything good has awareness for its root. From this root of awareness grow the tree of all virtues and the fruit of nirvana.This is a significant sutra. The moralists, the puritans of the world have been teaching people, “Do good works, charity, service to the poor, learn to be kind, be virtuous, be celibate, stop being possessive; all good qualities you have to practice.”But Bodhidharma is saying what I have been saying my whole life: that these are not possible to be practiced; they are by-products. You can only create more awareness in yourself, and all these things will come up on their own accord. And then they have a beauty of their own. If practiced they are only hypocrisies – they don’t go very deep. They are just masks, but they don’t change your original face.This is where morality and authentic religion differ completely. Morality teaches you superficial things: be good to others, be nice to others, be a gentleman, be non-violent, be compassionate and avoid all that is thought to be evil – cruelty, anger, greed. You can manage, millions are managing. And they are respected deeply, by all kinds of fools that the world is full of. But their morality is not even skin-deep. Just scratch them a little, and suddenly you will see they have forgotten all their practices and their real barbarous nature comes out.I have heard about a Christian saint who was continuously repeating in his sermons, “When somebody slaps you on one cheek, remember Jesus Christ and what he has said: ‘Give him the other cheek also.’” It is a beautiful teaching, but only if it comes from your innermost core. If it comes out of your awareness, it has a different significance. If you practice it, then it is not of much value.One day it happened: A mischievous fellow, just to see whether the saint himself gives the other cheek or not, stood up and he said, “Now let us see: you have been telling us again and again to give the other cheek.” He was a wrestler so the saint got very afraid, and the wrestler came and gave him a good slap on one cheek. But the saint had to keep his word; his congregation was there and everybody was watching what would happen.He gave him his other cheek thinking, “I have never done any harm to this fellow. He should feel ashamed and guilty.” But the wrestler was really a mischievous fellow. He gave an even bigger slap on the other cheek. But then he was suddenly surprised and the whole congregation was surprised: the saint jumped on the wrestler and started beating him this way and that way. He was not expecting it. Although he was a wrestler he forgot; it was so unexpected. He simply could manage to say, “What are you doing?”The saint said, “What am I doing? Jesus has only said: ‘Give the other cheek.’ I don’t have a third cheek. Now I am free from that discipline and I will show you what it means.”It is very easy to practice, but a practice has a very thin layer which can be scratched.One sannyasin asked me a few days ago…she was going after the evening discourse, on her bicycle to the place where she is staying. And a Puneite came on his motorbike, stopped the poor girl and squeezed one of her breasts. This they call in Pune, “Hindu culture.”The girl was asking me, “According to Jesus Christ, should I have given him my other breast too?” Even I have not thought about it, that it is not only a question of cheeks. She has asked a really profound question, “What do you say, what should I do in such a situation?”But basically the teaching of Christ is only a morality. You don’t have to give your other cheek, and you don’t have to give your other breast. You should have slapped that man as hard as possible, because these so-called Hindu chauvinists…and this city has a strange ego. They think it is a very cultural city; it is a dead city, it is a cemetery. But certainly in a cemetery nothing happens. How this ghost managed to come on the motorbike I don’t know, but ghosts are interested in women’s breasts because their whole life, when they were alive, they were interested in women’s breasts. So even when they are dead, the old habit continues.There is no need…it is not my teaching to give the other cheek, because what will you do when he hits the other cheek? You don’t have a third one!Her question reminded me about a conference of psychoanalysts.A very old psychoanalyst, who had been a disciple of Sigmund Freud, was reading a paper before the conference. And just in the front row was a beautiful woman who was a psychoanalyst. Another psychoanalyst, who was very famous, was playing with her breasts. And it was such a constant disturbance to the poor fellow who was reading the paper. He was hiding his eyes, but even – he was also after all a man, the same kind of man…. So once in a while he was looking at what was going on. And he could not believe what kind of woman this was…that old ugly fellow was playing with her breasts and she was listening to the paper as if nothing was happening. And so much was happening to the man who was reading the paper, who had no breasts and nobody was doing anything to him!But the question: what kind of woman was this? The man was simply ugly although he was a famous psychoanalyst. But fame does not change people; fame simply makes them more hypocritical, fame simply makes them do things in the dark, from the back door. Their front door is kept very clean and very pure, with pictures of all the great saints.Somehow he managed to finish. It was very difficult to finish the paper – because his priority was to ask the woman – and as he finished the paper he stepped down from the podium and went directly to the woman. As he went there, the old man pulled his hands away. He said to the woman, “The whole time I was reading the paper, I have been seeing this man playing with your breasts, and you did not object.”The woman said, “I am a psychoanalyst. It is his problem. Although he is old, he is not grown up; he is childish, immature. It is his problem; nothing to be worried about.”The reader thought it strange but that gave him an idea that it was his problem too. Why should he be disturbed? Perhaps he wanted to be in that old man’s place….Your so-called moralists, your so-called preachers, your so-called psychoanalysts, your so-called philosophers are just so superficial. And they are carrying the whole load of problems inside them, because they have not cut the roots and they have taken the whole situation from the wrong end.Bodhidharma is very clear when he says: Everything good has awareness for its root. From this root of awareness grow the tree of all virtues and the fruit of nirvana. He far transcends moralists, puritans, so-called good people, do-gooders. He has touched the very rock bottom of the problem.Unless awareness arises in you, all your morality is bogus, all your culture is simply a thin layer which can be destroyed by anybody. But once your morality has come out of your awareness, not out of a certain discipline, then it is a totally different matter. Then you will respond in every situation out of your awareness. And whatever you will do will be good.Awareness cannot do anything that is bad. That is the ultimate beauty of awareness, that anything that comes out of it is simply beautiful, is simply right, and without any effort and without any practice.So rather than cutting the leaves and the branches, cut the root. And to cut the root there is no other method than a single method: the method of being alert, of being aware, of being conscious. Be more conscious, and everything that will happen through you is going to beautify this existence, make it more divine, make it more mature. Your awareness will not only bring flowers to you; it will bring fragrance to millions of people.Awareness is the golden key to the gate of God.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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You say that our true buddha-nature and all virtues have awareness for their root. But what is the root of ignorance?The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions and evils, is rooted in the three poisons: greed, anger and delusion. These three poisoned states of mind themselves include countless evils, like trees that have a single trunk but countless branches and leaves. Yet each poison produces so many more millions of evils that the example of a tree is hardly a fitting comparison.The three poisons are present in our six sense organs as six kinds of consciousness, or thieves. They’re called thieves because they pass in and out of the gates of the senses, covet limitless possessions, engage in evil and mask their true identity. …But if someone cuts off their source, rivers dry up. And if someone who seeks liberation can turn the three poisons into the three sets of precepts and the six thieves into the six paramitas, he rids himself of affliction once and for all.But the three realms and the six states of existence are infinitely vast. How can we escape their endless afflictions if all we do is behold the mind?The karma of the three realms comes from the mind alone. If your mind isn’t within the three realms, it’s beyond them. …And how does the karma of these six differ?Mortals who don’t understand true practice and blindly perform good deeds are born into the three states. … Those who blindly perform the ten good deeds and foolishly seek happiness are born as gods in the realm of desire. Those who blindly observe the five precepts and foolishly indulge in love and hate are born as men in the realm of anger. And those who blindly cling to the phenomenal world, believe in false doctrines and hope for blessings are born as demons in the realm of delusion. …If you can just concentrate your mind and transcend its falsehood and evil, the suffering of existence will automatically disappear. And once free from suffering, you’re truly free.The sutras for this evening…. Bodhidharma is facing the ultimate question which nobody has ever been able to answer. The ultimate question is ultimate because it cannot be answered. Every philosophy, theology, mysticism, finally comes to the ultimate question, and there is no answer for it.But even a man like Bodhidharma, a man of tremendous courage, intelligence, awareness, still has not the ultimate courage to say that there is no answer to this question. He tries – just as millions of philosophers, thinkers, mystics, have always tried but have always failed.He also tries as if there is an answer and he knows it, but whatever he says is not the answer and the question remains untouched. What he says is exactly what is written in the scriptures of the Buddhists. Here he is no longer responding to the question immediately, out of his own awareness; otherwise he would have simply laughed and recognized that there is no answer for it.I could have simply said, “I don’t know.” But to say, “I don’t know” needs the greatest courage in the world. Even Bodhidharma does not have that ultimate courage. But I have got it! I will not in any way try to camouflage – through philosophical jargon, or theological hypotheses – to hide the fact that there is no answer and create an illusion of an answer.Whatever Bodhidharma says here is only an illusion. He is trying his best to rationalize it, to support it from the scriptures. Perhaps he may have been able to pacify the disciples, but he cannot pacify me!First I will read the disciples’ question. Their question is more important than the answer of Bodhidharma. Their question at least has a sincerity, an authenticity. Bodhidharma’s answer is just to hide the fact that ultimate questions remain questions. This is the whole reason why we call the essential religion “mysticism.” If everything can be answered, then there is no question of any mystery.Existence is a mystery because you can go on answering, but finally you cannot answer the ultimate question. And it is not far away; it soon comes up. You can answer all superficial things, but as you go deeper the ultimate question is coming closer. And the moment the ultimate question comes, I have not yet come across a single man in the whole history of mankind who has had the courage to say, “I don’t know.”The question:You say that our true buddha-nature and all virtues have awareness for their roots. But what is the root of ignorance?From where does the ignorance come in? In other words, in other symbols which will be more easily understood….The religions that believe in God can go on answering questions up to the point where it is asked, “Who created existence?” They have a ready-made answer: God created it. Now comes the ultimate question: “Who created God?” Because if everything needs a creator, then God must need a creator. And if God needs no creator, then why bother about God? Then why can’t you accept existence itself – without a creator? If you have to accept somewhere or other, then it is better to stop with existence as the ultimate, because at least we know it – we are part of it.God is just a hypothesis. Existence is reality. But all the religions have moved from reality to the hypothesis, and then they are faced with a problem which nobody has been able to answer. And nobody will ever be able to answer it, because any answer is going to lead into an infinite regress.If you say that God Number One was created by God Number Two, the question remains the same: “Who created God Number Two?” You can go on and on and on. But whatever the number, the question will still remain relevant, “Who created this God?” And this is the same question from which we have started, “Who created the universe?”So God has not been of any help. The hypothesis has not done any service. God is simply a futile hypothesis. It is just a pretension of an answer, but it is not a true answer because the question remains the same. A true answer means the question should disappear. That is the criterion.In Buddhism there is no god. In the place of god is the ultimate awareness, the buddhahood, the buddha-nature. This is only a different language.Now the disciples are asking: We can understand that the buddha-nature and all virtues have awareness for their root. But from where has the ignorance come in? Why in the beginning the ignorance? Why not the awareness from the very beginning? This is the same question, only a different theological framework. And any answer to it – without any exception, without knowing about it – I can say is going to be wrong.We have simply to accept the mystery that we are born in ignorance and the possibility is intrinsic in us to dispel this ignorance and become aware. We are born in misery, but with an intrinsic potential to overcome it, to transcend it, to become blissful, to become ecstatic. We are born in death, but with the possibility of going beyond death into immortality.But if you ask from where the death comes in, from where the ignorance comes in, from where the misery comes in, you are asking an ultimate question. There is no answer for it. It simply is the case. It is better to use Buddha’s expression, “suchness.” Such is the case.But Bodhidharma could not say that. He started answering. The only right answer would have been, “I don’t know.” And Bodhidharma would have done a tremendous service to humanity. He missed! Whatever he is saying is very childish. It has to be very childish, because it is not possible that a man like Bodhidharma will not be aware of the fact that he does not know the answer. Nobody knows the answer. Nobody can know the answer because nobody can be before the beginning.Just think of it for a single moment: you cannot be before the beginning. If you are before the beginning, then it is not the beginning. You are already there, so the beginning must have been before you were there. And unless somebody can be before the beginning, there is no witness who can say, “God created the world.”Who can say from where ignorance came? All that we can say is that existence is drowned in ignorance and slowly, slowly, a few courageous beings are moving into awareness, rising above the darkness of life and attaining to the light which is eternal.In another reference, Gautam Buddha makes it clear…although he also never recognizes at any point that it is a mystery and he doesn’t know.I want you to understand that it remains a mystery and it will always remain a mystery. By its very nature there is no way to know the beginning.But in a different context, Buddha has come very close. He says, “Ignorance has no beginning, but an end. And consciousness has a beginning, but no end.” This way he completes the circle. I will repeat it, so that you can deeply feel it: Ignorance has no beginning, but an end. And because ignorance ends, awareness has a beginning, but it has no end. It goes on and on forever.With this, Buddha is recognizing the fact that it is better not to ask about the beginning of ignorance and not to ask about the end of awareness. These two things will remain forever mysterious. And these are the most important things in existence.If the question was asked of me, I would simply say, “I don’t know,” because that is the most sincere answer. It simply means that it is a mystery.But Bodhidharma starts trying to answer the question, and you can see it does not even touch the question at all. The ignorant mind – now the question is from where the ignorance comes, and he has already accepted it, without answering:The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions and evils, is rooted in the three poisons: greed, anger and delusion.Is this the answer? He is saying the ignorant mind is rooted in certain things: delusion, anger, greed. But was this the answer? Was the disciple asking it? Was he asking for this kind of explanation?The question was, “What is the root of ignorance?” And if you answer that for example greed, anger and delusion are at the root of ignorance, you are simply postponing the answer. Again the question will arise, “From where comes the greed? From where comes the anger and from where the delusion?” And then you fall into a vicious circle. Then you start saying, “They come from ignorance. It is because man is ignorant; that is why he is greedy, that is why he is angry, that is why he is deluded.” And when we ask from where this ignorance comes, “It comes from anger, from greed and delusion.” Whom you are trying to befool?But for centuries these kind of answers have befooled people. Perhaps nobody questioned these irrelevant answers – either because they were so much impressed, so much overwhelmed by the individuality of a man like Bodhidharma, or perhaps they could not figure out that Bodhidharma is simply creating more smoke around the question, so they cannot see their question clearly. He is throwing dust into their eyes. It is not an answer.But this is not only the case with Bodhidharma. This is the case with everyone…with Gautam Buddha, with Mahavira, with Confucius, with Lao Tzu, with Zarathustra, with Jesus, with Moses…with everyone without exception. Whenever they come close to the ultimate question, they start talking nonsense. And these are very sensible people, very intelligent people.But the ultimate question can be answered not by intelligence but by innocence, can be answered only by an innocent person, a person who does not care for any respectability, for any wisdom, for any enlightenment, who can risk everything for his sincerity.These people were not able to risk their wisdom. They could not say, “I don’t know.” But that is the only authentic answer, because that gives you the sense that you have come to the ultimate: now begins the mystery – and it is unsolvable. There is no way to reduce it into knowledge. It is not an unknown which can be made known by efforts, by intelligence, by practice, by discipline, by any method, by any ritual.The mystery can be lived, but cannot be known. It remains always, unknowable. It remains always, a mystery.One man, a great contemporary, G.E. Moore, has written a book, Principia Ethica. And perhaps he is the only man in the whole of history, who has thought so deeply just to define the word good. Because without defining good, there can be no ethics and no morality. If you cannot define what is good, then how you can decide what is moral, what is immoral; what is right, what is wrong.He took a fundamental question, without knowing that it is the ultimate question and he got into trouble. And he was one of the most intelligent people of our contemporary world. He looks at it from every direction inquiring for almost for two hundred and fifty pages, just on a single question, “What is good?” And he was utterly defeated in defining such a simple word as good. Everybody knows what is good, everybody knows what is bad, everybody knows what is beautiful and everybody knows what is ugly. But when it comes to definition – you will be in the same trouble.He was thinking that everybody knows what is good…there must be some way to find the secret and define it. But finally, after two hundred and fifty pages of very concentrated thinking, of the keenest logic and rational analysis he comes to the conclusion that good is indefinable. These two hundred pages have been just going round and round and reaching nowhere. Good is indefinable.Croce has done the same work on “beauty”…one thousand pages. He has gone far deeper than G.E. Moore has gone into “good.” And after one thousand pages, comes the last statement: that beauty is indefinable.Everybody knows that the most difficult problem is that it is very difficult to find a man who does not know what beauty is and what ugliness is. But don’t insist on a definition. Even the greatest minds have failed.This is accepting failure, when they say beauty is indefinable. G.E. Moore became so frustrated that he said, “Don’t blame me that I have not been able to define what is good. Even simpler questions – this is a very complex question – are indefinable. For example, what is yellow…?”That is what G.E. Moore asks, “Can you define what yellow is?” You all know what yellow is. There is no doubt about it. You can all indicate towards a marigold flower…this is yellow. But he is not asking for indications; he is asking, “How have you come to know that this is yellow? What is the definition? What is the criterion that this marigold flower fulfills? Why it is not red? Why is it yellow? You must have certain definitions. Why is something red and something blue and something green and something yellow…on what grounds?”And then he says, “If yellow cannot be defined and although everybody knows what it is, nobody says, then perhaps all our knowledge is just very superficial.”Perhaps we have never inquired deeply into anything; we have never gone to the very rock-bottom. Otherwise my own understanding is everything is indefinable, because everything is mysterious. It is not only a question of beauty, or good, of ignorance, or awareness – everything, the whole existence consists only of indefinables. To recognize this is to recognize our ultimate ignorance. And to be able to recognize our ultimate ignorance, you need an absolutely selfless, egoless innocence, because that has been missing.Bodhidharma is doing the same as everybody else has done. And it is not a new thing – for centuries philosophers have been indulging in simple questions.You all know two plus two is four. But you have never gone deep into inquiry, whether it is so, or just hearsay. You have heard people saying two plus two is four, so you are repeating it generation after generation.Bertrand Russell, one of the greatest mathematicians of our age, and perhaps of all ages, has written a book, Principia Mathematica. It takes him two hundred and fifty pages to go into the question, whether or not two plus two is four. You cannot even conceive what he will be writing in two hundred and fifty pages…. Two plus two is simply four and forget all about it. Two hundred and fifty pages…such a dense, logical argumentation that his book is one of the most unreadable books in the world.Just a few crazy people like me, who don’t care whether it is readable or unreadable…. I have seen in many university libraries that the book has not even been opened. Many pages are joined – nobody has cut them, because even to read two pages is enough! It is one thousand pages in all and one-fourth has gone only in discussing whether or not two plus two is four.And the conclusion? The conclusion is that it is only a belief. It cannot be said with certainty, that two plus two makes four. It is a utilitarian concept. It is good, workable, but Bertrand Russell has not been left unchallenged – even on that. Another mathematician, Godel, challenged it. Because Godel says there is no possibility of two plus two being four. There is no possibility at all. And Godel has the same quality of genius as Bertrand Russell. He is not in any way a smaller genius – perhaps a greater genius. His argument is very clear and Bertrand Russell has not been able to answer it.Godel argues that you can put two chairs and two chairs together and naturally, there are four chairs. but two in itself is just an abstract symbol. Two chairs is another matter. Two is just a concept. It is as hypothetical as God, or the devil. Have you seen two anywhere? Have you met with two and said hello? Have you ever seen two with two meeting and hugging each other?And Godel’s criticism is that two things in existence are never exactly the same; something is always different. You cannot find two people the same; you cannot find even two leaves in the whole forest exactly the same. Then how can two leaves which are not equal, together with two other leaves which are also not equal, be four? They can be three, they can be five, they can be anything, but not four!And I understand Godel is right. Of course my understanding comes from a totally different dimension. To me, Godel is more appealing because that makes existence mysterious. You cannot even count on such simple answers as two and two are four. Everything is pragmatic. But as far as reality is concerned, it remains unknowable.So you have to remember this. I will go through the answers of Bodhidharma, but it is not the answer. It may be useful to go into it: it may help you to understand something else but it is not the answer to the question.But it is not Bodhidharma’s fault. There is no answer. His only fault is that he is not recognizing that he doesn’t know. And I cannot forgive him for that because I love him and I respect him and I wanted him to be sincere. Had he said, “I don’t know,” he would have risen far above the thousands of other mystics and buddhas and bodhisattvas and arhatas. He would have become absolutely unique, but he could not manage.The ignorant mind, with its infinite afflictions, passions and evils, is rooted in the three poisons: greed, anger and delusion. These three poisoned states of mind themselves include countless evils, like trees that have a single trunk but countless branches and leaves. Yet each poison produces so many more millions of evils that the example of a tree is hardly a fitting comparison.The three poisons are present in our six sense organs as six kinds of consciousness, or thieves. They’re called thieves because they pass in and out of the gates of the senses, covet limitless possessions, engage in evil and mask their true identity….But if someone cuts off their source, rivers dry up. And if someone who seeks liberation can turn the three poisons into the three sets of precepts and the six thieves into the six paramitas, he rids himself of affliction once and for all.All this is okay. But can you see it as an answer to the question? It is true, that if you can change your greed, your anger, your delusion – the poisons – with awareness, they transform into nectar. The same that was your disease, becomes your health. The same that was your bondage, becomes your freedom. All that is needed is to bring awareness into the darkness of your being.This is true. We have already discussed it many, many times in different ways. But it is not the answer to the question: “From where does the ignorance come?”This is also true, that if you cut the root then the tree withers away. And the root of your bondage, of your blindness, of your darkness, is your mind. If you cut the root of the mind – and the root of the mind is identity with yourself…when you are angry you say, “I am angry.” That is the root. If you are really aware when you are angry, you will not say, “I am angry.” You will say, “I am seeing anger passing through my mind.” If you can say that, you are a seer, you are a witness. The root is cut.One Indian sannyasin, who traveled far and wide in the world, was Ramateertha. He had a very strange habit of never using “I.” Instead of using I, he would use the third person for himself. For example, “Ramateertha is thirsty.” He would never say, “I am thirsty.” He would say, “Rama is thirsty.”With those who knew him, there was no difficulty. But he was continuously traveling all over the world. For many years he was in America and people could not understand when he would say, “Rama has a headache.” They would ask, “Where is Rama?” Or, “Rama is thirsty,” or “Rama is feeling sick.”In a strange land, he was moving with strange people and they were continuously saying, “This is a strange way of speaking. Why can’t you simply say that you are thirsty? Why make it unnecessarily complicated?” But he was practicing a certain method of cutting the root. By not saying, “I am thirsty, I have a headache, I am feeling sick, I am feeling sleepy,” he was trying to avoid the “I” and trying to be just a watcher. “Rama has hunger; Rama is thirsty” or “Rama is suffering from a headache.” He is just a witness reporting to you that this is what is happening to Rama…if you can do something, do it.He was trying to pull himself away from whatever was happening in his body, in his mind, in his heart. He was trying to clarify himself completely from all identities. He wanted just to be a witness.To be a witness is to cut the very root, and you will be liberated. This is perfectly right. But this is not the answer to the question.I will go on insisting on the fact that Bodhidharma is creating unnecessary verbiage…so much prose. Perhaps the disciples forgot about the question, but I cannot forget and neither can I forgive. Everything that he is saying is right in other contexts, so he is not saying anything wrong. But whatever he is saying, although it is right, is not at all relevant. And just being right is not the question. The answer has to be relevant to the question.He goes on creating more and more. But the three realms and the six states of existence are infinitely vast. What relation has it to the source of ignorance, from where it comes?How can we escape their endless afflictions if all we do is behold the mind? The disciples are asking another question. They have been deceived. They think they have received the answer to their first question. They have not received the answer, because there is no answer.Now they are asking another question:But the three realms and the six states of existence are infinitely vast. How can we escape their endless afflictions if all we do is behold the mind?They are caught by Bodhidharma. He has deceived them. He has brought them to a question that can be answered.I am reminded of a doctor who was treating a very rich woman…just for a common cold, but it was not going away. The doctor was tired because every day she was standing in his clinic with the complaint that the cold has not gone – and in fact, there is no treatment for the common cold.Those who know say, “If you take medicine, it goes in seven days. If you don’t take medicine, it goes in one week.”But the doctor was tired. Every day the rich lady in her limousine…and as he would hear the limousine being parked in front of his door, he would say, “My God, she is back again. That common cold is going to kill me.”Finally he became so fed up that he said, “Listen, there is only one cure. I have not told you because it is a little difficult.” The woman said, “No problem. I am ready to do anything, but I want to get rid of this cold.”So he said, “You do one thing: just behind your palace where you live is a big lake. So get up in the middle of the night, when it is absolutely cold and freezing, drop all your clothes and take a jump into the lake.”The woman listened breathlessly to what kind of treatment it was. “…and then stand on the shore, naked. Don’t dry the water on your body. Let the breeze take it away.”And the woman said, “My God, this is treatment for a common cold? This will give me double pneumonia!”The doctor said, “That is right. I have a treatment for double pneumonia, but I don’t have a treatment for the common cold. So first create double pneumonia; then everything is within control. When you come back, come with double pneumonia and I will treat it. But for the common cold, I just don’t have any other treatment. This is the only treatment. When somebody wants to be treated, then I have to give him this as a last resort. If you can manage to create pneumonia, or double pneumonia…no fear. I have experimented perfectly and have found a valid treatment for them. I guarantee it; you just do what I have told you.”That is what philosophers have been doing. Whenever you ask them the ultimate question that cannot be answered, they start going into pneumonia, double pneumonia. And ordinary people get puzzled with their words. They either think their question has been answered, or perhaps they have forgotten the question by the time the long sermon ends.They are asking another question. Now there is no problem; they are asking, “There are so many afflictions and existence is so vast, and one has so many lives and so many evil acts…just by beholding the mind, how can one get free of all that?”Just a simple cure, so simple: watch your mind and everything is finished. It is unbelievable. People want something complicated, because the problem is complicated….In millions of your lives in the past you must have done uncountable evil acts, you must have dreamed uncountable evil dreams. If you have not committed crimes, you may have thought to commit them. That makes no difference – whether you actually murder somebody or you simply think of murdering somebody, in both cases your mind is functioning in an evil way. It is vibrating in an evil way, and the mind carries those vibrations for millions of lives. Now so many past evil actions have been accumulated, how can they be dropped just by beholding the mind?But this is not the ultimate question. This is a very simple question…because you may have dreamed your whole life. In the night you may have dreamed that you lived a hundred-year life. And the time scale between waking and dreaming is different: if you fall asleep in a single second, you can dream a long dream of years’ duration. And when you wake up and look at your watch, you are puzzled: just one minute has passed. In one minute, how could you manage a long, long dream? Years and years have passed in the dream.In dreams the time scale is different. When you wake up, the time scale is different. We don’t yet know exactly what the time scale is in dreams; otherwise, we might be able to create watches which you can wear when you are asleep which will give you exactly the right time. They will not be in minutes and hours; they will be years, and perhaps light-years because you can dream that you have been on the moon, you can dream that you have been on the farthest star.It takes four years to reach to the nearest star and four years to come back – and that is about the nearest star! There are stars which will take four million years, five million years to reach, and then five million years to come back. You can manage in a single night; in a single dream, you can reach to the farthest star and you can come back too. You have to come back. You cannot remain there. It is not possible that you can wake up in your room and not find yourself there because you are gone….I have heard:Two friends were talking with each other about the dream they had last night. One man said, “Boy, what a beautiful dream…such big fish! In my whole life I have not been able to catch so many big fish. It was such a joy…the whole night, I was going in and in, inside the lake, and finding bigger and bigger fish.”The other said, “This is nothing. You cannot even conceive what happened last night in my dream.” His friend said, “What happened?”And the man said, “I am thinking if I should say it or not – because you will not believe it. Even when I am awake, I myself cannot believe it but it happened. Suddenly I found that in my bed, on one side is Sophia Loren. I said, ‘My God, how did she get in?’ and I turned to look at the other side and I found Marilyn Monroe. I said, ‘What is happening? Have I died and reached heaven?’”By this time the other fellow had become very angry. He said, “You idiot, why did you not call me? When two women came…what were you doing with two women? One is enough for you. You could have chosen. It was your dream of course, so the first choice was for you. But the other woman belonged to me. What kind of friendship is this?”And the other man said, “I went to your house but they said you had gone fishing.”In a small dream you can do everything…possible, impossible, everything! The time scale is different. In the morning when you wake up, do you ask how it was possible that just by waking up, all the dreams have disappeared – so many dreams, such beautiful dreams…?The same is the situation when a man becomes enlightened. All the millions of lives simply evaporate like dreams. It is not a question of fighting with each and every evil act separately – that you have to fight on, doing good, balancing the evil – then it will take millions of lives again before the time you can become awakened.And meanwhile, in these millions of lives when you are trying to undo your past, you will still be continuing to do something or other and that will go on accumulating. You cannot get out of this trap. The only way to get out of this trap is to wake up.Nothing else is needed. You don’t have to change your anger, you don’t have to change your greed, you don’t have to change anything. You have simply to be alert and aware. And all the projections of greed, all the projections of anger, all the projections of delusion, will evaporate – just the way, every morning, your dreams evaporate. They are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of.So it seems a simple method and inconceivable to the rational mind that it can solve anything. Just by watching your mind everything will be transformed and you will discover your buddhahood, your ultimate beauty and joy, your ultimate existence, your greatest ecstasy. How is it possible? That’s what the disciples are asking.Bodhidharma says:The karma of the three realms comes from the mind alone. If your mind isn’t within the three realms…It is no-mind.…it is beyond them.The moment you are aware, the mind becomes silent. And all the actions, good or bad, are created only by the mind. They are just like a film that you are seeing on the screen of the mind. Once you wake up, the film disappears. Suddenly there is a blank screen…utterly silent, nothing moving, absolute stillness.Mortals who don’t understand true practice and blindly perform good deeds are born into the three states. Those who blindly perform the ten good deeds and foolishly seek happiness are born as gods in the realm of desire. Those who blindly observe the five precepts and foolishly indulge in love and hate are born as man in the realm of anger. And those who blindly cling to the phenomenal world, believe in false doctrines and hope for blessings are born as demons in the realm of delusion.If you can just concentrate your mind and transcend its falsehood and evil, the suffering of existence will automatically disappear. And once free of suffering, you are truly free.The words he is using are theological, but what he is saying is that those who are living in greed want more and more pleasure. They can project a life of heaven, they can be born in heaven as gods, but this will be only a mind projection. It will be only a belief.I used to live with a professor and when one day I talked about projection, he was not ready to believe that everything is a projection. He had a younger brother and I had been watching the younger brother, because we had lived almost three months together in the same house. The younger brother had become very much attached to me and I was interested in him because I could see he had a tremendous capacity to be hypnotized.Thirty-three percent of people are very capable of being hypnotized. It is a very strange percentage – thirty-three percent, because only thirty-three percent of people are talented, too. And only thirty-three percent of people are ever interested in any kind of inner search. And only thirty-three percent of people are open, available, to be hypnotized. There must be some inner connection between all these things. Perhaps the quality of being hypnotized may be the criterion for a man’s possibility of going inwards. Because in hypnosis one goes inwards with the help of others; in meditation, one goes inwards on his own. But the way is the same.So to prove to this man – who was a professor of logic and never believed in anything unless some evidence was produced – I hypnotized his younger brother. And I was surprised that even in the first sitting, he went so deep that there was no need to have more sittings. I was thinking at least nine sittings and then the experiment could be done. But he went so deep in the first sitting that I told him, “Tomorrow, exactly at twelve o’clock – and tomorrow is Sunday so I will be at home, your brother will be at home, you will be at home – don’t go anywhere. Exactly at twelve o’clock you have to kiss the same pillow you are lying on right now. I am marking the place with a cross; exactly on that cross you have to kiss.”I repeated it again and again and again. And when I became certain that it had become an imprint in his unconscious mind, before waking him up I made a cross on the corner of his pillow with red ink.It took almost half an hour to bring him back, he had gone so deep. After waking up, he became normal except for one thing; again and again he used to look at the pillow and particularly at the cross. And then he would also feel embarrassed at what he was doing, because there was no reason to look at the pillow and at the cross. His conscious mind was not aware at all, but his unconscious mind was now projecting something of which he was not aware.The next day, near about eleven-thirty, he became very restless. Something from the unconscious was going on, telling him to do something which of course he was thinking was insane…to kiss. And I was present, his brother was present and I had told his brother that he had to just sit and watch what happened.At eleven-fifty, I took the pillow, put it in my suitcase and locked it. And you could see what was happening to that young boy…tears flowing from his eyes. And I asked, “What is the matter? Why you are crying?”He said, “I don’t know, but don’t put my pillow in your suitcase. I beg you.”I said, “But what is wrong? I will give it back to you, by the evening when you go to sleep.”He said, “No, I need it right now.”“What is the need?”“I don’t know any need. That is why I am crying, because I cannot give any explanation, but I need the pillow immediately.”So I gave him the key. He rushed – because it was getting close to twelve – he opened the suitcase, took out the pillow and started kissing that cross almost like mad. Just like any lover who has found his beloved after many years.I asked him, his brother asked him, “What are you doing?”He said, “I don’t know, but I feel such a relief. Such a burden has been removed from my heart. But I don’t know what…who has made this cross, why I have such tremendous compulsion that if I don’t kiss the cross I may die. I had to do it exactly at twelve. That was coming from inside me and I don’t know anything about it.”His brother said, “I accept the evidence.”When you become infatuated with a woman, do you think your woman is just a cross on the pillow? A biological infatuation? A projection from the unconscious, very deep rooted – not by anybody, but by nature itself.Your hormones, your chemistry, your biology, they are all functioning in a certain conspiracy against your awareness. They are making you restless, they are making you irresistibly attracted towards somebody and it is beyond your power to prevent yourself from this attraction or infatuation. You will be pulled like a puppet.It is not coincidental that all languages say, people fall in love. People certainly fall in love – fall into unconsciousness, fall into biological hypnosis, fall into the instinctual nature. They are no longer conscious human beings. That’s why this kind of infatuation and love affair finishes very soon. Once you have got the woman, once you have kissed the pillow…finished! A great burden, a great relief, but it was a pillow.So it was a simple phenomenon, but the woman you have kissed…and you cannot kiss without a preface. It needs some introduction – going to the movies, to the disco, all kind of things as preliminary necessities. Promising all kinds of promises, bringing roses and ice cream – this is the preface. And after all this preface, when you kiss a woman, she is not just a pillow. Now she will cling to you. Now you cannot escape. Now you want to escape but your own preface has created the prison. Now you cannot go against your word.All the seekers of human consciousness absolutely agree on the point that all your misery or your happiness, your sadness or your joy, is nothing but your projection. It is coming deep from your unconscious mind and the other person is functioning only like a screen. Once it is fulfilled, you are finished. And suddenly, the same woman you were ready to die for…you are ready to kill her.Strange…such a great change. Love turns into hate so easily. And yet you are not aware that love and hate both are your projections. When one is finished, the other remains there.It is true that once you are free from suffering, you are truly free. All that Bodhidharma is saying is right. But he has not answered the question.I want to say to you that nobody has answered the question. And the reason is because life is a mystery. You can go only so far, and then all your mind has to be left behind and you enter into existence where no question is relevant, no answer ever comes to you. But you can enjoy the experience immensely. I am all for experience, not for knowledge.I feel sad and sorry for Bodhidharma, because he has failed me. If he had said, “I don’t know” he would have raised himself as the highest and the greatest mystic the world has ever known.But I want to say to you: I don’t know. And I want to emphasize that you should also remember, whenever there is an ultimate question, don’t try to deceive others or yourself. Simply accept your innocence. Say with humbleness, “I don’t know.”It is not a question of ignorance. It is a question of your awareness that life is a mystery, a miracle. You can taste it but you cannot express anything about the taste. You cannot define it. And this is the greatness of existence. This is where all scientists have failed, this is where all philosophers have failed. This is the only place where mystics have succeeded.Bodhidharma is a mystic and if he meets me…and somewhere there is a possibility in this eternal life, this unending existence, someday, somewhere I am going to catch hold of him. And he will recognize me because I am wearing the same sandals that he was carrying on his staff – the exact type. My sandals come from the Zen monasteries of Japan. It is particularly Zen – Zen people have everything of their own. Even if they use cups and saucers from the market, first they break them, then they glue them back together. Then they make them unique, then there is no other piece like that – then it becomes Zen, original, and without any other copy anywhere. Just one of a kind.This sandal that you see has been used by Zen people since Bodhidharma, for almost fourteen centuries. The first sandal was sent to me by a Zen master from Japan as a present.So he will immediately recognize me. I have just to show him my sandals. And I have to ask him why he missed a great opportunity…when he could have become the greatest mystic in the world. And he had every capacity. He has the genius for it.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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But the Buddha said, “Only after undergoing innumerable hardships for three asankhya kalpas did I achieve enlightenment.” Why do you now say that simply beholding the mind and overcoming the three poisons is liberation?The words of the Buddha are true. But the three asankhya kalpas refer to the three poisoned states of mind. What we call asankhya in Sanskrit, you call countless. Within these three poisoned states of mind are countless evil thoughts. And every thought lasts a kalpa. Such an infinity is what the Buddha meant by the three asankhya kalpas. …But the great bodhisattvas have only achieved enlightenment by observing the three sets of precepts and by practicing the six paramitas. Now you tell disciples merely to behold the mind. How can anyone reach enlightenment without cultivating the rules of discipline?The three sets of precepts are for overcoming the three poisoned states of mind. When you overcome these poisons, you create three sets of limitless virtue. A set gathers things together – in this case, countless good thoughts throughout your mind. And the six paramitas are for purifying the six senses. What we call paramitas, you call means to the other shore. By purifying your six senses of the dust of sensation, the paramitas ferry you across the river of affliction to the shore of enlightenment.According to the sutras, the three sets of precepts are, “I vow to put an end to all evils. I vow to cultivate all virtues. And I vow to liberate all beings.” But now you say they’re only for controlling the three poisoned states of mind. Isn’t this contrary to the meaning of the scriptures?The sutras of the Buddha are true. But long ago, when that great bodhisattva was cultivating the seed of enlightenment, it was to counter the three poisons that he made his three vows. Practicing moral prohibitions to counter the poison of greed, he vowed to put an end to all evils. Practicing meditation to counter the poison of anger, he vowed to cultivate all virtues. And practicing wisdom to counter the poison of delusion, he vowed to liberate all beings. Because he persevered in these three pure practices of morality, meditation and wisdom, he was able to overcome the three poisons and reach enlightenment. By overcoming the three poisons, he wiped out everything sinful and thus put an end to evil. By observing the three sets of precepts, he did nothing but good and thus cultivated virtue. And by putting an end to evil and cultivating virtue, he consummated all practices, benefited himself as well as others and rescued mortals everywhere. Thus, he liberated beings.Bodhidharma is now really facing a question for which he has no answer. The case was the same in last night’s sutra and it continues because the disciples are asking more and more about the ultimate, which simply baffles all knowledge. It is a peace, a silence…there is no answer.But it is really difficult to accept that you are enlightened and you don’t know the answers to the ultimate questions. Then what has your enlightenment done for you if it has not solved the mystery? Then what kind of wisdom have you received?This has to be clarified for you. It is sad that Bodhidharma did not clarify it for his disciples; on the contrary he continued to answer questions which cannot by their very nature be answered.But this is a problem that every master has to face. When the questions are trivial the master is perfectly at ease to answer, but as the disciples become more and more keen in their inquiry and they start touching the ultimate, the master comes to a difficult situation. So as not to let the disciples feel that the master does not know, he goes on answering – but those answers are not true answers. They are in themselves perfectly right for some other questions, but not for the questions that have been posed before him.The question is very important. But even the greatest masters like Bodhidharma belong to a particular line of philosophy, a particular set of doctrines; hence they have to keep on repeating the ideological system they have accepted.It is totally different with me. I don’t belong to any ideology. I don’t have to console anybody. I am not concerned with who gets annoyed and irritated. My sole concern is that when you ask a question, you need a sincere answer – not according to ideology but according to my own experience.The disciple asks:But the Buddha said, “Only after undergoing innumerable hardships for three asankhya kalpas did I achieve enlightenment.” Why do you now say that simply beholding the mind and overcoming the three poisons is liberation?The truth is a little complicated. First I will explain my position, if I were to answer the question. Then it will be easier for you to understand the difference, when a person answers because of a certain ideological school that he belongs to, and when a person answers just out of his own experience and response.The Buddha has certainly said: “Only after undergoing innumerable hardships for three asankhya kalpas did I achieve enlightenment.” But as far as I can see, this is not a true statement of Gautam Buddha himself. It is what the Mahayana school of Buddhism maintains is the answer. Now Buddha is not there to refute it, and everything that he has said has been written after his death. And it has been written by common consent: a great gathering was called of all the old disciples who had been listening to him from the very beginning, and they assembled what everybody remembered.There was dissension, there was conflict, there was contradiction, and the whole gathering divided into thirty-two groups and they separated from each other. And all thirty-two groups have their own scriptures, their own reports of what Buddha said. Mahayana is only one school, the biggest, which has the greatest following. And certainly the reason why it has the biggest following is that it says that Buddha, once awakened, remains on this shore to liberate people.In fact, they have even invented a story: When Buddha reached the doors of moksha, the ultimate resting place for liberated beings, the doors were opened and there was great music and celebration because it rarely, very rarely happens that a man comes to such great enlightenment. Thousands of years pass and the door remains closed. Naturally there was great jubilation among the other buddhas who had entered moksha during the millions of years that had passed. They were welcoming a new guest.But Buddha refused to enter the gate. He turned his back towards the gate and told the gatekeeper, “Please close the gate. I will stand outside the gate until the last human being has become enlightened. It may take millions and millions of years – it does not matter. I’m at peace. I’m in absolute ecstasy. I can wait. But this will be a little selfish to enter the gate and forget all about those who are still groping in the darkness.”Every effort was made to persuade him that this is not the way…nobody has done this before. He said, “That simply means nobody has entered moksha with a compassionate heart. For compassion towards my human brothers and sisters, I can renounce moksha itself. It does not matter to me. It cannot give me more than I have already got. I will stand here before the door and when the last human being has passed in, then I will pass through.”This is a fictitious story of the Mahayana school. Because of this idea of compassion for other human beings, naturally Mahayana attracted more people who are not able to become awakened on their own. They need help. They need a compassionate, awakened person. And the Mahayana school preaches that every enlightened person in Mahayana will be doing every possible thing that he can do to make more and more people liberated. Because he has now a dual duty: people have to be liberated and secondly, if people are not liberated, Gautam Buddha has to stand at the gate for millions of years. So compassion for the people – they have to make every effort to liberate them, and gratitude to Gautam Buddha and his strange stand, that he is boycotting moksha, the ultimate state of silence and peace and rest just to make sure that nobody is left behind.The other school is Hinayana; it has not attracted so many people. The very word means the small boat. Mahayana means the big ship…an ocean liner, so thousands of people can go to the other shore together. But in a small boat, only one man can go. And the people who created Hinayana are the arhatas. They are enlightened and their standpoint is that even to make an effort to liberate people is interfering with their individual freedom. It is not compassion, it is not love: love gives freedom.Compassion does not force a certain way of life on people, and liberation is a certain way of life. Although it is for their good, still you are forcing them, insisting on it, that they follow the path, that they don’t waste time. You are not allowing them total freedom to be themselves. When they feel like moving on the path, they will move. And if they don’t feel to, it is nobody’s concern. It is their absolute right to remain in the world and not to go to moksha.The arhatas interpret compassion in a very refined way, with a very total, different perspective. It is very difficult to choose who is right. Both seem to be right….But Hinayana naturally could not gather as many disciples. Who would be interested in the people in the Hinayana school, who are not even interested in your liberation? They will not speak, they will not support, they will not give you a hand to pull you out of the ditch. They will simply wait. If you are capable of falling in the ditch you are certainly capable of getting out of it. If you are capable of falling into wrong paths, you are perfectly capable of feeling the misery, the suffering of the wrong path; you can change your path. Nobody else can do it for you.So this is the Mahayana interpretation, that Buddha took millions of ages to become enlightened. For the arhatas the situation is totally different. They say it is not a question of millions of years and arduous effort. It was all a dream. Whether you dream for three million years, or three days, or three minutes, it makes no difference. The moment you wake up, all the dreams will be found to be simply hot air. There is no such tension then.Even your disciplines – what you are practicing to obtain liberation – are really a kind of greed. And greed cannot destroy greed. It is ambition, and ambition cannot destroy the ego. Perhaps it is the greatest ambition – to be liberated, to be enlightened.But wherever there is desire and ambition, you are in bondage. And all your practices and all your disciplines are but practicing in a dream. It is almost as if you are weak, but in your dream you do great gymnastics and you feel that you have become a world champion. But in the morning when you wake up, the same mouse is sleeping in the bed. What happened to all your gymnastics that you have been dreaming about?You can dream about being a great sage, you can dream of being a great thief, you can dream of murdering many people, you can dream of serving many people but in the morning you will feel there is no distinction between all those dreams. They are all dreams made of the same stuff. They are all fictions. The good is as much a fiction as bad. The spiritual discipline is as much a fiction as murdering somebody. So those who don’t believe in the Mahayana doctrine say you can become enlightened, here and now. That was really the position of Bodhidharma. And that is creating the problem now. He cannot say Buddha is wrong; that is impossible. He loves Gautam Buddha, he is a disciple of Gautam Buddha, so he cannot say Gautam Buddha is wrong. He has to say the words of the Buddha are true.But his own position is that whatever you have been doing in your unconsciousness is meaningless. When you wake up it all disappears within seconds. And you can wake up at any moment. Just a certain right device and you will be awakened.You can wake up in the middle of the night. The dreams cannot prevent you from waking up; neither can your sleep prevent you from waking up. It is just your own will not to wake up. That’s why the sleep continues and the dream continues. If the will to wake up arises in you, then enlightenment is instantaneous.Now this is Bodhidharma’s own position. But he is in a difficulty because he belongs to the Mahayana school and he was teaching in China, to the Mahayana schools to which China belongs. Those disciples who were asking were quoting Buddha according to Mahayana sutras. Now nobody knows whether Buddha said them or they were inventions of a certain school, because in the Hinayana school those sutras are not found. And these are only two schools…the main ones. There are thirty other schools which are very small streams, but they also have something, a grandeur of their own, and they all differ.But on one point they all agree: that Buddha cannot be wrong. They cannot say that Buddha is wrong. So they have to go round about saying that Buddha is right. Still, what they are saying is also right, although it is contradictory. The disciple is asking: “Why do you now say that simply beholding the mind and overcoming the three poisons is liberation? You are making it too simple.”Buddha himself is saying that he has been undergoing innumerable hardships for three asankhya kalpas – that is, innumerable ages – and then he achieved enlightenment. It was not instantaneous. It had a long history of millions of years behind it…of doing good, of avoiding evil, of practicing meditation, of practicing other disciplines. It took three innumerable ages for him to become a buddha.If this was the situation of a Gautam Buddha, who seems to be the greatest human being who has lived on the earth, then what will be the situation for an ordinary man? Perhaps instead of three…thirteen asankhya kalpas, or thirty! But you are saying that just by watching your mind, just at this very moment, you can become enlightened.How did these two different attitudes arise? If you don’t understand the background, you will not be able to understand the difficulty of Bodhidharma. Buddha left his palace when he was twenty-nine years of age. He went to every great teacher who was famous in his day and he was such a sincere seeker that he risked everything. Whatever those teachers said, he did it more perfectly than they had ever expected from anyone. In fact, they themselves were not so perfect.And Buddha said, “I have done it, but nothing has happened. I am still as ignorant as I was before. Yes, I have learned a certain skill. I can do a certain distortion of the body, by yoga. But that does not make me aware of my being; it does not deliver me the good, the truth.His sincerity was indubitable. Even his teachers felt ashamed. They had never come across such a student. The teacher, the ordinary teacher, always likes mediocre students because compared to them, he is a great teacher. And whenever – sometimes it happens – a great student, who towers higher than the teacher himself, comes to him, then the teacher feels angry, irritated, because the student continuously brings questions which the teacher cannot answer. Whatever he answers, the student is always able to refute it.One of my teachers got tired of me because for eight months continuously, I would not let him move a single inch. We were stuck on a single point. He would bring all kinds of arguments and he was looking into books…. I was also working hard to refute him and all the other students enjoyed it – because the teacher was so much engaged with me, he had completely forgotten to give homework, or to teach anything else. There was no time, because the first lesson had not yet been learned so he could not move to the second.The examination was coming near and then he became really mad at me. He started shouting at me. I said, “Listen, you are an old man. If you shout so much, you may have a heart attack. And I hope it is not heart failure…just a small attack. But don’t think that by shouting, you can shut me up. And if you think it is a match in shouting, I can also shout. And you are an old man – I will really enjoy shouting. So calm down.”He understood the point, but he left the class and went to the principal and said, “Now it is absolutely certain that either I remain in the school, in the college, or this student remains. You can choose.” The principal said, “But what is the matter? Has he done anything wrong to you?”He said, “He has not been allowing me to teach the students and the examination is coming close. All the students are going to fail, except for him. And he has a strange stamina. I have been working hard. I have never worked so hard, reading late into the night, finding new arguments, and the next day he simply refutes them. He is working harder than me. Of course he is young and it is very humiliating to get defeated every day. I resign. I will not come to the college again if you don’t expel him.” And he left for his home.The principal called me. He knew me. I had brought so many trophies and so many cups from all over the country, from all the universities, for debating, for eloquence competitions. He was very happy that I had made his college famous nationwide.He said, “I’m in a difficulty. Why are you irritating that old man? He is our oldest professor, well educated; he has two PhDs, has been conferred D.Litt. recently by the university. He is a well-known scholar and we cannot lose him.”I said, “You can keep him, but you are being unfair and unjust because I have not done anything harmful to him. He is the professor of logic and if a professor of logic cannot argue with a student, then who is going to argue? The whole subject of logic is argument and sharpening of arguments, and I’m really doing my work as every student should do. The students are behaving like dodos; they don’t bother about the subject. They have other interests – somebody has a girlfriend, somebody has an interest in the movies – there are a thousand and one things in the world. And they study only at the end of the year.“And now, because questions have become stereotyped, the same questions are being repeated every year. Just read four years’ question papers and that is enough – prepare for twenty questions and you are going to find five questions from those twenty in your examination. There is no need to bother about the whole course because professors are lazy. Even to find a new question is difficult for them, so they just look at four or five year-old examinations questions and find questions – maybe they rephrase them. That is their whole work.“And in the market now examination keys – which are a very profitable business – have appeared. Some retired professor knows perfectly well what is going to come up in the examination. He takes ten years of questions in his book and gives the answers to each point. You just purchase a key book. There is no need to go into the originals because that is a difficult task.“And if you give the answers, nobody bothers whether you know it or whether you have crammed it. Those keys are made by retired professors in such a way that the answer is very small and can be crammed, so no intelligence is needed.“I was trying…because I have not come to the college just to sit there. I am not interested in degrees – my interest is to sharpen my intelligence.”The principal said, “I can understand you, but still I will have to expel you. It is unjust and I am feeling guilty because I cannot let that professor leave. Without him, our whole logic department will collapse. He is the most senior professor and he’s a very stubborn man. If he has said that he will not come unless you are expelled, he will not come. But knowing the injustice…you have not been doing anything harmful, you just don’t have a teacher of a real caliber and genius.“He is a mediocre man. He can write PhD theses and he can be awarded a DLitt for his services, but he is not a genius. That I know. So I will expel you because he will insist on seeing that your name is there on the notice board and that you are expelled. But I will make arrangements for you in another college. I will phone the principal.”I said, “I don’t want to create any trouble for your institution, or for you, or for the old professor. I have no antagonism towards him – I just feel a great pity. You make arrangements, but it is not going to be easy because this situation which has been happening for eight months, has become the talk of all the colleges in the university. Every principal knows….”He tried. He phoned one principal who was very close to him and the principal said, “Just forgive me. You are sending a trouble to us because you cannot manage it.”He tried a few other colleges, because the city I was in was one of the most significant cities as far as education was concerned; there were twenty colleges in all. He called a few other principals, and everybody said, “You can send anybody else, but we have heard about that student. And you are the oldest college and you have the best professors. If they are ready to resign because of him, what will happen to our professors who are not so senior, who are not so experienced?”The principal was in a dilemma. And I was sitting there listening to all this phone talk. I told him, “You will not be able to manage. I will manage myself. You just give me expulsion orders and I will manage.”And I arranged with one principal to enter his college on the condition that I would never come to the college. I would pay the fee but I would never come to the college. I would go to the library but not to the classes. I would not attend the classes, so no problem would arise. And the principal would see to it that I got the right attendance necessary for appearing at the examination. I said, “That’s a great arrangement. In fact, I have always wanted it.”For two years I never went to a single class for a single day. But those two years were of great importance. I settled into the library as deeply as possible. Before the library would open, I was there and only when the librarian pushed me out because it was being closed did I reluctantly leave.The same is the situation with Bodhidharma, who belongs to the particular school of Mahayana. Because China – the whole of China – does not have any other school except Mahayana. And to tell the Mahayana people that you can become enlightened just like a click of the fingers…it is not possible for them to believe, because Buddha himself said he had to do hard work for three asankhyas – innumerable ages – before he became enlightened. But Bodhidharma knew from his own experience that he had become enlightened without any austerity, without any discipline, without going through fasting, without doing prayers, rituals. He became enlightened just by becoming aware of his mind.But to say that Gautam Buddha is wrong…. He would be surrounded by the whole country which believed that Gautam Buddha cannot be wrong. And in actual fact, for six years after leaving his palace, Gautam Buddha did everything, and all the teachers finally felt that he was a far greater soul than they themselves were. And they said to him, “Forgive us. All that we knew, we have told you. More than that is beyond our capacity. But we will suggest a greater teacher to you.”For six years he went from one teacher to another teacher, and finally, the greatest teacher of those days said to him, “You are wasting your time. No teacher can help you. It is time enough that you should be on your own…. Just watch your mind. I don’t have any other teaching for you.”Tired of those six years of continuous discipline…. It was a full moon night. He had been was refused by the teacher and told, “Just watch your mind. There is no discipline for you; those disciplines are for mediocre minds. They are compromises, according to everybody’s capacity – a certain ritual to console him that he is doing some work for enlightenment. Nothing will satisfy you unless enlightenment happens.”So he went away. A full moon night – he had left the teacher just a few days before. And he was sitting under the tree by the side of Niranjana in Bihar. In India even trees are worshipped – and I don’t see anything wrong in it, because a tree is also a living being and they are very nice people. They don’t do any harm to anybody. A woman had been a worshiper of that Bodhi tree. And she had told the God of the tree that if she became pregnant – because for years she had not been getting pregnant – if she became pregnant she would bring sweets, fruits and flowers as a present to the god of the tree.And on the full moon night, she came. She had become pregnant and when she became absolutely certain and the physicians had said, “You are pregnant,” she brought delicious food, sweets, flowers. Her name was Sujata. It is a significant name in the history of Gautam Buddha.And he was hungry, because he had been fasting for months – very hungry. But he was a beautiful man, a prince, and because of the hunger he had become almost pale. And in the full moon night, he looked as if he were the god of the tree who had come out.The woman could not believe it – she was a villager, and she really thought that the god of the tree had come out to receive her presents. She fell to his feet and offered him all that she had brought.This was the first time in those six years that he had taken a full meal. And that too, in the night. It is not allowed for ascetics to eat at night, but now he was no longer an ascetic.When the teacher had said, “All that you have to do is to watch,” he dropped all disciplines, all asceticism. He had renounced his kingdom; now he renounced his renunciation too. For the first time he was perfectly relaxed. He ate well, and after six years he slept for the first time without any tension. There was no ambition. There was no desire. There was nowhere to go, nothing to be searched.In this relaxed state, even in his sleep he became aware that he was watching his mind; just a small flame of awareness was there. Although the body was asleep, the mind was asleep, something beyond was alert.And in the morning when he opened his eyes, the last star was disappearing. And the actual fact was that as the last star was disappearing, he also disappeared as an ego, as a personality. The enlightenment was sudden. Suddenly he saw his authentic being.Now the problem arose: Mahayanists say that this sudden experiment happened because of those six years of continuous austerity – this is gradual enlightenment.And there are people, a certain school, who believe in sudden enlightenment. They say it had nothing to do with those six years. If he had stopped at five years, the experience would have happened. And if somebody had told him the very first day, and if he had had the intelligence to understand it, it would have happened the very first day he left the palace.Those six years are not a cause for the effect of enlightenment. Enlightenment cannot have a cause. Their reasoning is very clear. Bodhidharma has said in the sutras that enlightenment has no cause. Then the question of millions of ages and arduous effort is meaningless. Enlightenment is always sudden.If it is not sudden, it is not because the nature of enlightenment is gradual. It is because your mind leaves you gradually. You are not ready to take the risk wholesale. You take the risk retail, inch by inch, part by part – the American way, in installments. A little bit you lose today, a little bit tomorrow, a little bit…. It takes time because you are not ready to drop the mind in its totality, in this very moment. You say, “I will do it slowly…tomorrow, then the day after tomorrow. What is the hurry?”So there are these two schools: the gradual school of enlightenment which appeals to many people because they don’t have the guts to drop the mind immediately; and the sudden school of enlightenment which belongs only to people who have the heart of a lion, who can simply risk everything.I remember a story about a Japanese actor. He was very famous in America and he earned millions of dollars. He wanted to return home, he had earned enough. But before returning home, he thought it would be better to go around the world. Then he would not have to leave his home again. Then he wanted to rest. But first he wanted to see every beautiful place around the world.He reached Paris. His guide took him to many places and then he said, “Would you like to see a casino?” The actor said, “Certainly, I want to see everything. In Paris, not to see a casino is missing much.” Casinos are gambling places and France has the best casinos.And as he entered the casino and he saw people putting up hundreds of dollars, thousands of dollars…and he got interested in the game. He risked all his millions of dollars that he had earned in America – just on one stake, not gradually.Even the owner of the casino was afraid. “What to do with this man? If he wins, my whole casino is gone. A strange fellow!” He had been in the business for so long but he had never seen a man putting millions of dollars at risk, at stake.But there was no way to refuse; it was not possible to refuse. You have to accept the stake and fortunately for the casino owner, the Japanese lost. He lost every single dollar that he had earned and was hoping to live a retired life on. He had nothing.He went into his hotel and went to sleep. In the morning he saw in a newspaper that a Japanese had committed suicide by jumping from a forty-story building, and naturally it was thought that it must be the same Japanese who had lost millions of dollars in the casino. So they mentioned that it seemed that it was the same Japanese who had lost millions of dollars the previous night and he had not even a single dollar left for himself.He read the news and he laughed and the owner of the hotel read the news and he said, “He was in my hotel. How did he reach the other hotel? He was a famous name.” The Japanese rushed to his room and he was laughing so madly. The owner asked, “Why are you laughing?”He said, “I am laughing because I am alive and this newspaper said I have committed suicide by jumping from a hotel. Some other Japanese has committed suicide.” And it was a very logical conclusion by the journalist that it must be the same famous Japanese actor from America. The body was so distorted, so broken in pieces that there was no way to find out who the man was.The owner of the hotel asked him, “It is strange. You lost all your life’s earnings and still you slept well?” He said, “It does not matter. I enjoyed the thrill for a moment – this way or that. And I enjoyed the owner of the casino trembling. As far as money is concerned, I can go back and earn again. That is not a problem. It was not stolen money, I earned it.”The owner said to him, “But you could have played the way all gamblers play – small sums. You could have played the whole night. Why did you stake everything?”And I was reading in his autobiography that he said, “I belong to the sudden enlightenment school. I don’t believe in gradual installments. If you have to do something, do it totally and intensely. If you don’t want to do it, then don’t unnecessarily befool yourself by doing it partially.”Bodhidharma is authentically a man of sudden enlightenment. But he was initiated by the woman, Pragyatara. She was a Mahayanist and she sent him to China to help the growing religion there. The religion had grown like wildfire – just in six hundred years. It reached China at the time of Jesus Christ, five hundred years after Gautam Buddha. And after six hundred years, there were thirty thousand Buddhist temples and two million Buddhist monks in China, and that is not including the laymen.Millions and millions of people, because they were really hungry…. Confucius had made them so hungry for religion because in Confucius’ mind there was no soul, no religion. It is because of Confucius that China turned to communism because Confucius’ mind was very close to that of Karl Marx; there was not much difference. Both believed that there is no God, there is no soul, and all religions are useless. Both believed that consciousness is just a by-product of five elements getting together, and death is the end. So there is no question of good actions or bad actions.Confucius had been such a dominant figure, such an influential figure that the whole soul of the Chinese people was hungry. There was an appetite which the Buddhist monks fulfilled. There was a gap so there was no conflict, no quarrel. The Buddhists were accepted without any struggle against anybody.And Pragyatara sent Bodhidharma because up to then, no enlightened men had gone to China. Many scholars had gone – thousand of scholars – who were trying to translate Buddhist scriptures into Chinese. But they were only scholars, and Pragyatara thought China needed to see an enlightened man. It deserved it. In just six hundred years, great work had been done – almost the whole country had gone from Confucius to Gautam Buddha. Pragyatara told Bodhidharma, “You have to go,” and he went there. But his own enlightenment was sudden and in China the school that had spread to the people was Mahayana, which believed in gradual enlightenment.This is the dilemma. The students are raising the question: Buddha says one thing and you are saying just the opposite. Why do you now say that simply beholding the mind and overcoming the three poisons is liberation? You are making it too simple, saying that one can do it now. Then what about Gautam Buddha’s struggle for three innumerable kalpas…?But perhaps even Bodhidharma is not aware about the distinction that I have made, that just before his enlightenment Gautam Buddha dropped all disciplines. That would have been the right answer: Gautam Buddha may have struggled for three or thirty innumerable kalpas – it was just a dream, and when the dream is broken it always happens in a single moment. Just a single moment before, you were asleep; after a single moment, you are awake. And when you are awake all dreams which were appearing so real, disappear.This would have been the right answer, but it would not have fitted with the Mahayana school. That’s why he goes on creating theological smoke around the question again.The words of the Buddha are true. But the three asankhya kalpas refer to the three poisoned states of mind.That is not true. He actually refers to innumerable lives in which he has struggled to achieve buddhahood and finally, in the last life, he has achieved it. Now Bodhidharma is trying to somehow make a plausible answer.What we call asankhya in Sanskrit, you call countless. Within these three poisoned states of mind are countless evil thoughts.Now this is all nonsense, because it is again not relevant to the question.And every thought lasts a kalpa.That is even worse than nonsense; it is absurd! – and you know it. A thought does not last even for an hour. Just try for any thought to remain in your mind for one hour continuously and you will be surprised – it goes on slipping out of the mind.Mind is in a constant traffic. You cannot stand in the middle of the traffic, your thoughts are moving faster than anything. And one kalpa is a very long time. A thought does not remain even for a few seconds. Your mind is continuously a flux; it is just like a river.Heraclitus says, “You cannot step in the same river twice because it going so fast. By the time you step twice, it is other water. It is the same river just for the name’s sake, but the water that you have stepped in for the first time is no longer there.”I go a little further than Heraclitus. I say, “You cannot step even once in the same river, because when your feet touch the upper part of the water, the lower part is rushing by. As your feet go a little deeper, the lower part and the upper part is rushing by. By the time you reach the bottom, everything has changed from the time when you first touched the surface of the water. You have not stepped in the same water, because every second new water is coming in and the old water is going out. Heraclitus is not aware that even stepping once in the same water is impossible. Twice is too much.”The same is the situation with the human mind: it is just a flux. Hundreds of thoughts queuing and going – relevant, irrelevant, consistent, inconsistent. But he is trying to make some sense of Buddha’s statement.Such an infinity is what the Buddha meant by the three asankhya kalpas.No, he actually meant what the words say. Bodhidharma is imposing his own idea on it, just to dilute it, just to bring it closer to his sudden enlightenment idea.In his place I would have said, “Gautam Buddha is wrong. What he is saying about the three innumerable ages must have been said before he became enlightened. It is not a statement made after his enlightenment. If he had ever said anything like that, it must have been before his enlightenment.”Even before his enlightenment he had five followers. Seeing him – a king and a perfect ascetic – five brahmin seekers had become his followers. They left because he accepted the food from Sujata, at night.And the word Sujata, has great implications. It means “well born,” born into a very high family. Now anybody who is really born into a high family will not have that name. Sujata must have been a sudra, an untouchable woman. This is how the human mind and human psychology functions. If she cannot belong to a high caste, at least she can have a beautiful name which means that she is well born. Her name indicates that she certainly, belongs to a very low strata of the society.Seeing that Buddha was accepting food from a sudra woman – he was not even asking, “To what class do you belong?” and in the night he was eating joyously – all the five disciples left him immediately. “He is a fraud, a fake. We have been deceived. He is not an ascetic at all.”Buddha may have said something like that to those five disciples, but he was not enlightened then. And one has to remember that any statement which has been made by Buddha before enlightenment should not be taken into account at all. It means nothing. Only that which he said after enlightenment has significance.Bodhidharma could have explained it very easily, but he is not as courageous as he has been believed for centuries to be. He cannot say the words of the Buddha are not true. He is trying to polish them and somehow dilute them and bring them closer to his own understanding.But the great bodhisattvas have only achieved enlightenment by observing the three sets of precepts and by practicing the six paramitas. Now you tell disciples merely to behold the mind. How can anyone reach enlightenment without cultivating the rules of discipline?He is really putting the disciples in a dilemma – and these are their last questions. Bodhidharma says that no discipline is needed, no austerity is needed. All that is needed is an awareness of your mind. And I agree with him absolutely. That’s what brings enlightenment.A man who is unconscious can discipline himself. He can shave just like the Buddha…he can shave his head, he can eat only once in twenty-four hours, he can have only three sets of clothes – not more than that – but he will not become enlightened by this. If this were so, then all poor people who don’t have even three sets of clothes, who sometimes have to go to bed without eating anything, would have become enlightened.I have known people who have gone to sleep tying a brick on their stomach so they don’t feel that their stomach is empty. Such poverty exists in many parts of this country. Would these people have become buddhas? – no. Enlightenment has nothing to do with poverty, fasting, discipline, religious rituals.There is only a single way to enlightenment and that is creating more and more awareness about your acts, about your thoughts, about your emotions.Bodhidharma could have said that exactly, but this is the trouble when you belong to an organization, when you belong to a certain philosophy, when you belong to a certain system of belief, when you are not a master of yourself, when you worship somebody else as a master…then this kind of dilemma is bound to happen. You have lost your individuality in a way. You have to support Gautam Buddha even if it goes against your own understanding.Bodhidharma says:The three sets of precepts are for overcoming the three poisoned states of mind. When you overcome these poisons, you create three sets of limitless virtue. A set gathers things together – in this case, countless good thoughts throughout your mind. And the six paramitas are for purifying the six senses. What we call paramitas, you call means to the other shore. By purifying your six senses of the dust of sensation, the paramitas ferry you across the river of affliction to the shore of enlightenment.Can’t you see that the answer has not even a far-off relationship to the question? It is not even a distant cousin.Bodhidharma could not manage…to simply say the truth would have been the right thing: “Whether it goes against Buddha, or Krishna, or Christ does not matter – I have to be my own truth. If it goes against somebody else’s truth, that is his problem, it is not my problem.”Truth has beauty when it arises in you, but if you are somehow trying to fix it into a certain system created by somebody else, you start distorting the truth. And to me that is one of the greatest crimes.The question was simply significant, but the answer is not. The answer is right in some other context but this place is not the place for this answer. He should have said that for all those three innumerable kalpas and the disciplines and austerities, Buddha lived in dreams.But perhaps he could not say this to the Buddhists of China, because he was sent from India to make Buddhism more solid and if he started speaking in this way, how was he going to make Buddhism more solid? He started compromising. And the moment somebody starts compromising, he loses touch with the truth. Truth is an uncompromising experience.According to the sutras, the three sets of precepts are…The disciples are asking again:“I vow to put an end to all evils. I vow to cultivate all virtues. And I vow to liberate all beings.” But now you say they are only for controlling the three poisoned states of mind. Isn’t this contrary to the meaning of the scriptures?It is, but Bodhidharma is not capable of saying so. In fact it is said that Gautam Buddha made these three vows: to put an end to all evil, to cultivate all virtues and to liberate all beings – but this was before he became enlightened. Hence, it has no value at all.After his enlightenment, he knew that all these vows were made in a state of dreaming. And what you decide in a dream, you are not supposed to follow when you wake up. You may have been flying in the dream – just like any bird across the sky – but when you wake up, you know it was a dream and you don’t insist that you really flew like a bird.These three vows were certainly made by Buddha, but they were made before his enlightenment. It is true nobody has asked Buddha, “What happened to your vows?” But Bodhidharma is being asked. He should have made it clear that they were made in dreams and dreams don’t matter at all. What matters is the awakened consciousness – and then Buddha did not make any vows.But instead of that, he goes on saying:The sutras of the Buddha are true.But you can see, even as he says The sutras of the Buddha are true – he has lost the authority and the strength that comes from sincerity, that comes from your own experience of truth. He has become mild.But long ago, when that great bodhisattva was cultivating the seed of enlightenment, it was to counter the three poisons that he made his three vows.He goes on again and again, bringing those three poisons to his help.Practicing moral prohibitions to counter the poison of greed, he vowed to put an end to all evils. Practicing meditation to counter the poison of anger, he vowed to cultivate all virtues. And practicing wisdom to counter the poison of delusion, he vowed to liberate all beings. Because he persevered in these three pure practices of morality, meditation and wisdom, he was able to overcome the three poisons and reach enlightenment. By overcoming the three poisons, he wiped out everything sinful and thus put an end to evil. By observing the three sets of precepts, he did nothing but good and thus cultivated virtue. And by putting an end to evil and cultivating virtue, he consummated all practices, benefited himself as well as others and rescued mortals everywhere. Thus, he liberated beings.He is not being authentic. He is simply trying somehow to manage the answer. The answer is not a spontaneous response. It is clever, intellectual. It may have satisfied his disciples; it cannot satisfy me.I am nobody’s disciple. I don’t belong to any belief system. I love people from all over the world and I never compare them. They are all unique: a Zarathustra is a Zarathustra, a Mahavira is a Mahavira, a Buddha is a Buddha, a Jesus is a Jesus, a Moses is a Moses…they are so unique that you should not make one of them a criterion that everybody else has to fit with.Bodhidharma himself belongs to the same category, but because of his compromise, he falls down. He could not maintain his uniqueness. He remains a disciple of Gautam Buddha – and how can a disciple say that the words of the master are not right?It is a unique opportunity for you to listen to a man who has no master, and who has a tremendous respect for truth – whether it comes from Zarathustra, or Lao Tzu, or Buddha, or Moses, or Jesus, or Mohammed. If it is truth which rings bells in my heart, I am in absolute support of it. But if it is not true, I know my heart. The bells don’t ring and I immediately know something is wrong.Bodhidharma is trying to pacify, console. He is no longer interested in truth. He is more interested in spreading the message of Buddha, and that’s where he loses his uniqueness; otherwise he is as unique a person as Gautam Buddha himself.I cannot conceive of what happened to him why he could not say directly, “These words are not true. They are not true because they don’t resonate with my being.” But this is what happens when you are toeing the line of a certain party – political, religious, social. Then you have to be in agreement with everything, without choice.The Buddhists were very happy with Bodhidharma because he established the discipline of Buddha in China, gave it a very solid foundation, and spread the message – not only to China, but from China to Taiwan, to Korea, to Japan.He did a great job, but he fell down from the heights. He could have remained there if he had said the truth exactly and explained to the people, in a very simple way, “These are statements made by Buddha before his enlightenment, and anything he said before enlightenment is immaterial. To me, Buddha’s statements after his enlightenment are pure gold.”I don’t think Bodhidharma would have hurt the feelings of people. Perhaps he would have created a precedent for other enlightened people: You need not agree with everything. You have certainly an obligation to accept the truth from whichever direction it comes, but you don’t have any obligation to agree with any untruth, any fiction created by the priests who know nothing of the truth.He did the job for which he was sent, but he lost something beautiful in his own being. To me that is more important than the whole of China becoming Buddhist. A single individual in crystal-clear truthfulness is more important than millions of people fast asleep.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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You should realize that the practice you cultivate doesn’t exist apart from your mind. If your mind is pure, all buddha lands are pure. The sutras say, “If their minds are impure, beings are impure. If their minds are pure, beings are pure.” And, “To reach a buddha land, purify your mind. As your mind becomes pure, buddha lands become pure.” Thus, by overcoming the three poisoned states of mind, the three sets of precepts are automatically fulfilled.But the sutras say the six paramitas are charity, morality, patience, devotion, meditation and wisdom. Now you say the paramitas refer to the purification of the senses. What do you mean by this? And why are they called ferries?In cultivating the paramitas, purification of the six senses means overcoming the six thieves. Casting out the thief of the eye by abandoning the visual world is charity. Keeping out the thief of the ear by not listening to sounds is morality. Humbling the thief of the nose by equating all smells as neutral is patience. Controlling the thief of the mouth by conquering desires to taste, praise and explain is devotion. Quelling the thief of the body by remaining unmoved by sensations of touch is meditation. And taming the thief of the mind by not yielding to delusions but practicing wakefulness is wisdom. These six paramitas are transports. Like boats or rafts, they transport beings to the other shore. Hence, they’re called ferries.But when Shakyamuni was a bodhisattva, he consumed three bowls of milk and six ladles of gruel prior to attaining enlightenment. If he had to drink milk before he could taste the fruit of buddhahood, how can merely beholding the mind result in liberation?What you say is true. This is how he attained enlightenment. He had to drink milk before he could become a buddha. But there are two kinds of milk. That which Shakyamuni drank wasn’t ordinary impure milk but pure dharmamilk. The three bowls were the three sets of precepts. And the six ladles were the six paramitas. When Shakyamuni attained enlightenment, it was because he drank this pure dharmamilk that he tasted the fruit of buddhahood. To say that the Tathagata drank the worldly concoction of impure, rank-smelling cow’s milk is the height of slander. That which is truly-so, the indestructible, passionless dharma-self, remains forever free of the world’s afflictions. Why would it need impure milk to satisfy its hunger or thirst?The sutras say, “This ox doesn’t live in the highlands or the lowlands. It doesn’t eat grain or chaff. And it doesn’t graze with cows. The body of this ox is the color of burnished gold.” The ox refers to vairocana. Due to his great compassion for all beings, he produces from within his pure dharmabody the sublime dharmamilk of the three sets of precepts and six paramitas to nourish all those who seek liberation. The pure milk of such a truly pure ox not only enabled the Tathagata to achieve buddhahood, it enables any being who drinks it to attain unexcelled, complete enlightenment.I feel greatly sorry for poor Bodhidharma. He has got into trouble – and this trouble was bound to arise because he belongs not only to a tradition of Buddhism, but to a sect of Buddhism, called Mahayana, “the great vehicle.” Anybody who belongs to any tradition, any sect, any doctrine, is bound to be in the same trouble as Bodhidharma. Whatever he is saying is becoming more and more stupid and nonsensical for the simple reason that he cannot say anything against the tradition.He had been sent from India specially to make Buddhism more solidly grounded. That was the order of his own master, the enlightened woman Pragyatara, who had said, “I am sending you to China not to disturb people but to establish Mahayana in the great land of China, because if the whole country is converted to Buddhism, one-fifth of humanity is converted.” One person out of five people in the world is Chinese.That reminds me of a man who was reading a newspaper in which he read that out of five people, four people are of different countries, different races, different religions but one is certainly Chinese. He called his wife who was working in the kitchen and told her, “Have you ever realized that out of five people in the world, one is Chinese?”She said, “My God! It is good you told us because we already have four children. Now is the time for birth control, otherwise the fifth will be Chinese.”China has been one of the largest lands up to now. But by the end of this century India will go ahead; it will become more populated than China. Otherwise, for the whole of history, China has been the most populated land in the world.And if Buddhism was spreading like wildfire, it was time to give it a solid foundation. Bodhidharma had been specially sent as a messenger because although during the six hundred years before Bodhidharma, thousands of Buddhist scholars had gone to China at the invitation of emperors to translate all Buddhist scriptures into Chinese, not a single one had been enlightened.So Bodhidharma was sent specially to give people a certain taste of what enlightenment is. They had heard the word, they were enchanted with the idea, a great longing had arisen in millions of people to attain to enlightenment, but they had not even seen an enlightened person. His presence, his silence, his compassion…they were absolutely unaware; it was only theoretical.By sending Bodhidharma Pragyatara had a certain specific purpose in her mind: to give China its first enlightened master. The trouble was that he could not say anything against Mahayana that would disturb all the new initiates into Buddhism. He could not say anything against Gautam Buddha, because nobody was going to listen to him.They were so much impressed with Gautam Buddha and his life and his teachings that in just six hundred years, they created thirty thousand temples and monasteries. Two million people were initiated as Buddhist monks and almost the whole country became Buddhist. They may not all have been monks but they were laymen; they had started the journey hoping that one day they would also become monks. Five percent of the whole population of China had become monks.It was a tremendous time of upheaval, change, transformation. And Bodhidharma, I think, had not realized the responsibility that he was taking upon his shoulders.As far as superficial questions were concerned, he was perfectly right and perfectly in tune with his own experience. But when the ultimate questions started arising – which are bound to arise sooner or later – if he had declared, “I do not know” at the first ultimate question, when he was asked “From where does ignorance come?” …if he had accepted his innocence, if he had announced, “I know how awareness can be created, but I don’t know from where ignorance comes. Perhaps ignorance is forever there.”Ignorance never comes; it is just like darkness. Have you ever seen darkness coming or going? You always see light coming in and the darkness is not there. You always see light going out and the darkness is there. Darkness is always there – no coming, no going. It is the light that comes and goes. Darkness is simply the absence of light.This would have been the perfect answer to the people: that darkness has always been there. There is no source for it because it is non-existential. Only something that exists can have some source. Light has source. In the same way, awareness has a source, consciousness has a source, but unconsciousness is simply nothing but darkness.And if he had stopped there he would have done a tremendous job of protecting himself from falling into all kinds of nonsense. But he could not say “I do not know,” because people had been expecting him for three years. The whole country had been waiting, emperor Wu included, with great longing and desire for Bodhidharma, the first enlightened person to enter China. All their thirst would be quenched; all their questions would be answered. And his answers were not scriptural; his answers were from his own experience.So he hesitated to say, “I don’t know. I’m utterly innocent. At the most I can say darkness has always been there, ignorance has been always there. There is no root to it. It is rootless, causeless, because it is non-existential.” That would have been my answer.He could have told them, “I have come here to teach you how to get out of ignorance. I don’t know how you have entered into ignorance. That is your business.”But rather than doing that, he went into long, theological descriptions. And that allowed the disciples to ask more and more about things which he was perfectly capable of answering but then those answers were going to be against Mahayana, or even against Gautam Buddha.So he is in a very difficult dilemma. He knows what is right and he also knows what is traditionally right. And he proved not as strong as I have always thought. He could not prove himself to be a true revolutionary. He could not go against the tradition. I will show you how he becomes mixed up and how he starts talking nonsense. He has to – just to console the traditional people, just to keep in line with the orthodox theology.This question also belongs to the same category. And he falls into such idiotic answers that it becomes almost hilarious. Once in a while he is true, but only once in a while. Most of the time what he is talking about is irrelevant and I for one absolutely disagree with his answers.The sutra:You should realize that the practice you cultivate does not exist apart from your mind.This is true. Whatever you practice, you have to practice through the mind. Hence enlightenment cannot be attained through practice. Because if enlightenment could be attained through practice, that means it is a by-product of the mind, just like any dream, any hallucination, any illusion, any thought. And just as thoughts disappear, your enlightenment may disappear at any moment.I had one German sannyasin, Gunakar, who has become enlightened so many times that now he has stopped completely, dropped the whole idea. When he became enlightened for the first time – he has a beautiful castle in Germany, in a very beautiful, scenic place – he declared his enlightenment to all the presidents and prime ministers and to all the ambassadors and to all the members of the UN. He wrote a letter…he informed me also….I said, “Gunakar” – he had just gone from here a week or two weeks before and I had not seen any sign that he was going to become enlightened so soon. I informed him, “Just come back; first I have to see….”So he came back, and as he came back, slowly, slowly as he came closer to Pune, enlightenment disappeared. He became aware that this was stupid…”I don’t know anything.” But in Germany it was perfectly good, because nobody understands what enlightenment is. When he declared, “I am enlightened,” people thought, “Perhaps…nobody has ever heard what this enlightenment is. He may be.” And naturally, nobody contradicted it. But he became afraid, and when he came in front of me he said, “Just forgive me. I have become absolutely unenlightened again.”I said, “Remember that whenever this desire arises in you, before acting and starting to write letters to all world governments and ambassadors and presidents that if they want any advice, you have become enlightened; first, you have to come here.”Two years he remained silent and one day I received his letter again. He said, “Osho, this time it has really happened and I am coming.”I said, “Okay, come.”And as he came to me he said, “Just forgive me. This is very strange. When I come here I become unenlightened and when I go back to Germany the desire arises, and nobody is there who can even say that I am not enlightened. Why wait? Declare! And the desire becomes so persistent….”It happened many times. The last time I heard he had joined a commune and he was washing dishes there. Somebody who was going to see me soon asked Gunakar, “What are you doing? Have you ever heard of any enlightened man washing dishes in a restaurant?” It was the commune restaurant.He said, “Forget all about enlightenment. Let me just do my dishes and if you are going to Osho, just tell him that I am not going to become enlightened – at least not in Germany! If I have to become enlightened, I will become enlightened when I am close to him. I am feeling immensely joyful just washing the dishes and that enlightenment was such a torture…” because he started just imitating me.He closed himself up in his castle on the mountain. He would not come out of his room. He would not meet with anybody. He had a secretary and naturally he got unnecessarily tortured. He could not come out, otherwise he would lose his enlightenment. He could not meet people, only the secretary, and the secretary informed them that he was in samadhi. “He cannot see anybody. Don’t disturb him.”He said, “I have suffered enough because of this enlightenment. Now I am enjoying life more as a dishwasher in the restaurant of the commune. At least I can go out, I can go to a movie, I can go to the disco, I can sing and dance. That enlightenment was a very difficult thing, just remaining closed in one room….”Enlightenment cannot come from the mind. Enlightenment can come only when the mind disappears. In fact, enlightenment is the light and mind is the ignorance. Enlightenment is the wisdom; mind is the darkness.If your mind is pure, all buddha lands are pure.I would like to correct it. I would like to say, if your no-mind – which means beyond purity and beyond impurity – is the buddha land…. It is not the pure mind which is the buddha land. Even the purest mind is still mind. And purity and impurity are a duality. And buddha land has to be beyond the dual. It cannot be one part of duality. It has to be beyond both.The sutras say, “If their minds are impure, beings are impure. If their minds are pure, beings are pure.”Up to now, this is perfectly okay.And, “To reach a buddha land, purify your mind.”That is wrong, because then, what is the difference between good people and a buddha? The pure mind is buddha land and people who are pure are pure beings, so what is the difference between a good man and a buddha? There seems to be no difference – but there is a great difference.Hence I would like to put it: To reach a buddha land go beyond the mind, go beyond both purity and impurity. As your no-mind becomes buddha land, buddha becomes available to you. These are my corrections.Thus, by overcoming the three poisoned states of mind, the three sets of precepts are automatically fulfilled.But the sutras say the six paramitas are charity, morality, patience, devotion, meditation and wisdom. Now you say the paramitas refer to the purification of the senses. What do you mean by this? And why are they called ferries?The question is simple and significant. The disciple is asking, “What are these six paramitas?” The word paramitas means that which takes you to the other shore – a small ferry boat.Charity, morality, patience, devotion, meditation and wisdom – these are the six ferries that can take you beyond this shore to the further shore, to your real home.It is a simple question. Bodhidharma has just to define what charity is, what morality is, what patience is, what devotion is, what meditation is, and what wisdom is. But rather than giving a simple definition of these beautiful words, he goes into a very strange answer:In cultivating the paramitas, purification of the six senses means overcoming the six thieves. Casting out the thief of the eye by abandoning the visual world is charity.Now, one cannot conceive of something more nonsensical. Just listen to it again: Casting out the thief of the eye by abandoning the visual world is charity. By renouncing and abandoning the world that is available to the eyes…the only way is to be blind! Otherwise, how can you abandon it? You can go to the mountains but the visual world will be there. You can go in a dark cave but darkness is also visual. You see it. And in fact, even blindness will not help unless you are born blind because a man who is born blind cannot even see dreams. He has no idea of anything.You may never have thought about it. Do you think a blind man can see a railway train in his dream, or a starry night in his dream, or a beautiful woman in his dream, or a roseflower in his dream? Impossible, because he has never seen these things. Dreams are only reflections. What you have seen in actual life, dreams can reflect.The most surprising thing is that almost everybody thinks that a blind man lives in darkness. And that is wrong, because darkness is also a visual phenomenon, you have to see it. The blind man has no eyes. He cannot even see darkness; light is far away. If he can see darkness, then you cannot prevent him from seeing light. And if he can see things in dreams, he is not blind. The born blind see nothing, just as the born deaf hear nothing.But what can you do? You have eyes. How can you abandon the visual world?There was in India a poet, Surdas, who has been worshipped by Hindus as a great saint. Surdas saw a beautiful woman – he had gone to beg, not aware of who was inside the house. He knocked on the door and a beautiful woman opened the door. And suddenly a desire, a fancy for her arose in his being. It was natural; it was not wrong. If you can enjoy a beautiful flower, why can’t you enjoy a beautiful face? But religions are very much against all pleasures. It seems all religions have been founded by masochists. Torture yourself! The more you torture yourself, the more you become spiritual.Surdas became very much guilty – and he had done nothing; just the face was so beautiful that it was natural a great appreciation arose in him. But it was against the religious precepts. He destroyed both his eyes and he became blind. And because of this blindness, he has been worshipped for centuries as a great saint.But do you think by destroying his eyes, he would have stopped dreaming? Just the opposite – then he would dream more and more of that beautiful face. The face that was beautiful would become more beautiful, more fancy, in his dreams. And this is the meaning of charity?Charity simply means an unconditional sharing. It has nothing to do with the eyes and nothing to do with the visual world and its abandonment. It simply means you have something; you should enjoy to share it. Don’t be a miser. Don’t hold on to it because this whole life is going to end one day and you will not be able to take anything with you. So while you are alive, why not share as much as you can? Things which can be taken away any moment…it is better that you share them. And it is a great joy to share. The man who learns the art of sharing is the richest man in the world. He may be poor, but his inner being has a quality of richness that even emperors may feel jealous of.I have always loved a small Sufi story:A poor man, very poor, a woodcutter, lived in the forest in a small hut. The hut was so small that he and his wife could sleep…only that much space was in the hut.In the middle of one dark night, it was raining hard and somebody knocked on the door. The wife was sleeping close to the door. The husband said to the wife, “Open the door. The rain is too much and the man must have lost his way. It is a dark night and the forest is dangerous and full of wild animals. Open the door immediately!”She said, “But there is no space.” The man laughed and said, “This is not a palace of a king, where you will always find a shortage of space. This is a poor man’s hut. Two can sleep well; three can sit. We will create space. Just open the door.”And the door was opened. The man came in and he was very grateful and they all sat and started talking and gossiping and telling stories to each other. The night had to be passed somehow because they could not sleep; there was no space. And just then, another knock….The man, the new guest, was now sitting by the side of the door. The owner of the hut said, “Friend, open the door. Somebody else is lost.” And the man said, “You seem to be a very strange fellow. There is no space.”He said, “This was my wife’s argument too. If I had listened to her argument, you would have been in the forest, eaten by the wild animals. And you seem to be a strange man that you cannot understand that we are sitting just because of you. We are tired after a long day. I am a woodcutter – the whole day I cut the wood and then sell it in the market and then we can hardly get food once a day. Open the door. This is not your hut. If three persons can sit comfortably, four persons can sit a little closer, with a little less comfort. But we will create the space.”Naturally he had to open the door, although reluctantly. And a man entered and he was very grateful. Now they were sitting very close; there was not even a single inch of space left. And then suddenly, a strange knock, which did not seem to be a man’s! There was silence from all three; the wife and the two guests were afraid that he would say open the door.And he said it. “Open the door. I know who is knocking. It is my donkey. In this wide world he is my only friend. I carry my wood on that donkey. He remains outside, but it is raining too much. Open the door.”And now it was the fourth guest to be allowed in, and everybody resisted and they said, “This is too much. Where is the donkey going to stand?”This man said, “You don’t understand. It is a poor man’s hut, it is always spacious. Right now we are sitting; when the donkey comes in we will all be standing and we will keep the donkey in the middle so he feels warm and cozy and loved.”They said, “It was better to get lost in the jungle, rather than to be caught in your hut.”But nothing could be done. When the owner said to open the door, the door was opened.And the donkey came in. The water was dripping from all over his body and the owner took him into the middle and told all the others to stand around. He said, “You don’t understand. My donkey is of a very philosophical mind. You can say anything, he is never disturbed. He always listens silently.”I have loved this story which says that the emperor’s palaces are always short of space – although they are so big….The house of the president of India has one hundred rooms with attached bathrooms, one hundred acres of garden. This used to be the viceroy’s house and still they have separate guest houses. What are these hundred rooms doing there? One wonders….I have once been there because one of the presidents, Zakir Hussein, was interested in me. He was a vice-chancellor of Aligarh University and when he was the vice-chancellor, I spoke there. He was presiding, and he loved what I had said. When he became president and he came to know that I was in Delhi, he invited me to come and he took me around. I asked him, “What purpose are these one hundred rooms serving?”He said, “They are just useless. In fact to maintain them, one hundred servants are needed. For the maintenance of this big garden of one hundred acres, one hundred rooms – and in front you see two big buildings. They are guest houses and each guest house must have at least twenty-five rooms, not less than that.”I said, “This is absolute wastage. In how many rooms do you sleep?”He said, “In how many rooms? I sleep in my bed. I’m not a monster that I will spread myself into many rooms…head in one room, and the body in another and the legs in another.”“But then,” I said, “these hundred rooms which are simply empty, fully furnished with everything available that a man needs, should be put to some use.”But this is the situation around the world. The emperors have big palaces and still there is no space. They are always making new palaces, new guest houses.And the poor man in this story said, “It is a poor man’s hut, there is no shortage of space. We will manage.” And they managed. The night passed beautifully, although they had to stand up.But it is beautiful to share whatever you have. Even if you don’t have anything, you can find something in your nothing, also to share.Charity is sharing. What Bodhidharma is saying is simply nonsense.Keeping out the thief of the ear by not listening to the sounds is morality.Have you ever heard of such a definition? Not hearing the sounds, not hearing the music is morality! Then killing a man, or raping a woman is not immoral? Listening to music is immoral, listening to the birds in the trees in the early morning is immoral. My feeling is that because he got entangled with the ultimate question and lied, he has lost his grip and he is now trying to make all kinds of definitions which are absolutely meaningless and absurd.Humbling the thief of the nose by equating all smells as neutral is patience.He is really original! I have read thousands of books on morality, on virtues like patience, but I have never come across the statement that it is a question of the nose, not of you. If you can equate all smells as neutral – a roseflower and cow dung smell the same – you are patient! To hell with such patience – this is simply insanity, insensitivity.A man of intelligence will become more sensitive. The poet sees the greens of the trees differently from how you see them. He sees them more green. He sees not just green trees, he sees different shades of green. His sensitivity for color is very acute, sharp.The musician hears sounds even in silence, his ears are so attuned. And the same with the other senses.But Bodhidharma is really making a laughingstock of himself:Controlling the thief of the mouth by conquering desires to taste, praise and explain is devotion.If you can eat the most delicious food and the holy cow dung without it making any difference, this is devotion! My whole life I have been trying to define devotion, but Bodhidharma knows better!Quelling the thief of the body by remaining unmoved by sensations of touch is meditation.If somebody touches you and you don’t feel it, you are in meditation? If somebody touches you and you don’t feel it, you are simply dead. It is not meditation.But he has done a great job. And the people who were listening to him, must have wondered…. “From India an enlightened man has come. We have also heard” – those Chinese had also heard much about meditation – “but this is really original!”They have also their own Lao Tzu and Chuang Tzu and Lieh Tzu – contemporaries of Gautam Buddha, of the same caliber, who know what meditation is. And he is trying to make a definition, an almost unbelievable one. He has just lost his nerve.When the ultimate question was asked, that was the point from where he started falling. And he forgot everything. Now he is trying to make up, in any way he can…patching up this hole, patching up that hole, and new holes are coming up and he is running hither and thither and he cannot make any sense of what he is doing.And taming the thief of the mind by not yielding to delusions but practicing wakefulness is wisdom.Only this one seems to be a little sensible – just a little, not much, because wakefulness cannot be practiced. He himself has said before that it is a spontaneous phenomenon, you cannot practice it. Anything practiced will be practiced by your mind. Who is going to practice it?You have your body; you can practice yoga. You have your mind; you can practice meditation, wakefulness. But anything that comes from the body will go with the body, and anything that comes from the mind will go with the mind. They will not be able to go with you when death takes away everything.Something has to happen in you which is not part of the body, not part of the mind – something which has no roots in body-mind structure. And wakefulness is awareness, witnessing from far away all the activities of the mind and the body. Then wakefulness will go with you. Even when the body and mind are taken away by death, wakefulness cannot be taken away by anyone.So that’s why I say just a little bit – at least he is not making too much of an idiot of himself.These six paramitas, that which takes you beyond, are transports. Like boats or rafts, they transport beings to the other shore. Hence, they’re called ferries.But when Shakyamuni was a bodhisattva, he consumed three bowls of milk.Now this is going to be the last imaginable madness. The disciple is asking:But when Shakyamuni was a bodhisattva, he consumed three bowls of milk and six ladles of gruel prior to attaining enlightenment. If he had to drink milk before he could taste the fruit of buddhahood, how can merely beholding the mind result in liberation?Because Bodhidharma is getting eccentric the disciples are also starting asking questions which ordinarily they would not have asked. But now everything is okay. It is true that Buddha consumed three bowls of milk but that does not mean that because of those three bowls of milk he became enlightened, that one has to do something before enlightenment. It does not mean that it is a condition.But that’s what the disciples are asking: If he had to drink milk before he could taste the fruit of buddhahood, how can merely beholding the mind result in liberation? First one has to drink three bowls of milk – and you are telling us just to watch the mind and you will become liberated. What about those three bowls of milk?And this is not only with Bodhidharma, this is the case with all religious scriptures, commentaries. They come to points where you are simply shocked that these people…. Can’t they see a simple thing, that it was just incidental? He was hungry and somebody offered the milk. But what the disciples are asking can be forgiven. They are disciples, ignorant. But the answer is really great! The disciples are nothing before the answer.The answer is:What you say is true. This is how he attained enlightenment. He had to drink milk before he could become a buddha. But there are two kinds of milk.This is something that you cannot go beyond. I used to think there is a limit to stupidity, but there is none. He says:But there are two kinds of milk. That which Shakyamuni drank wasn’t ordinary impure milk but pure dharmamilk.Not just ordinary milk – religious milk! And what is religious milk? Nobody has ever heard about it. People have heard about powdered milk, and all other kinds, but dharmamilk? How can milk be religious?The three bowls were the three sets of precepts. And the six ladles were the six paramitas. When Shakyamuni attained enlightenment, it was because he drank this pure dharmamilk that he tasted the fruit of buddhahood. To say that the Tathagata drank the worldly concoction of impure, rank-smelling cow’s milk is the height of slander. That which is truly-so, the indestructible, passionless dharma-self, remains forever free of the world’s afflictions. Why would it need impure milk to satisfy its hunger or thirst?On the one hand, we have seen Bodhidharma saying again and again, in many sutras, that your intrinsic being is always pure, there is no way to make it impure. And now, to become aware of your self-nature – that’s what buddhahood is – you need a very special kind of milk, dharmamilk. He gives the whole description for how this dharmamilk is created.The sutras say, “This ox doesn’t live in the highlands or the lowlands.”The first thing to remember is that it is not a cow because a cow is a woman, female, and you cannot expect dharmamilk from a female. Dharmamilk comes only through males. You should send this sutra to Morarji Desai; it supports his ideology. He is drinking the dharmamilk every day…milking and drinking and milking and drinking his own milk. I think he has attained more virtue than any buddha!This ox is not a mistake, because before this, he has used the word cow. When he is condemning the milk he is saying, To say that the Tathagata drank the worldly concoction of impure, rank-smelling cow’s milk… So he knows perfectly well the difference between cows and oxen.The sutras say:“This ox does not live in the highlands or the lowlands. It doesn’t eat grain or chaff. And it doesn’t graze with cows.”Because even to graze with cows, there is a possibility the dharmamilk may get impure.“The body of this ox is the color of burnished gold.” The ox refers to vairocana. Due to his great compassion for all beings, he produces from within his pure dharmabody the sublime dharmamilk of the three sets of precepts and six paramitas to nourish all those who seek liberation. The pure milk of such a truly pure ox not only enabled the Tathagata to achieve buddhahood, it enables any being who drinks it to attain unexcelled, complete enlightenment.This is really very discouraging. Where are you going to find this dharma-ox?That reminds me of a Hindu monk, very famous. I was traveling with him to participate in a Hindu conference and we stayed in the same house. He used to drink only milk; that was his only great spirituality. Otherwise, I could not see – three days I had been with him – I could not see any intelligence. The only thing was that he used only milk – and that milk had to be from a white cow, an absolutely white cow.When I heard this I asked him, “I should not interfere in your great discipline, but I cannot resist the temptation because I have never seen even a black cow giving black milk. Milk is always white, so why do you worry? If a cow has a dot, just a small dot…black or brown or anything…is that canceled?”In the morning, many cows were brought for the saint to see and to look all around to see whether they were absolutely white or not. And when he accepted some cow, that it was absolutely white, then a man had to take a bath with his clothes on and with those wet clothes on he had to milk the cow, in front of the saint, so no impurity or anything wrong goes into the milk.In three days I got so tired of his idiotness. I had not heard about Bodhidharma then; otherwise I would have told him, “What you are doing is absolutely right. Only one thing is wrong; you drink the milk of the cows. You should drink the milk of the ox, a white ox.” But even white ox milk will not be white. It will be yellow. But to attain enlightenment one can do any austerity – and this is a great discipline!Bodhidharma has simply made himself an utter fool, when in fact things were simple to explain. But it is not just with this religion – with every religion the same problem arises again and again.The Jaina tirthankara, Mahavira, became enlightened sitting in a certain pose which is very strange because you are rarely found in that pose. In yoga that posture is called, “cow-milking posture.” In India, machines are not used; men sit on a tripod and milk the cows by hand. But what was Mahavira doing? – because he was certainly not milking a cow so why should he sit in the milking-a-cow posture?That can be done only for one reason…and I will not tell you the reason. You can ask Morarji Desai; tell him, “You are doing perfectly. Just remember, sit in the right cow-milking pose. Collect the milk and drink, and enlightenment is sure.”Now, after Mahavira, Jaina monks had been thinking one could not become enlightened because to sit in that posture is very difficult. You cannot sit long enough – and it is a very strange posture. To meditate one needs to sit in such a way that one is relaxed, at ease. Mahavira’s is a very tense posture.But what is accidental, people start thinking of as if it is the cause – as if that posture is a necessity for enlightenment. Nothing is a necessity for enlightenment because enlightenment is not caused by anything that you can do. Enlightenment happens only when you are absent, so utterly silent that it is not your doing.You cannot brag, “This is my enlightenment. I have done it.” When enlightenment happens, you can simply say, “I was not. And because I was not, I was so silent, so absent – just a pure nothing, only a receptivity – it happened.” It came from the beyond just as sunrays come to the flowers and they open their petals. Something from the beyond comes into you and your lotus opens its petals and releases all its inexhaustible fragrance. But there is no cause.Cause and effect are scientific terms. They don’t have any significance in the mystery of your inner life. There is nothing caused, nothing effected. The buddhahood, the enlightenment, the awakening, the liberation is already there. It is not to be created, hence no cause is needed. It has only to be looked at. You have just to turn your eyes inwards and see it. It is a discovery. It has been there for millennia so you can do it at any moment – just a small thing which is not a cause – you just open your eyes inward. And that’s what I call meditation.Mind opens outside; meditation opens inside. Mind is a door that leads you outside in the world; meditation is the door that leads you to your interiority – to the very innermost shrine of your being. And suddenly, you are enlightened. Enlightenment is always sudden; it is never gradual.And Bodhidharma knew it. His own enlightenment was a sudden experience. But just so as not to contradict the tradition, not to annoy the people, not to make enemies, he compromised. I categorically condemn this compromise.A man of his genius should not have compromised on any ground. Even if all Buddhism in China disappears, nothing is lost.But Bodhidharma compromising has destroyed his own integrity, his own sincerity, his own authority. He has become a pygmy when actually he was a giant.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Throughout the sutras, the Buddha tells mortals they can achieve enlightenment by performing such meritorious works as building monasteries, casting statues, burning incense, scattering flowers, lighting eternal lamps, practicing all six periods of the day and night, walking around stupas, observing fasts and worshipping. But if beholding the mind includes all other practices, then such works as these would appear redundant.The sutras of the Buddha contain countless metaphors. Because mortals have shallow minds and don’t understand anything deep, the Buddha used the tangible to represent the sublime. People who seek blessings by concentrating on external works instead of internal cultivation are attempting the impossible.What you call a monastery, we call a sangharama, a place of purity. But whoever denies entry to the three poisons and keeps the gates of his senses pure, his body and mind still, inside and outside clean, builds a monastery.Casting statues refers to all practices cultivated by those who seek enlightenment. …And burning incense doesn’t mean ordinary material incense but the incense of the intangible dharma, which drives away filth, ignorance and evil deeds with its perfume. …When the Buddha was in the world, he told his disciples to light such precious incense with the fire of awareness as an offering to the buddhas of the ten directions. But people today don’t understand the Tathagata’s real meaning. They use an ordinary flame to light material incense of sandalwood or frankincense hoping for some future blessing that never comes.For scattering flowers the same holds true. This refers to speaking the dharma, or to scattering flowers of virtue, in order to benefit others and glorify the real self. … If you think the Tathagata meant for people to harm plants by cutting off their bloom, you’re wrong. Those who observe the precepts don’t injure any of the myriad life forms of heaven and earth. If you hurt something by mistake, you suffer for it. But those who intentionally break the precepts by injuring the living for the sake of future blessings suffer even more. How could they let would-be blessings turn into sorrows?The eternal lamp represents perfect awareness. … Long ago, there was a buddha named Dipamkara, or lamplighter. This was the meaning of his name. … The light released by a buddha from one curl between his brows can illuminate countless worlds. An oil lamp is no help. …Practicing all six periods of the day and night means among the six senses constantly cultivating enlightenment and persevering in every form of awareness. Never relaxing control over the six senses is what’s meant by all six periods.As for walking around stupas, the stupa is your body and mind. When your awareness circles your body and mind without stop, this is called walking around a stupa. …The same holds true for observing a fast. … To fast means to regulate your body and mind so that they’re not distracted or disturbed. …Also, once you stop eating the food of delusion, if you touch it again, you break your fast. And once you break it, you reap no blessing from it. The world is full of deluded people who don’t see this. They indulge their body and mind in all manner of evil. They give free rein to their passions and have no shame. And when they stop eating ordinary food, they call it fasting. How absurd!It’s the same with worshipping. You have to understand the meaning and adapt to conditions. Meaning includes action and non-action. …Worship means reverence and humility. It means revering your real self and humbling delusions. If you can wipe out evil desires and harbor good thoughts, even if nothing shows, it’s worship. …Those who fail to cultivate the inner meaning and concentrate instead on the outward expression never stop indulging in ignorance, hatred and evil while exhausting themselves to no avail. They can deceive others with postures, remain shameless before sages and vain before mortals, but they’ll never escape the wheel, much less achieve any merit.I am deeply hurt to have to say that Bodhidharma has gone senile. He was going so great up to the point when the question was asked, “From where does ignorance come?” But he lost the track. It often happens…if you lie once, you have to lie one thousand and one times more; each lie needs another lie to protect it – and still it remains unprotected. Instead of one lie, now you have to protect two lies, but lies cannot be protected by truth – so you bring in a third lie. And this is an endless series.That’s what has happened to Bodhidharma because he simply could not say, “I don’t know.” Now he’s in a dilemma: whatever is asked, he has to give some answer – whether he knows or not. And there are things which cannot be known by their very nature. So it should not have been a calamity at all to accept that this is an ultimate question and ultimate questions cannot be answered – either by Bodhidharma or by anybody else, past, present, or future.The ultimate will remain always a mystery. You cannot demystify it by giving an answer. The moment you face the ultimate, you simply have to be like a child, an innocent. Enjoy the wonder of it, relish the mystery of it in the depths of your heart. Let it reach into the silences of your being. Let it penetrate you and transform you. It is not a question to ask about, or to expect any answer to.But Bodhidharma took only one single wrong step, and now he is going on down the drain. Each day he has to go on creating unnecessary lies. Once in a while he says something true, but now the amount of truth goes on lessening and the lies are becoming more and more, their quantity goes on increasing.I had never thought that a man like Bodhidharma was not courageous enough to simply say, “Forgive me, I don’t know,” to the ultimate question. If he had said that and stopped there, he would have risen above millions of mystics in height, in depth, in magnificence.But I can understand the problem: he did not want to disappoint his disciples, he did not want to disappoint the Chinese people. He did not want to tell them that there are fundamental questions which even an enlightened person cannot answer. So he goes on fabricating fictions. He cannot say that the Buddha is wrong, so he has to produce strange answers which don’t fit at all with what Buddha said – and they don’t fit absolutely with what Bodhidharma himself said earlier. His whole teaching was to be aware of the mind and to go beyond the mind, and that was absolutely perfect. Nothing was to be added to it.Now he’s answering questions reluctantly, but he cannot stop. It needs tremendous courage to ignore your disciples’ questions and to simply say that this is not a question because it is ultimate. He has been trying in every way to satisfy the disciples and to satisfy the Chinese people that an enlightened man knows everything.The reality is not so. The more you become enlightened, the less you know. At the ultimate peak of enlightenment, you simply know yourself…and nothing else. But at that peak, you yourself are the whole universe.I will tell you where he’s still right – because he knows what is the truth – but he is compromising. He is not a rebel, he is a pacifying person. He does not want to say a single word to disturb the newly converted Buddhists in China. It would have been all right if he had remained in India and never gone to China. Here he would have been his real self; there was no need even to consider others. The moment you start considering others, you fall from the height.As far as I am concerned, my absolute commitment is towards the truth. Even if I irritate and annoy the whole world, I will not say anything just to console them, and I will not say anything that goes against my experience of truth. People have been asking me, “Why is the whole world against you?” The world is not against me. I am against the world because I have chosen truth. And I will say only that which is absolutely my experience. I will not compromise in any way, for any reason whatsoever.But Bodhidharma started compromising. He may have been worshipped by people because he consoled them, but in my eyes he has lost his grandeur; he has lost his beauty and intelligence. He has come just too low to be understood.This is the question of a disciple:Throughout the sutras, the Buddha tells mortals they can achieve enlightenment by performing such meritorious works as building monasteries, casting statues, burning incense, scattering flowers, lighting eternal lamps, practicing all six periods of the day and night, walking around stupas…Stupas are the graves of ancient enlightened people.…observing fasts and worshipping.In fact, this whole sutra is an invention of the Mahayana school of Buddhism. Buddha never said anything like that, and if he said it he was wrong. That should have been Bodhidharma’s simple approach, because even at the time of his death Buddha’s last words were, “Don’t make my statues.”And you have heard Bodhidharma in the beginning saying, “Buddhas cannot worship buddhas.” There is no need, and it is really humiliating. You have the same quality of consciousness within you, you just have not discovered it. Somebody else has discovered it, but as far as having it is concerned, you both have it in the same way.Bodhidharma mentioned the name of Dipankara. He was an ancient buddha long before Gautam Buddha, and in Dipankara’s time Gautam Buddha was an ordinary man. Just out of curiosity he had gone to see Dipankara. He was given the name Dipankara because his presence was so infectious that those who innocently came close to him immediately caught something invisible, as if a flame had jumped from Dipankara into their heart, which was utterly dark, and now there was light. Hence the name, Dipankara Buddha, was given to him – a man who lights the unlit lamps of others just by his presence.Gautam Buddha was not enlightened at that time, but he had gone just out of curiosity, like a small child, to see what was happening, why so many people were going there. His curiosity was innocent. He had not gone to attain knowledge or enlightenment, or anything. There was no greed in it, there was no ambition in it. It was simply the wonder. He had heard that people who went to Dipankara…just sitting silently with him something had transpired, and they returned home totally different people. Their actions changed, their lifestyles changed. They became more loving, more compassionate, greed disappeared, ambition disappeared, anger disappeared. They became individuals so beautiful and so fragrant that Buddha wanted to see this man…this man was a wonder. He did nothing, yet….The master never does anything. His whole work is somehow to bring you close…as close as when you bring one candle which is burning with a flame close to another candle which is unlit. There is a certain point when the unlit candle will catch fire from the flame of the lit candle. The lit candle will not lose anything, but the unlit will gain a tremendous treasure. Unlit it was dead, and when the flame started, life came to it. Now it can also dispel darkness in the same way as the first flame was doing.Dipankara was such a man; in fact every great master is such a man. Whatever happens around him is not done by him. Whatever is done is just to bring you close, to make himself available to you and a mystery to you, so that without your knowing you are pulled like a magnet pulls things…and at a certain distance, suddenly you become aflame. The old dies, and the new man is born.This sutra is absolutely wrong. It is not a statement of Gautam Buddha, because a man of his understanding cannot tell people that they can achieve enlightenment by performing such meritorious works as building monasteries, casting statues, burning incense… Can you see any connection with enlightenment and burning incense? You can burn mountains of incense…there is no logical relationship with your becoming enlightened. You may get burned, that’s the only thing. Making monasteries…and you are not a monk! – you are making monasteries for other fools to become monks. How can that become your enlightenment? How many monasteries did Gautam Buddha make before he became enlightened? How much incense did he burn? How many flowers did he scatter? How many eternal lamps did he burn?No! This statement is not at all Gautam Buddha’s. It is the invention of the Mahayana school, a certain creed and doctrine. And there was a historical reason why such things were created. Buddha was a very straightforward man. He said whatsoever was right – whatever the consequences. For example, he said, “All the pundits and the scholars and the brahmins are idiots – and they are parasites. For centuries they have been sucking the blood of the people.” He called the Vedas “just rubbish.” And the Vedas were so much respected by the Hindus that anybody calling them rubbish must have had great courage. He did not accept any Hindu avatara, any Hindu incarnation, as having any value.For example, Parasuram is one of the Hindu incarnations of God. He was the son of a man who was thought to be a great seer, but he was suspicious…as all husbands are suspicious about their wives, and all wives are automatically suspicious of their husbands. That is their only relationship. Finally the father became so convinced of his suspicion – which may have had grounds or may not have had grounds, he could not be certain on this point – that he ordered his son, Parasuram, to cut off his mother’s head and bring it to him. And Parasuram went, without asking why. It was not a small thing! He cut off his mother’s head and brought it to his father.Then the father told him, “I have been suspecting her, but now I have certain evidence that she has been in love with a man who is a great warrior.” Parasuram and his family belonged to the caste of the brahmins. Parasuram said, “Don’t you be worried. I will not leave a single man of the warrior caste alive.”The story may be exaggerated, but it shows the quality of the man. It shows that he killed all the warriors of the whole world many, many times. And from where were these new warriors coming? The Hindu society accepts a very strange thing, and nobody ever considers…. They go on claiming they have a great culture, but they never look at its foundation; their culture is just a phony name.The Hindu society accepted that if a woman came to a brahmin seer and asked that she be given a child, then it was obligatory for the brahmin seer to make love to her and make her pregnant. He could not reject her. So Parasuram went on cutting off the heads of the warriors; the widows were left, and they were going to the seers…. It was a good business, a great conspiracy!The whole country was in a state of prostitution, and Parasuram was killing. Such violence cannot be accepted as a quality of God. And it seems illogical…. If his mother was in love with a warrior, he could just have killed him – we can make a few concessions, because he was thought by the Hindus to be an incarnation of God. But to kill all the warriors of the world, not even of this country, does not seem to have any logic behind it. And it was not certain that what the father was saying…. Parasuram should have asked for evidence, for proof. His father may have been just a jealous man.Now Buddha could not accept Parasuram as a reincarnation of God, and if Parasuram is a reincarnation of God then who will be the reincarnation of the devil? Buddha could not accept Rama as and incarnation of God because Rama killed a sudra, a young man, by pouring hot liquid lead into his ears because he had been listening while hiding behind a tree when a few brahmins were reciting the Vedas. The sudras were not allowed to read; they were not allowed even to listen! What kind of culture has this country created, where one-fourth of the people are not even allowed to listen to its religious scriptures?And because this young man, just out of curiosity hiding behind a tree, listened…. He could not have understood it though, because it was in Sanskrit, and Sanskrit has never been the language of the people. It has always been the language of the priests – only of the priests. So even if he had listened, he would not have understood anything. And do you think it is a crime? Is it worth destroying a young man, by pouring hot boiling lead into his ears, because he committed a sin by listening to the Vedas? And the man died….Buddha could not accept Rama, and he could not accept Krishna, a man who was so mad that he collected sixteen thousand women…any woman that he fancied was taken away from her family. She may be a virgin, she may be married, she may have children, she may have a husband, she may have to look after her old father-in-law, her old mother-in-law. Sixteen thousand women were just simply taken away by his soldiers. They were treated as if they were cattle – and I don’t know if he even remembered the names of those sixteen thousand women. But he was powerful, and he had a great army and he was a great king. Buddha could not accept such nonsense, such a corrupted man, as a reincarnation of God.Buddha was very straightforward. He said, “All the statues, all the temples, all the Vedas are creations of a cunning priesthood to exploit people.” How can he tell his own people that they can attain enlightenment by building monasteries, casting statues, burning incense, scattering flowers, lighting eternal lamps, practicing all six periods of the day and night, walking around stupas, observing fasts and worshipping?Buddha was against worship, he was against statues. His last words before his death were, “Again I remind you: don’t make statues of me, don’t create temples in my name, don’t start worshipping me because worshipping is not going to lead you anywhere. I have shown you the path of meditation – meditate. And if even in your meditation I appear, don’t hesitate. Immediately cut off my head.” A man who can say this…do you think this sutra can possibly come from him?Bodhidharma could have simply said, “These are not the words of Buddha.” But he did not say it. That’s where he falls low in my eyes.He did not say it because in China the Buddhists were trying to make as many monasteries, as many temples, as many statues as possible. One temple exists in China with ten thousand statues of Buddha. The whole mountain has been carved as a temple. This is the biggest temple in the world, where there are ten thousand statues of Buddha, and to say anything about this not being right would go against the very Buddhists who have been working to convert the Chinese. And they had been giving the certainty to the Chinese that they would become enlightened if they fed the monks, if they worshipped the Buddha, if they gave donations to the monasteries.Bodhidharma must have hesitated a moment, but finally he fell into the trap of being part of an organized religion. Organized religion always insists on these stupid things which don’t lead you anywhere, but they help the organized religion to exploit you; otherwise, who is going to feed one million Catholic nuns and monks? Who is going to take care of all the expenses of thousands of Catholic monasteries? It has to be continuously emphasized by the sermons of the priests every Sunday, people have to be reminded to donate, reminded that, “Donation will bring you salvation.” Salvation is the Christian word for enlightenment.The disciples can see it, so they are asking:But if beholding the mind includes all other practices, then such works as these would appear redundant.If a single method of beholding the mind creates enlightenment, then what is the need of all these things? These are all things that come out of the mind; they will strengthen the mind. But all that you have to do is to weaken the mind, go beyond it…so beyond that it cannot take any energy from you and it dies out of hunger and starvation. And when you don’t have any mind, but just a pure silence of no-mind, you have attained enlightenment.The disciples are perfectly right to ask the question, “You yourself have been saying, ‘Just behold the mind and that’s enough.’ Then what is the need of all these rituals?” Now he is caught in a catch-22…. If he says, “These words are not from Buddha,” he goes against Mahayana Buddhism and he belongs to that sect.That’s why I insist: Don’t belong to any sect, to any creed, to any religion; otherwise, you cannot be absolutely committed to truth. Any other commitment side by side with the commitment to truth is dangerous. Then you would like somehow to also console that other commitment.And if a man like Bodhidharma could not manage to say the truth, because he could see that if he says it – and he was the first enlightened man to enter China – if he says it, the whole edifice that thousands of Buddhist monks had created in six hundred years, the whole atmosphere that you can become enlightened by worshipping Buddha, by burning incense, by offering flowers, by making temples, statues, monasteries would simply flop, because none of them was enlightened. The whole of China was waiting to hear what is actually the truth from an enlightened man. But because he also belonged to a certain business firm, he decided in favor of the business rather than in favor of the truth.I have always told a small story…. A small school, a Christian school, but the only one in the vicinity and little kids…. The teacher was telling them for almost one hour, “Jesus Christ is the greatest man who has walked on the earth.” And then she asked the students, “Who is the greatest man that has walked on the earth?”One American boy student said, “Abraham Lincoln.” She said, “Not bad, but not quite right.”An English girl stood up and said, “Winston Churchill.” The woman could not believe that she had wasted one hour insisting on a single point. She said, “Not bad, but not quite right yet.”And then a little boy who never used to speak stood up raising his hand. The teacher said, “You never do that. For the first time you are raising your hand!” And she was afraid that certainly his answer was not going to be right. But the boy said, “Jesus Christ.” She was shocked by the previous two answers, but this answer was even more shocking because the boy was Jewish.After the class she caught hold of the boy, took him aside and said, “Hymie, aren’t you a Jew?”He said, “Yes, I am.”“Then do you really think Jesus Christ is the greatest man who has walked on the earth?”He laughed and said, “Business is business. In the deepest part of my heart I know Moses is the man, not Jesus Christ. He’s just a pygmy. But business is business….” because there was a big trophy to be given to the person who answered the question right, and Hymie was carrying the big trophy, bigger than himself.But you can forgive a small child. And he was very logical; he must have thought, “What does it matter if I say once in a class, just to win the game, ‘Jesus Christ’ I know the rules for who is going to win, so why unnecessarily bring in Moses and get defeated? In the deepest part of my heart I know Moses is the greatest man who has ever walked on the earth.”But even people who are enlightened, when it comes to deciding between their commitment to an organized religion and their commitment to truth, decide for their commitment to the organization. This is really sad. The answer Bodhidharma gives is simply irrelevant. It’s just trying to make something that can prove that the sutra is spoken by Buddha.I absolutely deny that such a statement was spoken by Buddha. It goes against his very life, his very teaching, his very way.Bodhidharma says:The sutras of the buddha contain countless metaphors.Now can you see the trick? Now he cannot say it is wrong and he cannot say it is right. He finds a middle way and says that Buddha is speaking in metaphors.Because mortals have shallow minds…And to whom is he speaking – to the mortals or the immortals? If Buddha’s audience had shallow minds, does Bodhidharma think that his audience is of higher status? Buddha had perhaps the most intelligent audience any man ever had. Bodhidharma is talking to the recently converted Buddhists.…the Buddha used the tangible to represent the sublime.This is tricky, and unforgivable.People who seek blessings by concentrating on external works instead of internal cultivation are attempting the impossible.But he knows the truth, so once in a while it comes up in spite of his effort to suppress it and to go with the crowd and the mass mind. This is true when he says – concentrating on external works instead of internal cultivation is attempting the impossible.But that’s what the sutra says; now the only way is to make it a metaphor.What you call a monastery, we call a sangharama, a place of purity.That is absolutely wrong. Sangharama is exactly a monastery; it is not different from a monastery, it is not a metaphor. And even for these last two thousand years, thousands of monasteries have existed in China. It is just since the communist revolution thirty years ago that many monasteries have been destroyed; otherwise millions of monks were living on the people’s blood. But they are coming back again….It was Mao Zedong’s very adamant, stubborn, fascist and communist mind that turned the monasteries into hospitals, into schools and forced the monks to go to the fields and work. Mao stopped begging – and Buddhism has lived only on begging. In fact begging had been a discipline, a practice, because it makes you humble. But Mao made it illegal to beg and forced the monks to work for their food, for their clothes, for their shelter.Now Mao is dead and his enemies in the communist party – who he had not allowed…many of them were forced into jail, many have been killed – have come into power. Now the opposite party inside the communist party itself has come into power and it wants to win the heart of the people. Monasteries are coming back again because two thousand years of Buddhism cannot be erased so easily. Now Buddhist monks can again be seen with their begging bowls. Those hospitals have been removed, those schools have been removed, and monks are no longer forced to work in the fields, or in the factories, or wherever they can be of any use….But whoever denies entry to the three poisons and keeps the gates of his senses pure, his body and mind still, inside and outside clean, builds a monastery.Now this is a very far-fetched idea. And if Bodhidharma can explain it to very new candidates of Buddhism, why cannot Buddha himself have said that he was speaking in metaphors? He could have explained it himself, and he was far better as far as speaking was concerned, far more articulate; he could have explained that these are just metaphors. But nowhere does he mention them as metaphors. It is very arduous for Bodhidharma to turn everything into a metaphor, but we will see that with everything he goes on with the idea that they are metaphors.Casting statues refers to all practices cultivated by those who seek enlightenment.I cannot understand how this can be a metaphor. Casting statues refers to all practices cultivated by those who seek enlightenment. What relationship, even a far-fetched one…? A metaphor should be representative; it should explain something, it should be helpful to understand. This is not at all concerned with casting statues and practicing for enlightenment! Could not Buddha himself say, “Practice for enlightenment”?And burning incense does not mean ordinary material incense…As if there is somewhere available some spiritual incense….…but the incense of the intangible dharma…Where are you going to get it? That’s why I said it hurts me to say that Bodhidharma seems to have gone senile, although he was only seventy-five….…which drives away filth, ignorance and evil deeds with its perfume.Great! But where to get it? That spiritual incense – which drives away filth, ignorance and evil deeds with its perfume.Nobody has ever seen such a thing; otherwise life would have been so simple. There is no need to bother people with meditation, with any discipline, with any awareness. Just burn the spiritual incense and everything is driven out and you are purified by the perfume!I alone will not be enlightened because I am allergic to perfume, whether it is tangible or intangible. But there is not much harm if one man is not enlightened, it can be tolerated if the whole world will be enlightened! I am perfectly ready….Bodhidharma is not even aware for how long he can deceive people, but he has deceived them for one thousand years…that’s how long these sutras have been in existence. They have certainly been preserved, because they were in the hands of the Mahayana Buddhists, who were not willing for them to be translated. And I can understand now why they were not willing for them to be translated: they will destroy the great image of Bodhidharma. They themselves may have understood that what he is talking about is absolutely outlandish.When the Buddha was in the world, he told his disciples to light such precious incense with the fire of awareness as an offering to the buddhas of the ten directions.It may be precious, but where is it available? And then he makes awareness like a fire just to burn the incense, and the incense will do everything…you will become enlightened. So now your sole search is to find that dharma-incense, that spiritual incense! Perhaps you can find it in Pune…it is a very spiritual city – so spiritual that only spirits roam around, no living human beings.But people today don’t understand the Tathagata’s real meaning.Only Bodhidharma understands the Tathagata’s real meaning. Perhaps the Tathagata himself did not understand his own real meaning!They use an ordinary flame to light material incense of sandalwood or frankincense hoping for some future blessing that never comes.He’s going round about, and round about…. He could have simply said, “This statement is not Buddha’s, and this statement is absolutely nonsense.” And that would have been absolutely correct.For scattering flowers the same holds true. This refers to speaking the dharma, or to scattering flowers of virtue.How do you scatter flowers of virtue? Even if one accepts this stupid explanation, how do you scatter the flowers of virtue? You go on giving to people saying, “This is truth, this is love, this is compassion,” and your hand is empty.Two madmen from a madhouse were sitting in the park. Every day for one hour they were allowed to go out in the garden. One man, who was keeping his fist closed, asked the other, “If you tell me what I am keeping in my fist, I will give you one rupee.”The other man said, “Really? Will you keep your word?” The first man took out one rupee from his pocket and said, “This is the rupee. Just tell me what is in my hand?” And the other man looked and said, “It’s seems it is an elephant.”The first man said, “You cannot get the rupee. It seems you have looked. You are being tricky.” He did not give the one rupee because he also believed he was keeping an elephant in his fist!How can you scatter……flowers of virtue, in order to benefit others and glorify the real self? If you think the Tathagata meant for people to harm plants by cutting off their bloom, you are wrong.That seems to be right, but he’s mixing everything in such a way that it loses all significance. Certainly Buddha would not like you to pluck flowers; that is killing. The flower on the rosebush has a life, a beauty. The moment you pluck it, it is dead. Leave it there.Mukta is my gardener. She is not allowed even to cut any leaf or to cut any flowers. In the beginning she used to move with gardener’s scissors hidden behind her back! But right now I can see, whenever I go to Buddha Hall – otherwise I don’t get out – I can see flowers are there, I can see the garden has become a jungle so she must have dropped those gardener’s scissors. Let every tree grow in its own way; at least in my garden! Don’t kill any tree, don’t destroy any living flower.So I can understand that Buddha would not have allowed the cutting off of their blooms, but rather I would say that the whole sutra was inserted by the Mahayana school. But why did the Mahayana school have to insert such things…?There is something very fundamental to be understood here. When Gautam Buddha worked in this country, twenty-five centuries ago, he almost converted the whole land. He was a man of such charisma. He was not just a learned man; he has known existence, he has been part of it. His impact was tremendous – perhaps nobody else has ever made such an impact.But the moment he died, the brahmins, the priests, came out of their caves where they had been hiding because they could not face Gautam Buddha – whoever went to face him became a disciple. But they were waiting for their chance: one day he was going to die. He has destroyed their whole profession. Now no bells were ringing in the temples, people were not going to worship, people were not calling brahmins for their rituals…and brahmins are the most clever priesthood in the whole world.People get caught…each person when he is born is immediately under their control: first some ritual, then his birth chart has to be made, then his naming ceremony has to be performed. And in all these, the priest is exploiting the people. Then shaving the head….and this goes on and on. Even if you go to some other city you have to consult the brahmin for the right constellation of the stars, whether to go north or to south, or to east or to west, what will be the most appropriate and beneficial time?Then comes marriage – then again the priest is there. And then after the marriage, children start coming from the new marriage – and the priest is there. And then the man becomes old…. From the cradle to the grave, the priest keeps his hold.Even after the man has died there are rituals to be performed! And in a poor country, those rituals cost so much that people have to sell their houses, their lands, their possessions – on which they were dependent for their livelihood – because their father has died. Then they have to give a great feast for brahmins.And even the forefathers who have died…. It must have been a long line, an unending line in fact, millions of people in a queue behind one another…for that they have a special time. One month completely they devoted to the forefathers because the number is so big, so one month of continuous rituals – fire worship, mantra chanting – for the peace of all those who have died in the family…you don’t know even their names! And millions must have died.Scientists calculate that wherever you are sitting, at least eight persons’ graves are underneath you. Don’t be afraid, they are dead! But so many people have died; even thousands of years after the man has died, the priest is still exploiting you.Buddha has created a tremendous revolution in this sense, in that he destroyed the whole integrity of the priesthood. But the moment he died, the priests came back.People were also missing them. Life had become very simple. A child was born – no priest was chanting for a blissful, long life for him. Somebody died and the priest was not there chanting and blessing him for the great journey he has gone on. People were also missing all these rituals. So when Buddha died, slowly, slowly brahmins came back, and they started driving out the Buddhists from the land.Just fifty years ago in India there was hardly a single Buddhist. In these last fifty years, one man has done a great service – although he himself was not a religious man, he was a politician. But by accident he had to do something; it was political tactics.Babasaheb Ambedkar was a sudra, but caught the eye of a very rich man who, seeing he was so intelligent, sent him to study in England. He became one of the greatest experts of law in the world and he helped make the constitution of India. He was continuously fighting for the sudras to whom he belonged, and that is one-fourth of the Hindu society. He wanted a separate vote for the sudras – and he was absolutely right.I don’t see why they should belong to the Hindu fold which has tortured them for ten thousand years, forced them to do every sort of ugly work and paid them almost nothing. They are not even allowed to live in the cities, they have to live outside the city. Just before freedom, they were not allowed to move in many streets of the town. In many places they were forced to announce loudly, “I am a sudra and I am passing through here. Those who can hear me, please move out of the way…” because even their shadows falling on you, defile you.But finding no way, because Mahatma Gandhi was insistent that sudras should not leave the Hindu fold…. That was also a political strategy, because if one-fourth of the Hindus leave the fold, then Hindus will become a minority in their own country. There are Mohammedans, there are Christians, there are Jainas; now if a new big chunk would go out of the Hindu fold, the country of the Hindus would become almost the country of other religions. And if they all got together, Hindus would never be in power.I don’t consider Mahatma Gandhi a religious man either; he belonged to the same category as Doctor Ambedkar. Gandhi went on a fast to death so that Ambedkar had to take back his stand. He had to withdraw the idea that sudras should be given a separate vote. And Gandhi was clever…he started calling sudras harijans. Cunning people always play with words. Words don’t make any difference – whether you call them sudras, untouchables, or harijans…harijans means, “children of God.”I had a long discussion with Mahatma Gandhi’s son, Ramdas. I said, “Don’t you see the cunningness? The children of God have been suffering for ten thousand years and those who are not children of God are exploiting them, torturing them, oppressing them, raping their women, completely burning their towns with all living people inside. If these are the children of God, it is better not to be a child of God. That is dangerous.”Gandhi changed the name just to give it a beautiful meaning, but everything inside remained the same. And he went on a fast unto death unless Ambedkar took his statement back.If I had been in the place of Ambedkar, I would have told Mahatma Gandhi, “It is your business to live or to die. It is your business if you want to fast – you are free to. Fast unto death or even beyond!”But Ambedkar was pressurized from all over the country, because if Gandhi died the whole blame would come on Ambedkar. And I would have told Gandhi, “This is a very violent method, and you have been talking about nonviolence. Is this nonviolence?”It happened…I was in Raipur teaching in the Sanskrit college there. A very beautiful young girl was asked by a gangster if she would be married to him. He was a dangerous man, a criminal. He had been to jail many times, he had committed many crimes, and he was almost the same age as the girl’s father. But he took a fancy to her, and seeing the success of Gandhi fasting to death and how he managed everything…because Gandhi had managed Ambedkar.After Gandhi had been fasting for twenty-one days, and his health had started to fall fast, the doctor said, “Do something; otherwise the old man will be gone.” Ambedkar was much pressurized by all the Indian national leaders who said to him, “Go to Mahatma Gandhi. Ask for his forgiveness, offer him a glass of orange juice to break his fast…and renounce your movement; otherwise you will be remembered always as the one who killed the greatest man of this country, the great religious man.” And Ambedkar had to do it, although unwillingly.I would not have done it! I would have accepted the blame, I would have accepted history’s condemnation. Who cares when you are dead what is written in history about you? At least you don’t know what is written, and you don’t read. Let them write anything….But I would have insisted that this was not a nonviolent method. It was absolutely violent but in a very subtle way. I threaten to kill you – this is violence. And I threaten to kill myself if you don’t accept me – is this logical? The standpoint that Gandhi was taking was absolutely illogical, but he supported it by threatening. It is blackmail to say, “I will kill myself.”Ambedkar managed another way. He started converting the sudras to Buddhism. That’s why now there are a few lakhs of Buddhists, but they are not in any way religious. It was just a political maneuver.This man in Raipur went to the girl’s house with a bed, and declared that if the girl was not married to him, he was going to fast to death. It became the talk of the whole city; photographers and journalists were there, and the whole day the crowd was there. The father became afraid, and pressure was put on him, “Why take the responsibility of his death?” But the father said, “This is absolutely ugly. This man is my age and he’s a criminal. I cannot give my daughter to him.”I knew the father and the girl – the girl was my student in the college. The girl suggested to her father to consult me as to what could be done. I had not known him before. He came to me and he told the whole story. I said, “It is very simple. You just find some old, rotten prostitute.”He said, “What?”I said, “Just listen to the whole point: find a very rotten, old bitch, and put another bed in front of the house. The bitch should declare, ‘I’m going to fast to death unless this man marries me.’ Other than this nothing will work.”That gangster man escaped in the middle of the night. He was never seen again, he never asked again! This is the Gandhian methodology, a very religious thing.The Buddhists were burned, driven out of the country, and the whole country was absolutely cleaned of all the impact that Buddha had left. Even in the temple that had been raised in memory of his enlightenment in Bodhgaya, there was not even one Buddhist to take care of the temple. A brahmin has been taking care of it for two thousand years, the same family, generation after generation.Now they have become the owners of the temple. They don’t believe in Buddha. They are against Buddha, but the temple is very precious, because from all over the world people come to the temple. Much money comes to the temple, so the priest is not concerned. He is earning lots of money and he is not willing to hand over the temple, because for two thousand years it has been in his possession. No law can take it away from him.So when the Buddhists reached China and Tibet they had learned a lesson, that if you go against the people and their traditions…. Perhaps when a charismatic person is alive you may seem to be winning the game, but when the charismatic person is gone…what has happened in India, will happen in Tibet, will happen in China, will happen in Sri Lanka, will happen in Japan. So they compromised.That was the reason for inserting all these wrong sutras. The Buddhist scriptures in Tibet have different sutras, to console and to convince the Buddhist population of Tibet; Chinese Mahayana sutras have differences, in Sri Lanka they have differences. This is the historical reason why these absolutely absurd sutras, which cannot be Buddha’s, have entered into the scriptures. They have been knowingly put in, because without them there was no question of survival.But as far as I am concerned, and as far as Bodhidharma should have been concerned, truth is the ultimate value, not survival. And survival by creating lies, by distorting the truth…. What is the point? Even if Buddhism disappears from the whole world, it does not matter. But the purity of Buddha’s statements should have been preserved.Whenever a seeker wants to search, he has not to get lost in a forest of unnecessary disciplines, rituals. Bodhidharma should have made it clear. I know the risk. I understand that he must have felt very guilty, because after these sutras, he left China for the Himalayas. He must have felt tremendously hurt that what he was doing was against his own understanding. But still I can not forgive him. I cannot forgive anyone who goes against truth.Those who observe the precepts don’t injure any of the myriad life forms of heaven and earth. If you hurt something by mistake, you suffer for it. But those who intentionally break the precepts by injuring the living for the sake of future blessings suffer even more. How could they let would-be blessings turn into sorrows?The eternal lamp represents perfect awareness.Only in this statement does the metaphor seem to be correct. It can be interpreted as perfect awareness, the eternal lamp. But he has not been able to relate other metaphors to his interpretations.Long ago, there was a buddha named Dipamkara, or lamplighter. This was the meaning of his name…. The light released by a buddha from one curl between his brows can illuminate countless worlds. An oil lamp is no help….Practicing all six periods of the day and night means among the six senses constantly cultivating enlightenment and persevering in every form of awareness. Never relaxing control over the six senses is what’s meant by all six periods.But these are contradictory to his own statements. Control is not needed because it is through the mind. Practice is not needed because it is through the mind. One has to live a life of let-go – that was his basic teaching. One has to be spontaneous. One has to live moment to moment, neither thinking of the past, nor thinking of the future, nor clinging to the present.He has given such beautiful sutras, and at the end he spoils his own work completely.As for walking around stupas, the stupa is your body and mind. When your awareness circles your body and mind without stop, this is called walking around a stupa.He is just trying to manage somehow, even though the whole thing is so stupid. Stupas actually exist and Buddhists of Mahayana school go on pilgrimages to the stupas and go around them. But your body and mind is not a stupa. A stupa is for when you are dead; then a grave has to be created for you. The Buddhist grave is called a stupa. It is made in a certain round way.But your body and mind are alive. And how can your consciousness go around body and mind? He is not even taking into consideration that all his interpretations can be questioned. They were not questioned because they consoled the people. They wanted something tangible and if it was a metaphor – no harm; he is not denying Gautam Buddha.The same holds true for observing a fast.Even a man of very small intelligence can see the stupidity….To fast means to regulate your body and mind…I cannot conceive how a fast can mean:…to regulate your body and mind so that they are not distracted or disturbed.Fast simply means fast, and nothing else.Also, once you stop eating the food of delusion, if you touch it again, you break your fast.Now he has forgotten what he was saying. In fact, because that saying is not coming from his innermost being – it is just his mental gymnastics – he has forgotten that he has defined body and mind as ‘stupa’ and that he has defined fasting as, ‘regulating your body, disciplining your body’.Now from where comes this idea: once you stop eating the food of delusion? It was not in the very definition of the metaphor. Food was not brought in.If you stop eating the food of delusion… And is there any food that is not of delusion? Buddha also eats the same bread as you eat and Buddha also drinks the same water as you drink. If you touch it again… Not even eating, but just touching and it is delusion! What harm is there in touching a delusion? A delusion does not exist, you cannot touch it. But if you touch it again, you break your fast. He has forgotten the metaphor that he explained before. Now, even if you touch the delusion food, you have broken your fast.And once you break it, you reap no blessing from it. The world is full of deluded people who don’t see this. They indulge their body and mind in all manner of evil. They give free rein to their passions and have no shame. And when they stop eating ordinary food, they call it fasting. How absurd!I agree only with the last: How absurd!It’s the same with worshipping. You have to understand the meaning and adapt to conditions. Meaning includes action and non-action.He is just trying to deceive people – bringing in words which have no relation at all.Worship means reverence and humility.That is true.It means revering your real self and humbling delusions.But if you know your real self, where will you find the delusions? Both cannot exist together. Either you are awake – then the dreams are no more there – or the dreams are there and you are not awake. The man who knows his real self has no delusions. But he has got into a mess and he is trying hard to get out of it, but he is getting deeper and deeper into it.If you can wipe out evil desires and harbor good thoughts, even if nothing shows, it is worship.Early in his sutras he said that one has to go beyond good and evil. Now good becomes worship.Those who fail to cultivate the inner meaning and concentrate instead on the outward expression never stop indulging in ignorance, hatred and evil while exhausting themselves to no avail. They can deceive others with postures, remain shameless before sages and vain before mortals, but they’ll never escape the wheel, much less achieve any merit.It is a strange compilation of sutras. He goes really deep, like a sharp sword cutting all that is wrong, to the point. When he is asked the ultimate question, “From where does ignorance arise?” He cannot answer it and he is not humble enough to accept that he doesn’t know. He gets into such a mess that after that every question remains unanswered; he pretends to answer it, but the answer is not even related to the question.If this can happen to a man like Bodhidharma…. You have to be aware. My insistence that you don’t belong to any religion, don’t belong to any doctrine, don’t belong to any scripture, is for the simple reason that your whole and total commitment should be to truth and not for anything else. Your commitment should not be divided, otherwise you will have to make a compromise, which will make anybody who understands feel that you have gone either insane, or senile, or mad. But one thing is certain: you have lost the path.Bodhidharma himself may not, in his innermost core, have lost his enlightenment – enlightenment cannot be lost – but he has defiled it. His enlightenment is not anymore so clean, so bright, not any more a pillar of light. And just for the simple business of an organized religion….Humanity will never be religious unless all organized religions disappear and religion becomes an individual commitment towards existence, so no question of compromise arises.Let me say to you: Religion is rebellious, and the man of religion is a rebel. He is rebellious against all orthodoxy, against all traditions, against all organizations, against all ideologies. His only love is for truth, and his whole love is for truth. Only such a man finds it. Others only wander into ignorance, into dreams, into sleep – and they suffer.

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Bodhidharma 01-20Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Bodhidharma 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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But the Bathhouse Sutra says, “By contributing to the bathing of monks, people receive limitless blessings.” This would appear to be an instance of external practice achieving merit. How does this relate to beholding the mind?Here, the bathing of monks doesn’t refer to the washing of anything tangible. When the lord preached the Bathhouse Sutra, he wanted his disciples to remember the dharma of washing. So he used an everyday concern to convey his real meaning… …The bathhouse is the body. When you light the fire of wisdom, you warm the pure water of the precepts and bathe the true buddha-nature within you. By upholding these seven practices, you add to your virtue. The monks of that age were perceptive. They understood the Buddha’s meaning. They followed his teaching, perfected their virtue and tasted the fruit of buddhahood. But people nowadays can’t fathom these things. …Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form. How can people use ordinary water to wash an intangible body? It won’t work. When will they wake up? To clean such a body, you have to behold it. Once impurities and filth arise from desire, they multiply until they cover you inside and out. But if you try to wash this body of yours, you’ll have to scrub until it’s nearly gone before it’s clean. From this you should realize that washing something external isn’t what the Buddha meant.The sutras say that someone who wholeheartedly invokes the buddha is sure to be reborn in the western paradise. Since this door leads to buddhahood, why seek liberation in beholding the mind? …Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind that prevents evil from arising in either. And to invoke means to call to mind, to call constantly to mind the rules of discipline and to follow them with all your might. …To invoke the buddha’s name, you have to understand the dharma of invoking. If it’s not present in your mind, your mouth chants an empty name. As long as you’re troubled by the three poisons or by thoughts of yourself, your deluded mind will keep you from seeing the buddha. … If you cling to appearances while searching for meaning, you won’t find a thing. Thus, sages of the past cultivated introspection and not speech.This mind is the source of all virtues. And this mind is the chief of all powers. The eternal bliss of nirvana comes from the mind at rest. Rebirth in the three realms also comes from the mind. The mind is the door to every world. And the mind is the ford to the other shore. Those who know where the door is don’t worry about reaching it. Those who know where the ford is don’t worry about crossing it.The people I meet nowadays are superficial. They think of merit as something that has form. They squander their wealth and butcher creatures of land and sea. … They see something tangible and instantly become attached. If you talk to them about formlessness, they sit there dumb and confused. Greedy for the small mercies of this world, they remain blind to the great suffering to come. Such disciples wear themselves out in vain. Turning from the true to the false, they talk about nothing but future blessings.If you can simply concentrate you mind’s inner light and behold its outer illumination, you’ll dispel the three poisons and drive away the six thieves once and for all. And without effort you’ll gain possession of an infinite number of virtues, perfections and doors to the truth. Seeing through the mundane and witnessing the sublime is less than an eye-blink away. Realization is now. Why worry about gray hair? But the true door is hidden and can’t be revealed. I have only touched upon beholding the mind.Thank God that this is the last Bodhidharma sutra. I was worried about where he is going after the bathhouse! It has been a tremendous journey to the mountaintop and back to your home. Bodhidharma has been taking you on the whole merry-go-round.I started with Bodhidharma – the name Bodhidharma means “the self-nature of awareness” – but unfortunately I have to end the journey with Buddhudharma. Buddhudharma means “the nature of unawareness, of stupidity.”He got himself into this mess, but it has been of tremendous insight to us. Watching him you can avoid the same mess. Whatever he said earlier showed his insight into the deepest potential of man, but what he is saying now is just absolutely irrelevant. Once in a while he remembers who he is but it seems he goes on forgetting; or perhaps he is too much attached to his special doctrine of Mahayana and much worried about disturbing the newly initiated Buddhists.In this situation, he must have suffered a lot. I can see – perhaps nobody may have noted it – but I can see his suffering. His suffering is that he is saying things very unwillingly and this is the problem with all those who accept any doctrine, any scripture, any church. They are in constant trouble. If they listen to their own inner voice, it says something; if they listen to the tradition, it says something else.There have been very few people in the world who are ready to antagonize everybody. If Bodhidharma had said whatever his experience was, perhaps he would have lost all his prestige, respectability and his great name in the annals of Buddhism. But to me, it would not have been a loss. To me, he would have risen higher than anyone else, just because his single commitment was concentratedly and consistently one…and that is his own experienced truth. Nothing else can change it.You laughed listening to the very name of the sutra, The Bathhouse Sutra, because you don’t know that there have been two rebellious religions against Hinduism in India – Jainism and Buddhism. The Jaina monk never takes a bath; he does not even brush his teeth. He stinks and it is thought to be a great discipline that you are not at all concerned with your body which is ephemeral, which is going to die anyway. Why go on cleaning it and wasting your time? It will become unclean again tomorrow.Buddhism is almost a parallel religion to Jainism. They agree on all the essential points, but Buddha seems to be more sensible than Mahavira. He wanted his monks to take a bath every day so that they would remain clean, so that their bodies would not be condemned but respected as a temple of their divine nature. But there were so many monks: to feed them, to give them use of your bathhouses, to give them clothes, to give them medicines when they were sick, was becoming more and more of a burden to the society.Just a few years ago in Thailand, the situation became so bad that almost one-fourth of the population of the country were monks. The government had to pass a law saying unless you had the permission of the government, you could not become a monk.This is the first time in history that any government had taken such a step but it was absolutely necessary in a poor country. If out of four persons, one person does not work, does not create and yet needs all kinds of things which are absolutely necessary, he is going to become a burden.It is an ugly situation where half the population is starving, where half of the country sleeps only with one daily meal, where people not only eat fruits but dig out the roots of trees, boil them and eat them, hoping that they must have nourishing power. Because they are nourishing the whole tree – they are nourishing the flowers and the fruits – naturally the roots must have great nourishment.Gautam Buddha has to talk about such trivia because if it is not talked about, then people start taking decisions on their own. And Buddha wanted his disciples to be integrated individuals – clean, pure, alert in every possible way both outwardly and inwardly. His concern and compassion were so great that there are thirty-three thousand rules for a Buddhist monk. It is mind-boggling; thirty-three thousand rules! Even to remember them is difficult.But Buddha has taken care of every detail: when to wake up, when to go to beg for your food, not to take all your food from one house but from five houses so nobody is burdened. Five houses can give you small bits and that will be enough for you. On one house, you might be a little heavy…and not to stay in one city more than three days so you don’t create any kind of burden for anybody. Eat only one time a day because millions of people eat only once a day. You should not ask for two meals.Don’t have more than three pieces of clothing; two to use, one for emergency situations. For example: you suddenly find yourself coming back to the place where all the other monks are staying and it starts raining. Both your pieces of clothing, upper and lower, are wet. At least you still have one cloth to cover yourself – this third is for an emergency. Two are for your essential needs but you should not have more than three.These details were essential though they look like trivia. You think, “What nonsense is this? A Gautam Buddha should talk about spirituality, about growth and awareness and freedom and he is talking about these small matters.” But he had to for the simple reason because he accepted the idea of renouncing the world. Once people renounce the world they are bound to become burdens…and on poor societies.So when Buddha says that one who gives his bathhouse to be used by a monk earns great virtue, he is simply trying to persuade people that they should not think of it as a burden, but as a blessing.When a monk accepts the food you offer he is not obliged to you, Buddha says. You are obliged to him. Just his receiving your food, on your part gives great virtue. Perhaps you have given your own food, perhaps you have given your children’s food, but you have sacrificed something and you have respected a man who has no possessions, no money.Buddha has said that the mother is blessed who gives birth to a child who is going to renounce the world. The father is blessed who has a child who is going to renounce the world. They are renouncing the world just to develop their potential to its ultimate. Help them. If you cannot raise your consciousness, at least you can help in some small way those who are making the tremendous effort of raising their consciousness to its ultimate illumination.Hence, whether it is trivia or not, it would have been perfectly good if Bodhidharma had accepted the sutra as it was. And what I have said, he should have said. But he himself is feeling embarrassed, so he starts trying again, saying it is a metaphor for something invisible, and that makes his whole approach fallacious. I will read the sutra and then I will read his fictitious explanations. The sutra is absolutely clear; it needs no clarification.But the Bathhouse Sutra says, “By contributing to the bathing of monks, people receive limitless blessings.” This would appear to be an instance of external practice achieving merit. How does this relate to beholding the mind?The disciple is asking Bodhidharma: You say beholding the mind is enough, but Buddha is talking about such small things. In your beholding the mind is there any place for such things?The simple answer would have been: I am talking about the essential and Buddha is talking about both the essential and the nonessential. He is taking care not only of what the monk has to do. The monk has to behold his mind; that is his only essential practice – awareness, vipassana, watching, witnessing. But also, the poor monk needs food; he needs some shelter in rain, he needs some clothes.Buddha has a very comprehensive view. It was not just a question of a single monk but when millions of people were becoming monks, then certain rules had to be made; otherwise it would have created chaos in the whole society.A monk is not supposed to say what he wants to eat. Whatever is made by the family for itself, he should take only that. He should not say to which family he is going to beg tomorrow, because his information may make the family feel that then they have to make some delicious food, some costly food because the monk is coming to their home. This may be an unnecessary burden and the monk may become a parasite.To avoid all this, Buddha had to talk about such small things that people ordinarily don’t like, and in those days very few people had their own bathhouses. Even today after twenty-five centuries, except in a few big cities, ninety percent of the Indian population has no bathroom in their house. They go outside the village, either to the bank of a river, or to the bank of a lake. That is their bathroom, that is their toilet.It is thought to be a great luxury to have a bathroom attached to your bedroom; only a very few people in India can afford it, the country is so poor. And not only poverty has prevented it; even people who had enough money in the days of Buddha had no idea of having a bathroom attached to their bedroom.You will be surprised to know that just a hundred years ago there was a case in the Supreme Court of America, because a man attached a bathroom to his bedroom. It was thought to be against Christianity; it was thought to be such a dirty thing. The man had learned about it from Europe and he thought he was bringing a gift to America. It certainly is a gift!But the Christian associations filed a case against him in the Supreme Court saying that he was trying to corrupt people’s minds. “This is an idea implanted in his mind by the devil,” they said. “Who has ever heard of a bathroom attached to your bedroom?” And you will be surprised that the Supreme Court ordered the man to move the bathroom to the back of the house where it belonged. They were called outhouses. They were not attached to the main house – just in the backyard, far away. Dirty places!But in Buddha’s time, there were rich people who had attached bathrooms and the most surprising, almost unbelievable thing is that in Harappa and Mohenjodaro, two most ancient cities discovered in Pakistan…. They are seven thousand years old. Some natural calamity, or perhaps some man-made calamity, destroyed those beautiful cities not only once, but seven times, because seven times those cities were built. People have been excavating for almost half a century. They could not believe what kind of calamity had continuously happened: one layer of the city is covered with mud, then another layer of the city is again covered with mud.As they went on digging, first they thought the first layer, the superficial layer was the city, but somebody tried to dig a little deeper to see what is underneath that. They were surprised to find that after a few feet of layers of mud, there was another city. Then they tried again and again and finally they have found seven layers of great cities – cities which had streets as broad as San Francisco or New York. And certainly cities don’t have those broad streets if they don’t have big vehicles to move on them.Varanasi is thought to be the ancientmost city in India. Not even the smallest car can enter in the old part of Varanasi. What to say of a car? – even sunlight never reaches there because on both sides are huge buildings. Just when the sun comes exactly in the middle of the sky, for a few minutes there is sunlight; otherwise the whole day there is no sun. A great civilization must have been there.I remembered them because all the houses in Mohenjodaro and Harappa – both the cities – had bathrooms attached to their bedrooms, had swimming pools as big as we have them now. And they had a system, a very strange system which they had invented, for hot and cold running water in every house. It is simply amazing! It seems they had reached to the same height of civilization, perhaps better, because even in the beginning part of the twentieth century the Supreme Court of America refused to let that man have a bathroom in his own house.The future is going to be different because there are architects…. I have seen a few designs sent to me from a friend who is thinking about a very strange thing which will be fought in courts by every religion all over the world. The idea is not to have an attached bathroom but to have the room inside the bathroom. They have made such beautiful designs that the bathroom does not look out of place; it enhances the beauty of the room.But certainly it is going to be contested by every religion…that this is going too far. Somehow we have accepted bathrooms attached to the rooms. Now these insane architects are trying to enforce an idea…and I think that idea is going to work out. Their designs are just superb. Why have an attached bathroom? The bathroom can be made so beautiful that you can attach your room to the bathroom. And in fact both can be in the same place – there is no need for any partition. It is your bathroom, it is your bedroom. And things can be made so beautiful and so clean, there is no question of….But it was a problem. Very few rich families had bathrooms and the problem was bigger because the Buddhist monks could not take a bath in the river. They didn’t have enough clothes, they didn’t have any underwear. They had only three pieces of clothing, one to wrap around underneath, another to wrap around on top – just plain pieces of cloth.To avoid tailoring – because that is a luxury – they were just using plain pieces of cloth; one they wrap around their waist, another they wrap around their chest, and that’s all. It was difficult for them. Either they had to be naked – which was not allowed by Gautam Buddha – or they had to enter the river with their clothes on and then their clothes would get wet.So you have to see the whole situation…why Gautam Buddha has to talk about such trivia. It is giving an incentive to the people who have their own bathrooms to allow the monks to have a bath and then people would receive limitless blessings. There is no metaphor in it. It means exactly what it says.The disciple is absolutely right to ask: “This would appear to be an instance of external practice achieving merit, because the man who is allowing you use of his bathroom is achieving merit. He is not doing anything – just allowing you to use his bathroom.”And Bodhidharma says, “There is nothing and no need and no possibility either, of attaining any merit from any outside practice. The only meritorious thing is beholding the mind.”He could have simply said, “This is only an incentive for people; otherwise why should they allow anybody?” In fact, nobody likes his bathroom to be used by anybody else, and particularly not by strangers. It is not a public place. Everybody wants his bathroom to be private, his own, and the richer people are…. They certainly would not like the idea of strange monks wandering with dirty clothes, dirty feet because they have no shoes, perspiring in hot summer, collecting dust on the roads which were not coal tar, asphalt, or cement – they were just dusty roads for bullock carts. Rich men would not like this.And you don’t have any idea of the rich men of those days. They used to have in their bathtubs, not ordinary water, but rosewater. It is a strange story of a strange humanity: one part is dying for food and another part of the same race of human beings takes such a costly bath – thousands of roseflowers have to be used for one bath. These people would not like vagabonds, monks, beggars – they were all beggars in their eyes – unless they had some incentive that they would get great blessings in the other world. Buddha is simply talking in business terms and he is perfectly right.But the problem with Bodhidharma is that he cannot accept things simply as they are. He says:Here, the bathing of monks doesn’t refer to the washing of anything tangible.How do you wash anything intangible? A thing that is not tangible is not visible either. Only tangible things have to be washed. Your body can be given a shower but not your soul. Your clothes can be cleaned but not your being. But that does not mean that you have to use dirty clothes, that you have to remain dirty in your body.Buddha was very aesthetic in comparison to Mahavira, his contemporary, and that’s why he has more grace than Mahavira. Mahavira has a very strong personality but he’s not graceful…a personality of a wrestler, but not the individuality of a lotus flower.It is not accidental that Gautam Buddha has become synonymous with the lotus flower. It is so fragile and so beautiful and so graceful that no other flower on the earth even comes close to it. He wanted his monks to be sensitive, aesthetic, clean, and naturally the only way was to tell the people that if you help these poor monks with food, with a bath, with medicine, with clothes you will be getting great merit in the other world. This was simply a pragmatic affair.When the lord preached the Bathhouse Sutra, he wanted his disciples to remember the dharma of washing. So he used an everyday concern to convey his real meaning.The bathhouse is the body.Now this is nonsense and he himself in the beginning sutras has said Buddha never teaches nonsense. He is contradicting almost everything that he has said with tremendous clarity in the beginning sutras. But now he himself has got into trouble.The bathhouse is the body. When you light the fire of wisdom, you warm the pure water of the precepts and bathe the true buddha-nature within you.Could not Buddha have said something other than The Bathhouse Sutra? He could have talked about the Buddha-Nature Sutra. Do you think Buddha was less intelligent than Bodhidharma…that he did not know that it is better to say exactly what he means? And there is no difficulty in saying it. A Bodhidharma can say it – why can’t Buddha say it?By upholding these seven practices, you add to your virtue. The monks of that age were perceptive.If this is true, that the monks of that age – that means Gautam Buddha’s time – were perceptive, then certainly The Bathhouse Sutra does not need to be called Bathhouse Sutra at all. It should be called the Buddha-Nature Sutra, or any other beautiful word. Why bring bathhouse into it? And if Bodhidharma can make it clear to less perceptive people – and Buddha’s disciples were more perceptive – it is strange that he had to use such strange metaphors. Bodhidharma is making the whole thing up.They understood the Buddha’s meaning.If they understood the Buddha’s meaning then why was he hiding it behind the bathhouse?They followed his teaching, perfected their virtue and tasted the fruit of buddhahood.If these disciples of Buddha had even experienced buddhahood, what was the need to speak to them in metaphors? Buddha could have been direct – metaphors are needed for children. So what he is saying is right, but it goes against him, not in favor of him.But people nowadays can’t fathom these things.But The Bathhouse Sutra is not written for Bodhidharma’s time. Bodhidharma came eleven hundred years after The Bathhouse Sutra was spoken by Buddha. Do you think Buddha was talking to the people of Bodhidharma’s time? This is something to be understood because it is a constantly repeated thing: that people of older times were more perceptive, more sensitive, more intelligent than the people of today. Even today it is being said.In Babylon a brick has been excavated and on the brick there is an inscription which says, “People of the old days were very intelligent” – and the brick is six thousand years old. Gautam Buddha and Mahavira both repeat many times that people of the old days were very intelligent, but I don’t know when those old days were.In the Hindu Vedas, which are supposed to be the oldest scriptures in the world, one man from this very city, Lokmanya Balgangadhar Tilak has proved, and proved with great argument and evidence – and such evidence that it has not been refuted by anybody for almost half a century – that the first Veda out of the four, Rig Veda, is ninety thousand years old. But even in Rig Veda, it is the same: that in the old days, people were very perceptive, very intelligent. I don’t know when these old days were. It simply seems to condemn the people of the present day. This idea has been continuously used.Is man’s consciousness evolving or not? According to all these people, it seems that it is going downwards, not upwards. In fact the further back in history you go, the more primitive people you will find with more primitive practices. Cannibalism was a prevalent practice. The few cannibals that are left are in the thick forests of Africa, but they are the ancientmost people.If you want to see the ancientmost people, you can go to Africa, but be careful!I have heard that when the first Christian missionary went there to convert the cannibals and to tell them, “God loves you all and Jesus will come to save you,” they enjoyed his sermon very much. They took him on their shoulders and he thought that this was a great reception. When they started putting him into a boiling pot, he said, “What are you doing?” They said, “In just a few minutes you will see.”When the water started getting too hot, the fat missionary with just his head showing out from the big pot, started trying some way to persuade these people: “I have come here to give you a taste of Christianity and you are killing me.”They said, “Don’t be worried. Once we have made a soup of you, we will have the first taste of Christianity. That’s why we are boiling you – to have a taste of Christianity.”I think there is no other way of having a taste of Christianity! These are the most primitive people: they were three thousand at the beginning of this century, but because it is very rare to find anybody passing in their area – they look all around but nobody goes even close – then finally they have to eat their own people. In the beginning of this century there were three thousand; now there are only three hundred. They have eaten twenty-seven hundred of their own people. Every day food is needed. If they can get somebody from outside, good – just a little taste of some Chinese, some Japanese, some German, some Indian. Just as you go once in a while to the Chinese restaurant, they also want some taste – some change once in a while.But it is very difficult because people remain miles away from them. Everybody knows that that area is dangerous; people have gone there but they have never returned. Whoever has gone there, has gone forever. Once they catch hold of you, you are finished…soon you will be cooked – maybe stuffed with grapes, spices. You may enjoy it! I am not saying that you will not enjoy it, you may enjoy it! The whole thing will be such an adventure.But as you go backwards you will find more and more unintelligent, more and more retarded, more and more barbarous people. So this idea that is being used by all religions – that people in the beginning were great and now everybody has fallen – this is not true. This is absolutely wrong. There is no historical basis to it and no logical support. And I want to say to you that you are the highest pinnacle of consciousness up to now – although your highest pinnacle is not much.You have immense potential undeveloped. But those primitive people were even more undeveloped than you are. You have at least some consciousness, they had no consciousness at all. They were just close to the animals.Our true buddha-nature has no shape. And the dust of affliction has no form. How can people use ordinary water to wash an intangible body?He goes on repeating the same stupid things. Yesterday he was saying how can Buddha drink ordinary milk? Now, how can people use ordinary water? As if there is some extraordinary water available somewhere – to wash an intangible body. That which is intangible need not be washed. Only the tangible gets dirty. The invisible, space, never gets dirty; the sky never gets dirty. The silence beyond mind never gets dirty. And even if it gets dirty – which is impossible but just for argument’s sake, even if it gets dirty – then we will find some invisible soap, some invisible shampoo which you cannot see. You will just see the empty bottle but inside there is invisible shampoo.I have heard in a New York shop they were selling a certain commodity, so much of it that all the women of New York were immensely excited and wanted to purchase it. It was invisible hair pins. I think no woman can remain without temptation if invisible hairpins are available. There were queues before the shop and women were taking the packages, giving money and going away. One woman opened the box and could not see anything there. How can you see invisible hairpins? So she said to the shopkeeper, “I don’t see anything.” He asked, “How can you see invisible hairpins?”She said, “That’s right. I want to come again tomorrow to purchase a few more for my daughters and my friends to send as presents, because this is something so new. Will you have enough stock for tomorrow also? because I see so many customers and I had to stand for almost one hour in the queue. He said, “Don’t be worried. We have been out of stock for fifteen days but it is an invisible thing. It does not matter whether it is there or not. You can come anytime – it will be always available.”Bodhidharma is saying something which is absolutely illogical, irrational. It is not even common sense.It won’t work. When will they wake up? To clean such a body, you have to behold it. Once impurities and filth arise from desire, they multiply until they cover you inside and out. But if you try to wash this body of yours, you will have to scrub until it is nearly gone, before it is clean.He is saying you cannot clean this body that is visible. If you try to clean it you will have to scrub it to the point when the whole body is gone. Then you will be clean. That means there is no need to clean this body. It is useless; it will mean committing suicide!But you know that there is no need to scrub the body to the point that it disappears. You can scrub the body to the point that you don’t have a body odor, that your perspiration is not creating a disgusting smell around you, that your mouth is washed clean, that your breathing is not disturbing anybody else. You can use soap, you can use shampoo, you can use deodorants. There is no need to scrub the body to the point that it is completely gone. Then what is the point of cleaning it? Nothing is left.Bodhidharma thinks he is giving you an argument that shows Buddha does not mean the ordinary bath for your body, he means cleaning your soul.But Bodhidharma has forgotten completely that in his own sutras he said that the soul is always clean – it has never been unclean – that your buddha-nature is always pure, it has never been impure. Can you remember his sutras? He says that you are already enlightened, just you are asleep. There is no question of cleaning or doing any worship, or any ritual. All that you need is to behold your mind, and slowly, slowly that beholding of the mind will wake you up. To be awake is to be enlightened.But now he has completely forgotten all those sutras. He has made such a tremendous mistake he should have stopped the moment the ultimate question about ignorance was asked. He did not stop. One has to know where to stop, otherwise one gets into a trap. Now he is going on and on and he does not know where to stop and how to stop.From this you should realize that washing something external is not what the Buddha meant.Only the external needs washing; the internal needs no washing. And if Buddha meant what he is saying, then Bodhidharma is also driving Buddha to the same point of stupidity at which he is. Only the external gets dirty and needs washing. The internal never gets dirty and hence needs no washing.The disciple asked:The sutras say that someone who wholeheartedly invokes the buddha is sure to be reborn in the western paradise. Since this door leads to buddhahood, why seek liberation in beholding the mind?The disciple’s continuous insistence is because if Bodhidharma’s emphasis on beholding the mind is enough, then why does Buddha talk about other things? And Bodhidharma does not have the courage to speak against his own master. He could have said, “It is not my business to sort out his things. My understanding and my realization is that just beholding the mind is enough. Perhaps Buddha wanted to create an outer discipline also, side by side with an internal discipline. That is his business. That is none of my concern.” Just a simple statement like this would have saved him from falling down from the sunlit peak where he was, into small things which he cannot solve.His answer is again the same kind of foolishness. Buddha means awareness – which he has said so many times.Buddha means awareness, the awareness of body and mind, that prevents evil from arising in either. And to invoke means to call to mind…If invoke means to call to mind, then why should Buddha not say, “Call to mind?”; why say, “Invoke Buddha?” Why make things unnecessarily complicated when they can be made simple? And Buddha is not a man to make things complicated; he is not a philosopher. He is a realized sage. He speaks only in the simplest way and the clearest way, not using any jargon that can create disturbances in people’s minds. His whole effort is to pacify the mind so that you can go beyond it more easily.And to invoke means to call to mind, to call constantly to mind the rules of discipline and to follow them with all your might.And this same Bodhidharma has said again and again that no discipline can lead you to buddhahood, that no rules are needed. The only thing that can help you is simply awareness of your thought process, of your mind.To invoke the buddha’s name, you have to understand the dharma of invoking. If it is not present in your mind, your mouth chants an empty name. As long as you are troubled by the three poisons, or by thoughts of yourself, your deluded mind will keep you from seeing the buddha. If you cling to appearances while searching for meaning, you won’t find a thing. Thus, sages of the past cultivated introspection and not speech.That is absolutely incorrect, because what is introspection except internal thinking? And what is speech but bringing your internal thinking to an expression? They are not different. One is the inside. First you introspect, you think, and then you bring it out: you can think the word Rama without saying it and then you can say “Rama.” What is the difference? The difference is only that first you were saying it to yourself. Talking to yourself is introspection and talking to others is speech. Introspection is a silent monologue. Everybody goes on doing it all the time – it has nothing to do with sages. Even sinners have to do it!What are you doing all the time except introspecting? Sitting, walking, you are continuously thinking of a thousand and one things, but only a few things you bring to expression. Saying that sages of the past cultivated introspection and not speech is not true because if sages were not speaking, then from where have your scriptures come, from where your Vedas, from where your Upanishads? And there are one hundred and eight Upanishads. From where does your holy Koran, and from where does your holy Bible come? From where your holy Talmud, from where Gautam Buddha’s Dhammapada? And from where do the words of Bodhidharma himself come? He is speaking and talking about sages who cultivated introspection only, and not speech.That means all your holy scriptures are written by sinners and not by sages. A sage is one who knows himself and he speaks only that which is in tune with his inner experience. If he cannot find a word to express it, he remains silent. He is not against speech, he is not in favor of silence. He has come to a space which is beyond language, so it is very difficult to speak; but it is difficult to introspect also, because whatever can be introspected, can be spoken.Just watch: introspection is speaking within yourself – you are using words. If you can use words without speaking, why can’t you use the same words in speaking? That which cannot be spoken cannot be introspected either because they are two sides of the same coin.This mind is the source of all virtues.Now I am helpless but to say that this is pure nonsense! And it is nonsense according to Bodhidharma. In his own sutras he has said that this mind has to be transcended, that this mind is your bondage, that this mind has to be completely silenced, emptied. In other words you have to attain to no-mind.No-mind can be the source of all virtues, but not the mind. If the mind is the source of all virtues, then what is the purpose of no-mind? All virtues include all virtues. Only sins remain. Is the no-mind the source of all sin? Is meditation the source of all that is criminal in you, immoral in you, unvirtuous in you? Bodhidharma is not in his right senses. Once he trembled, once he lied, he has not been able to regain his balance.This mind is the source of all virtues. And this mind is the chief of all powers.Then what about the buddha-nature and its power?The eternal bliss of nirvana comes from the mind at rest.Here he comes a little bit closer to the truth but not exactly to the truth. The mind at rest is still mind. Nirvana happens on the death of the mind, not just at the resting of the mind, because the mind that is at rest can any moment become restless. The mind simply has to go. Then only can you be certain of your absolute peace. The troublemaker is completely gone. The troublemaker at rest does not mean you are free of trouble. The troublemaker may be simply resting to gain a little energy to create more trouble again. He may be tired – everybody gets tired.I used to live in a house with a friend and his child was a continuous nuisance. His father was tired, his mother was tired but he was an only child so they loved him very much. Only I was not tired of him. They asked me, “What is the matter? He never harasses you.”I said, “I harass him. I call him and he never comes close to me.”He said, “How do you harass him? Because he is such a constant worry, never at rest, always doing something, dropping something, breaking something, jumping from the sofa onto the table. He cannot sit silently.I said, “I will show you how he can sit silently.”As I went in he said, “I will sit silently.”His father said, “What is the matter? You have not said anything – just your coming and he is saying, ‘I will sit silently.’”I used to live in half of the house and they used to live in the other half – but both were connected from inside. The child used to come once in a while to my side and I used to tell him, “If you want to come in you have to pay for it.”He said, “What?”I said, “Money is not the issue. I will tell you what you have to do: first you have to go and run around the house seven times” – it was a big house, four acres of land – “seven times exactly, no cheating, no deceiving. Then you can come in.”After seven rounds he was so tired, he would come in and just flop on the sofa. I would say, “How are you feeling?”He said, “I am still alive.” And then I would continue my work and he would just rest.So his father said, “This is strange…you never told me – and he has been torturing us.”I said, “I have found my way with him. Whenever he wants to see me or come to me, he has first to pay. And seven rounds of the house are enough. Then he does not ask for anything, then he is not in a position to ask. He is so tired he just sits on the sofa and most often falls asleep, and I continue my work.”Mind at rest is not reliable. Mind has to go completely to the point that it cannot come back…to the point of no return.Rebirth in the three realms also comes from the mind. The mind is the door to every world. And the mind is the ford to the other shore.This is not right because if mind is also the ford to the other shore, then what is the use of meditation? All powers belong to the mind, all words belong to the mind, all eternal bliss of nirvana comes from the resting of the mind. The ford going to the other shore is of the mind – then what is the use of meditation?In fact, mind is not the ford to the other shore: meditation is. And meditation always means no-mind. When the mind is extinguished, the same energy that was involved in the mind becomes your meditation.Those who know where the door is don’t worry about reaching it. Those who know where the ford is don’t worry about crossing it.The people I meet nowadays are superficial. They think of merit as something that has form. They squander their wealth and butcher creatures of land and sea. … They see something tangible and instantly become attached. If you talk to them about formlessness, they sit there dumb and confused. Greedy for the small mercies of this world, they remain blind to the great suffering to come. Such disciples wear themselves out in vain. Turning from the true to the false, they talk about nothing but future blessings.If you can simply concentrate your mind’s inner light, and behold its outer illumination, you will dispel the three poisons and drive away the six thieves once and for all.I have told you that in English there is no one word which can translate dhyan. There are three words: the first is concentration, which is the lowest. It means focusing your mind on one thing or one thought. It is useful in science; in fact without concentration there would be no science at all. Science is the by-product of concentration.The second word in English is contemplation, which is higher than concentration. Contemplation means thinking about a certain subject matter – not a single thought, but a stream of thoughts confined to the same subject matter. For example, somebody is thinking about light. Then he goes on thinking about light, its speed, its division into seven colors and all its possibilities – the whole physics of light. Philosophy arises out of contemplation, just as science arises out of concentration.And the third word in English is meditation, which is the highest. But still it is not an equivalent to dhyan, or the Chinese chan, or the Japanese zen which are different pronunciations of the Sanskrit word dhyan. Dhyan means no-mind. In concentration, mind concentrates. In contemplation, mind contemplates. In meditation, mind meditates. But in dhyan, mind simply disappears. Dhyan is a silence beyond the mind. The man who has translated these sutras has used the lowest word in English – concentrate – for dhyan.This is a problem with linguistic people – those who know the language. They translate books from one language into another, but particularly when it comes to translating poetry it becomes more difficult. And if it is a question of translating the statements of somebody who has attained to enlightenment, then it becomes even more difficult.But the problem is that people who have attained to enlightenment are no longer interested in translating anybody’s book. They are not even interested in writing their own book, they are enjoying their silence and their ecstasy so much. If they want to convey anything at all, they use the spoken word, because the spoken word has the warmth and the liveliness. And the spoken word has something of the person who is speaking it. It comes from his heart. It carries some flavor of his being. It also carries some light, some profundity which is lost in the written word. Hence, no enlightened person has ever written a single word.If you can simply concentrate your mind’s inner light and behold its outer illumination, you will dispel the three poisons and drive away the six thieves once and for all. Just change the word concentrate. If you can meditate – and the meditation has to be understood in the sense of dhyan – if you can bring your no-mind to function, then all is light, then all is delight.And without effort you will gain possession of an infinite number of virtues, perfections and doors to the truth. Seeing through the mundane, and witnessing the sublime, is less than an eye-blink away.Finally at the end he comes back again to his original status. In this sentence he is again the Bodhidharma we started with.Seeing through the mundane, and witnessing the sublime, is less than an eye-blink away. Realization is now. Why worry about gray hair?Why worry about tomorrow and old age?But the true door is hidden, and can’t be revealed.This is all that he needed to say at the time he was asked from where ignorance arises. Going round and round and round, at the end he manages to come to the point. The door, the true door, is hidden and can’t be revealed.I have only touched upon beholding the mind.If he had only said these two sentences at that moment – and whatever he has said in between would have been dropped – Bodhidharma’s sutras would have remained absolutely pure, impeccably pure. But I have made it clear to you, so you can choose what is right and what is just so much prose.That which is going to help you in meditation is right, and that which is just unnecessarily metaphysical, philosophizing, has no validity and is of no use to your meditation.In a way I feel happy that by coincidence this sutra came to be discussed and you have seen both sides. It will help you to remain aware – aware that even at the highest peak of your enlightenment you can still commit mistakes, you can still go astray, you can still say things which are stupid. The problem is that I cannot tolerate anything which is not the best. I want you to know only the best, to experience the best, only twenty-four carat gold, no pollution, no mixture, just utter purity.It was good to talk about these sutras, because I could go on telling you what is not right and what is right. You may be reading many books, you may be hearing many people. Just watch clearly. Every day I receive letters from sannyasins saying, “I have been to see some saint, some guru” …and I know those people are just idiots. They write to me, “We are very impressed,” and I simply say, “My God!”I have been working with these people so hard to make every small point completely clear, and any idiot can impress them! They don’t seem to have the awareness and the clarity and the capacity for discrimination.One of the greatest Indian scriptures is Badarayana’s Brahmasutra. He prescribes a clear-cut capacity for discrimination as the first thing needed by the disciple. I can see why Badarayana has made discrimination his first point – to see what is false and to see what is true, to feel what is real and to feel what is just hypocrisy.Have you seen the Catholic pope? Perhaps many of you have seen him or met him and most of you must have seen his photographs. Do you see anything that gives you an indication that this man is the representative of God? He can be a salesman of any shoe company…but a representative of God! He should look at least once in a mirror and he himself will realize, “My God, why have you chosen me? Can’t you find some other idiot? In this big world, why have you chosen poor me?”I have heard about an old Jew dying. He was muttering something, so people of his family came close to hear what he is muttering at the time of his death. He was saying to God, “God, just only one request. We have been your chosen people for four thousand years. It is enough. Can’t you choose somebody else now? If you had not chosen us we would not have suffered so much. Now be merciful; listen to a dying old man’s last words. It is time that you choose somebody else as your chosen people and relieve us of that great burden. We are being continuously crushed.”Look at your popes, look at your shankaracharyas, look at your Ayatollah Khomeini, look at your Jaina monks, Buddhist monks, and you will be surprised that these people don’t have the presence of the awakened person. Neither do they have the words that come from an experienced source of authority, but you become impressed by any kind of nonsense.And this has been going on for centuries. It is time it should stop. At least everybody should be meditative enough that he can discriminate between the man who is an arrow towards the ultimate truth and its realization, and the man who is simply pretending.These sutras were a good exercise for you to see how to discriminate. Be very alert. To be impressed easily is to be gullible. Don’t be gullible, otherwise you will be exploited. Not to be gullible is what Badarayana means by being discriminative, alert, aware. There is no hurry to be impressed by anybody. Wait, watch, look at it from every aspect, and if your heart starts ringing bells, then it is a different matter altogether. But if it is just your mind saying, “I have found the right master,” beware of your mind. Your mind is your greatest enemy.

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Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Bukko said:Taking things easily and without forcing, after some time the rush of thought, outward and inward, subsides naturally, and the true face shows itself.…Now body and mind, free from all motivations, always appear as void and absolute sameness, shining like the brightness of heaven, at the center of the vast expanse of phenomenal things, and needing no polishing or cleaning. This is beyond all concepts, beyond being and non-being.Leave your innumerable knowings and seeings and understandings, and go to that greatness of space. When you come to that vastness, there is no speck of Buddhism in your heart, and when there is no speck of knowledge about you, you will have the true sight of buddhas and patriarchs.The true nature is like the immensity of space which contains all things. When you can go and come in all regions equally, when there is nothing specially yours, no within and no without, when you conform to high and conform to low, conform to the square and conform to the round, that is it.The emptiness of the sea allows waves to rise; the emptiness of the mountain valley makes the voice echo; the emptiness of the heart makes the buddha. When you empty the heart, things appear as in a mirror, shining there without differences between them. Life and death an illusion, all the buddhas are one’s own body.Zen is not something mysterious; it is just hitting and piercing through. If you cut off all doubts, the course of life-and-death is cut off naturally. I ask you all: do you see it or don’t you? – how in June the snow melts from the top of Mount Fuji.Maneesha, Bukko has come to the ultimate expression of the experience of one’s own being. Very rarely has a master succeeded to such a point as Bukko has in his statements. Listen carefully, because rarely will you meet a Bukko again.Bukko said:Taking things easily and without forcing, after some time the rush of thought, outward and inward, subsides naturally, and the true face shows itself.That’s what I have been telling you. To be a buddha is not a difficult job. It is not some achievement for which you need a Nobel Prize. It is the easiest thing in the world, because it has already happened without your knowing.The buddha is already breathing in you. Just a little recognition, just a little turning inwards…and that has not to be done forcibly. If you do it forcibly you will miss the point. It is very delicate. You have to look inward playfully, not seriously. That’s what he means by “taking things easily.” Don’t take anything seriously.Existence is very easy. You have got your life without any effort, you are living your life without any effort. You are breathing perfectly well without being reminded; your heartbeat continues even in your sleep – so easy is existence with you! But you are not so easy with existence. You are very close-fisted. You want everything to be turned into an achievement.Enlightenment cannot be an achievement. That which you have already – how can it be an achievement? The authentic master simply takes away things which you don’t have and you believe you have, and he gives you that which you already have. You are having many things which you don’t have at all, you just believe that you have them. The master’s function is that of a surgeon, to cut all that is not you and leave behind just the essential core – the eternal being.It is a very easy phenomenon; you can do it on your own. There are no problems and no risk in taking things easily, but people take things very tensely. They take things very seriously, and that spoils the whole game.And remember, life is a game. Once you understand it as a game, a deep playfulness arises on its own accord. The victory is not the point; the point is to play totally, joyously, dancingly.What is called playfulness is very essential in the inquiry of your own being. Says Bukko:Taking things easily, and without forcing, after some time the rush of thought, outward and inward, subsides naturally, and the true face shows itself.When I say to you that meditation is nothing but thoughtlessness, you can misunderstand me. You are not to do anything to become thoughtless, because whatever you will do will be again a thought. You have to learn to see the procession of thoughts, standing by the side of the road as if it does not matter to you what is passing by. Just the ordinary traffic – if you can take your thoughts in such a manner that they are not of much concern, then easily, slowly, the caravan of thoughts which has continued for thousands of years disappears.You have to understand a simple thing, that giving attention is giving nourishment. If you don’t give any attention but remain unconcerned, the thoughts start dying on their own. They don’t have any other way to get energy, any other source of life. You are their energy, and because you go on giving them attention, seriously, you think it is very difficult to be free from thought. It is the easiest thing in the world, but it has to be done in the right way.The right way is just to stand by the side. The traffic goes on – let it go. Don’t make any judgment of good and bad; don’t appreciate, don’t condemn. That is what is meant by being easy. It is all okay.Without forcing…and that is something that has to be remembered, because our natural tendency is that if we have to become thoughtless, why not force the thoughts? Why not throw them out? But by the very act of forcing them, you are giving them energy, you are giving them nourishment, you are taking note of them and you are making them important – so important that without throwing them, you cannot meditate.Just try to throw out any single thought, and you will see how difficult it is. The more you throw it the more it bounces back! It will enjoy the game very much, and you are going to be defeated finally. You have taken a wrong route.I have always told an ancient Tibetan story….A young man was very much interested in the esoteric, in the mysterious. He found a saint who was known to have many secrets, but it was very difficult to get any secret from him. The young man said, “I will see. I will devote my whole life to his service, and I will get the secrets, the mysteries.”So he remained with the old saint. The old saint told him, “You are unnecessarily wasting your time. I don’t have anything, I am just a poor old soul. Because I don’t speak, people think I am keeping some secret. But I don’t have anything to say, so I remain silent.”But the man said, “I cannot be persuaded so easily. You will have to give me the secret which opens the door of all the mysteries.”Tired of the young man, because twenty-four hours a day he was there…the poor old saint had to arrange for his food, had to ask somebody to take care for his clothes; the winter was coming and he would need more clothes. It had become a burden. Finally the old man got fed up. He told the young fellow, “Today I am going to tell you the secret. It is not very difficult. It is very simple.”In Tibet there is a common mantra which religious people repeat: Om mani padme hum. He said, “Everything is hidden in this.”But the young man said, “Don’t befool me! Everybody knows this mantra, it is not a secret. It is the most widely known mantra to the Tibetans.”He said, “It is true, it is widely known. But the key is not known to them for opening it. Do you know the key for opening it?”The young man said, “Key? I have never heard that there is a key to open a mantra.”“That is the secret! The key is, while you are repeating the mantra – just for five minutes – just don’t let any monkey pop into your head.”He said, “You seem to be an old idiot! In my whole life I have never thought of a monkey. Why should I think of one?”He rushed down the stairs of the temple where the old saint lived. But strangely, even though he was not reciting the mantra, monkeys started coming, giggling. He would close his eyes and they would be there. He would run to this side and they would be there. They were not outside, they were inside his head. And slowly, slowly the crowd was becoming bigger. As far as he could see, only monkeys and monkeys, and doing all kinds of circus!He said, “My god, this is the key? I am finished! I have not even started the mantra.”Finally he said, “Let me take a good bath and get rid of all these monkeys.” But the more he pushed them away, the more they jumped towards him. He took the bath, he burned incense, he sat in a religious lotus posture, but whatever he was doing, monkeys were watching from every side. He said, “It is strange – monkeys have never visited this house…” The whole night he tried, but he could not repeat this simple mantra Om mani padme hum without monkeys jumping in.By the morning he was so tired. He said, “This old saint, I will kill him! What kind of key…?” In the morning he rushed to the old saint and said, “Please take away your key. I am almost mad!”The old man said, “That’s why I was not telling anybody, because the key is very difficult. Now do you understand why I was silent?”He said, “I don’t want to listen to a single word from you. You just take this key back and let me go home. And I don’t want these monkeys to follow me!”The saint said, “If you give back the key, never repeat the mantra again. The monkeys will come! I cannot help it, they are not in my power.”The man dropped the mantra, he dropped the key. He descended the same steps and there was no monkey at all. He closed his eyes and there was no monkey. He looked all around and there was no monkey. He said, “It is strange…” He tried just once on the way, to see what happens when he says Om mani padme hum and closes his eyes. And they were all coming, from all directions!You cannot repress any thought. The very repressive process gives it energy, life, strength. And it weakens you because you become a defeated partner in the game. The easiest thing is not to force but to be just a witness. If a monkey comes, let him come. Just say “Hello!” and he will go. But don’t tell him to go. Just be a witness that a monkey has come, or a thousand monkeys have come. What does it matter? It is none of your business. They may be going to some gathering, some religious festival, so let them go. It is none of your concern. And soon the crowd will disappear, seeing that “the man is not interested.”All your thoughts are in the same category. Never force any thought to go away; otherwise it will rebound with greater energy. And the energy is yours! You are on a self-defeating track. The more you throw it away the more it will come back.Hence, what Bukko is saying is the only way – I say the only way – to be thoughtless: don’t pay any attention. Just remain silently watching all kinds of things…monkeys and elephants, let them pass. Soon you will find an empty road, and when you find an empty road, you have found an empty mind – naturally. Everything outward and inward subsides and there is the tremendous silence which easiness brings.Now body and mind, free from all motivations, always appear as void and absolute sameness.When you are in the state of no-mind, which is equivalent to thoughtlessness…when there is no thought cloud moving in your mind, you attain to the clarity of no-mind.Mind is simply a combination of all the thoughts, of all the clouds. Mind has no independent nature of its own. When all the thoughts are gone and the sky is clean and clear, you will see that everything that you have paid so much attention to is nothing but emptiness. Your thoughts were all empty. They contained nothing, they were void.Whatever you thought they contained was your own energy. You have withdrawn your energy – just the empty shell of the thought falls down. You have withdrawn your identity and immediately the thought is no longer alive. It was your identity that was giving it life force.And strangely enough, you thought that your thoughts were very strong and it was difficult to get rid of them! You were making them strong, you were cultivating them. Just by forcing them, you were getting into a fix.I agree with Bukko. I have agreed out of my own experience that you can simply sit or lie down and let the thoughts pass by. They will not leave even a trace. Just don’t get interested…and don’t be disinterested either, just be neutral. To be neutral is to be easy, and to be neutral is to take back the very life force that you have given to your thoughts.Suddenly, a man of no thought becomes so full of energy – energy which he had spread into the thoughts unnecessarily. He was weak because he was nourishing thoughts, which leads nowhere. They promise – thoughts are politicians. They promise great things to come, but the moment they have power, they forget all their promises. This has been going on for centuries.Those promises are just seductive. Your thoughts are promising you many things: “You can be this, you can be that.” And they drive you, they give you motivation to become the greatest leader in the world, to become the richest man in the world. They drive you into ambitions, they become your masters. It is one of the weirdest phenomena that the servants become masters, and the master becomes just a servant. The moment you take your energy back you become a tremendous force, gathered in your own being and center.This is the first and the most important thing to understand: never force anything, just let it go easily. If you ever want to find out what the secret of your life is, then you have to go inwards. And thoughts are always going outwards; every thought takes you outwards. When all thoughts cease, there is nowhere to go – you simply are at home.This at-homeness is meditation.Utter silence and peace prevails.In this silence every ambition seems to be stupid; the whole world of objects seems to be nothing but a dream. And your own being shines in its brightness of heaven, at the center of the vast expanse of phenomenal things, and needing no polishing or cleaning.Your own being is so pure, so unpolluted, not even a particle of dust has ever reached there – cannot reach. Only your consciousness can reach there, and consciousness arises in you with no-mind. With no-mind you become so wakeful, so watchful – nowhere to go outside, because all thoughts are gone. So you turn inwards, and for the first time face your own original being.This is beyond all concepts…What you are going to face in your meditation is beyond all concepts.This is a very pregnant statement.…Beyond being and non-being. We are using the word being because you will not be able to understand, while your thoughts are there, that something beyond being and beyond non-being is in existence within you. But when thoughts are gone, the first encounter is with a being, an individual being, bright and clean. And as you enter this being, you find yourself going beyond your individuality into the universal, which is beyond being and non-being.This is what ultimate enlightenment is. And Bukko has put it in the simplest possible way.Leave your innumerable knowings and seeings and understandings, and go to that greatness of space. When you come to that vastness, there is no speck of Buddhism in your heart.He is really a great master. His love towards Buddha is great, but that does not mean that he is a follower of Buddha. He is saying that when you enter into this great space, you will not find anything – no speck of buddhism even in your heart. And when there is no speck of knowledge about you – you will not know anything, even about yourself – you will have the true sight of the buddhas and the great masters.Buddha himself had a great difficulty. Perhaps no man has had such a great difficulty in explaining his experience. In this country, the self, atma, has been considered to be the ultimate experience. The two other religions of this country, Hinduism and Jainism, have both emphasized that to know your self is all, there is nothing beyond it. Now, Buddha was going against all of India’s traditions by saying that the self is only a door to no-self. Don’t stop at the door, it is a bridge to be passed. Don’t make your house on the bridge because a vaster universe is ready to welcome you if you can leave this small idea of your self.What is this self that you carry, that all the traditions of this country and other countries think so much of? Hundreds of philosophers came to Gautam Buddha, saying, “What you are saying goes against the Vedas, against the Upanishads.”He said, “What can I do? It is my own experience, I cannot deny it. The self has to be transcended; only then you become one with the universe. The dewdrop has to disappear into the ocean.”Why cling to the dewdrop?What are you gaining by it?Have you ever observed? – all the religions teach that you should liberate yourself from misery, from sin. You should earn virtue so that you can make a place in paradise. “You” are the center of all the religions – but not of Zen.All the religions say, “Liberate yourself from your attachments.” Only Zen has the strange courage to say, “Liberate yourself from yourself!” Liberating yourself from your attachments is child’s play. The real, authentic seeker finally liberates himself not only from other things but even from himself. He drops the very idea that “I am.”Existence is.Looked at from this viewpoint, it can be said that you are the center of all misery. And however you try, you will find you are only changing misery, from one misery to another misery. Maybe in the gap you feel a little light. From one marriage to another marriage – just in the meantime, while you have to wait, you feel good. But this goodness is not going to last, you are already filling in the form for another marriage.You are the problem.All other problems are just your children – a bus load of children, and you are the driver.Buddhism, particularly, introduced the idea that it is not a question of dropping this greed, that anger, this passion, that possession. The question is of dropping yourself completely, disappearing into the universal energy from where we have arisen.In India, Buddha was not understood. I am experiencing the same thing. In India I am not understood, because India has, for ten thousand years or more, believed in the self as the ultimate value.Self is not the ultimate value. What are you going to do with the self when you find it? Just sitting stupidly, looking weird to everybody. Just for a moment think: You have found your self, now what are you going to do? And remember, once you have found it, you cannot escape from it. It clings like German glue! It is not Indian glue….Buddha took a tremendous step in the world of consciousness when he said, “The self is only a stepping stone. Step beyond it! And going beyond it, you are just empty.”But this “empty” is not nothingness. The word that Buddha used has been translated either as “emptiness” or as “nothingness,” but in English both words have a negative connotation. Buddha’s word was shunyata. It is not a negative phenomenon.Bukko gives it perhaps the best expression I have come across:When you can go and come in all regions equally, when there is nothing specially yours, no within, no without, when you conform to high and conform to low, conform to the square and conform to the round, that is it.When you are simply available, with no self, you don’t have any boundaries anymore. Without boundaries you can conform to anything.The emptiness of the sea allows waves to rise…And your emptiness will also allow waves of blissfulness, peacefulness, splendor and unknown glory. You are at the highest peak available to any consciousness. But all these are still waves according to Bukko. That’s why I say he has made a great statement.The emptiness of the sea allows waves to rise; the emptiness of the mountain valley makes the voice echo…It is empty; otherwise how can it echo the voice?Just nearby in Matheran, there is an echo point. A very clear echo point – I have seen other echo points in other mountains also. Whatever you say it simply repeats, the whole valley. If you bark like a dog, the whole valley barks like a dog. If you sing a song, the whole valley sings the song. Its emptiness allows it to conform to anything.And Bukko is saying that when you are utterly empty of being and no-being, of mind and no-mind…When you are just merged into the universal it can be said from one side that you are empty, but from the other side you are so full that now you can conform to anything. You can be the moon, you can be the rose, you can be the clouds. Or you can just remain the empty sky.For the first time you are free to be anything you want. For the first time your emptiness allows you to experience existence from different angles.It is a vast phenomenon. We know only small parts of it because our self-ness creates a boundary. We cannot go beyond the boundary.The emptiness of the heart makes the buddha.Once your heart is empty, you are the buddha – serene, silent, utterly blissful, at home. When I say to you that you are a buddha, I mean it. It is just that you have to recover from your dreams, afflictions, addictions. You just have to penetrate deeply to the point where even the self starts disappearing and the door opens to the vast, to the infinite. To be a buddha is the ultimate experience of joy, of eternity, of immortality, freedom and liberation.And nobody else can do it for you. It is simple: you have to do it yourself.When you empty the heart, things appear as in a mirror, shining there without differences between them. Life and death an illusion, all the buddhas are one’s own body.Zen is not something mysterious; it is just hitting and piercing through.I am reminded…A great industrialist had imported a totally new, sophisticated machine. It worked so beautifully, a hundred times more productive than the older one, but one day it stopped. Nobody knew what to do.The manufacturers were informed, and they said, “We can send our man. But his fee is ten thousand dollars plus all traveling expenses.”The industrialist was losing thousands of dollars every day. He agreed; he said, “Send him immediately, right now.” The man came from the airport and without wasting a single moment, he took from his handbag a small hammer and hit the machine at a certain point and it started working.The owner of the factory said, “But this is too much! Ten thousand dollars just for hitting it with this little hammer?”The expert said, “No, for hitting with the hammer just one dollar will do. The real thing is knowing where to hit.”It is true, Zen is not something mysterious. It is just hitting and piercing through.But don’t believe in Bukko. The point is where to hit. It is not mysterious, but the problem is where to hit. Once you hit at the right time, at the right place, it is really very simple; there is nothing mysterious about it.That’s what I have been continuously trying to get you to experience, because there is no way to tell you where to hit. Everybody has to find the place by going deeper into himself, seeing where the light is coming from, where the life is coming from, and then moving in that direction without any fear. This is what he means by “hitting and piercing through.”Then don’t stop. It will be very beautiful. Even in the beginning, the moment you see your light, your life source, it will have a tremendous beauty and there will be a desire to stop, that you have arrived. Don’t do that. Much more lies ahead. Until you are finished completely…when you look all around and you don’t find yourself – that is the goal. This beyond is the buddha.If you cut off all doubts, the course of life-and-death is cut off naturally.I ask you all: do you see it or don’t you? – how in June the snow melts from the top of Mount Fuji.He is saying that just as in June the snow starts melting from Mount Fuji…so simply, without making any fuss. As June comes, the snow does not say, “Wait a little, I am engaged in something else and I have to wait a little.” No – no resistance, no delaying, no postponing. As June comes, the snow starts melting.So when you reach to the point where you feel, “this is my center,” then start melting. Your June has come. Then start melting and disappearing. Your very disappearance is making you the whole universe.Buddha has said, “When I disappeared, I saw stars within me, sun rising, sunset, full-moon nights – everything within me, not without me. It was my boundary that had been keeping them out. Now the boundary is no more; everything has fallen in. Now I am the whole.”At the time of his death the Zen monk, Guin, wrote:All doctrines split asunderZen teaching cast away –fourscore years and one.The sky now cracks and fallsthe earth cleaves open –in the heart of the firelies a hidden spring.When all is dropping and disappearing, in the heart of all this disappearance is hidden your spring. From this point you will start growing new flowers that you have never seen before.Maneesha has asked:Osho,In the West, they say that love – two full hearts – makes the world go round. Judging by the casualty rate, full hearts don't seem to be the answer. What is the world of the empty heart of Zen?In the first place, whatever is said in the West, that “love – two full hearts – makes the world go round” is all nonsense. Whether you are here or not, the world will continue to go round.And two hearts full of love…where are you going to find them?The world would have stopped long ago if it were dependent on two hearts full of love. Even to find one heart is very difficult; two is too much! But those are just mass-mind oriented proverbs, not statements of a man like Bukko.When Bukko says the empty heart is the buddha, he is talking about a very authentic experience. And it does not depend on anybody else.Love is both, a joy and a misery, because two are involved. Wherever there is duality, there is going to be conflict. You can put the conflict aside for a few days on the honeymoon, but after the honeymoon the conflict arises on every point. What kind of curtains? – and immediately there are two voices. What kind of carpets, and what kind of literature, what kind of furniture? On every point you will find that those great lovers are in absolute disagreement! There is the beginning of real love, which always ends in divorce.The world of religion is not the world of duality. It is a world of oneness. You have to find your own heart, utterly empty, empty of all rubbish. And when your heart is empty of all rubbish, you are the buddha. There is no other experience which goes beyond it.Now before you become buddhas, a few laughs, because a few may come back, a few may not come back. Those who come back will celebrate, but for those who will not come back from this great inner journey, some laughs as a good-bye….Kowalski and Olga are making love in the upstairs bedroom. Just as Kowalski is about to start up his machinery, they hear a loud banging noise downstairs.“What’s that?” asks Olga, jumping up in bed.“Nothing,” pants Kowalski. “Come on, let’s get on with it!”“No! No way!” demands Olga. “No lovemaking until you find out what is going on downstairs.”Poor Kowalski stumbles downstairs with a very large erection, and flips on the lights.Suddenly, the cat jumps out of the window. The dog dives under the sofa. And the parrot, trapped in its cage, looks around frantically, then tucks one leg under its wing and screams, “Wait! Wait, you silly Polack…you wouldn’t fuck a cripple would you?”Terrence and Mrs. Tuber, the TV Couch Potatoes, are propped up on their potato couch, chewing peanuts and watching their favorite soap opera “The Potato Family” on television.When the doorbell rings, Chip the dog starts barking, and Terrence looks around at it and accidentally pops a peanut into his ear. He is still sitting on his potato couch with his head tipped to one side, trying to get the peanut out, when his daughter and her boyfriend Frito walk in.Frito immediately sees the situation and offers to help Terrence to get the peanut out.“Look,” says Frito, “I’ll cover your mouth, stick my two fingers into your nostrils and then blow into your other ear.”In desperation, Terrence agrees to give this a try. Frito stuffs his fingers tightly into the couch potato’s nose and blows into his ear. Sure enough, the peanut pops out the other side.Later that evening, Terrence and Mrs. Tuber are propped up in bed watching a re-run of “The Potato Family” on television, when Mrs. Tuber asks her husband, “That Frito is such a nice boy, what do you think he will do when he leaves school?”“I don’t know what his plans are,” replies Terrence. “But from the smell of his fingers, I think he will probably be our son-in-law.”“Hey man,” says Swami Haridas to his friend, Stonehead Niskriya, “how come you got home so early from your date with Papaya Pineapple last night?”“Well,” explains Stonehead, “after dinner we went back to her apartment. We sat on her bed listening to music, talked for a while, and drank some herb tea. Then she slowly undressed, pulled back the bed covers, lay down, reached over me, and turned out the light.”“So?” asks Haridas. “What happened?”“Well, I can take a hint,” replies Stonehead. “So I went home!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent. Close your eyes. Feel your body to be frozen; gather all your life energy inwards and look in.Deeper and deeper.Find the center of your being.Finding the center of your being is the door that leads you beyond yourself, that makes you a buddha.Be well acquainted with this new space you are in, because you have to carry the buddha twenty-four hours – in your gestures, in your actions, in your words, in your silence, waking or sleeping.If one can remain with this silence, then there is no need to follow any discipline, any virtue. Everything will happen on its own accord, spontaneously.And when things happen spontaneously they have a beauty of their own.It is a blissful moment.You are dissolved into an oceanic consciousness, you are at home, realizing that which you have carried since the very beginning, for thousands of lives, but have never looked into it…never searched for it, have taken it for granted.It is the most precious treasure in you.It is the whole universe falling in you.Nivedano, to make it clear…(Drumbeat)Relax, and just watch the body, the mind.You remain a watcher.Just a watcher.Your body is born and dies.Your mind every moment changes.Only this watcher is your eternity.Remember it.Remind yourself of it.And slowly, slowly make it your ordinary, simple life experience, just like breathing. You don’t have to make any effort.When your buddha is that spontaneous, you have found the truth.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, and bring with you all the fragrance that you have gathered.Sit down, slowly, gracefully as a buddha, for a few seconds.This is going to be your lifestyle.I don’t want any followers.I want everybody to be a buddha, a master unto himself.Can we celebrate the buddhas?

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Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Buddha Emptiness of Heart 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Daikaku said:Zen practice is not clarifying conceptual distinctions, but throwing away one’s preconceived views and notions and the sacred texts and all the rest, and piercing through the layers of coverings over the spring of self behind them.All the holy ones have turned within and sought in the self, and by this, went beyond all doubt.To turn within means all the twenty-four hours, and in every situation, to pierce, one by one, through the layers covering the self, deeper and deeper, to a place which cannot be described. It is when thinking comes to an end and making distinctions ceases, when wrong views and ideas disappear of themselves without having to be driven forth; when, without being sought, the true action and true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know what is the truth of the heart.The man resolute in the way must, from the beginning, never lose sight of it, whether in a place of calm or in a place of strife, and he must not be clinging to quiet places and shunning those where there is disturbance.If he tries to take refuge from trouble by running to some quiet place, he will fall into dark regions.If, when he is trying to throw off delusions and discover truth, everything is a whirl of possibilities, he must cut off the thousand impulses and go straight forward, having no thought at all about good or bad. Not hating the passions, he must simply make his heart pure.Maneesha, Zen can say things which no other religion is capable of. Zen is a rare flower. All other religions are subservient to the vested interests, to the past, to the society, to the state. Zen is an exception. My love for it is not without reason. It is the only revolutionary approach to the ultimate reality, and a man like Daikaku is a perfectly representative master. You have to listen to his every word as if you are listening to me.Daikaku said:Zen practice is not clarifying conceptual distinctions…The whole theological world and the whole philosophical world are concerned only with clarifying conceptual distinctions – what is what. They never go beyond the conceptual mind. Looking from the point of view of Zen, what they are doing is not only childish, it is also stupid. A child can grow up, but stupidity only becomes thicker and thicker and thicker.All the religions have served the politicians, the emperors, the murderers, the criminals. You may not be aware of it, but you have to be aware. The pope in the second world war blessed Mussolini, who was a fascist, to be victorious. He prayed to God to make Benito Mussolini the victor. Now it is strange, the archbishop of England was also praying to the same God – both are Christians – but Italy and England were at war. Even Adolf Hitler was blessed and received the prayers of both the Catholic and Protestant religions. Their high priests prayed to God that he should be made the victor.Now, God must have been in trouble to decide! All sides were praying to the same God, the same Christian God. They all worshipped the same Christian Bible. But this strange situation shows completely that your religion is nothing but a servant to the state – it can even pray for Adolf Hitler to become the victor over the world. It does not matter for whom the religion is praying; it has always been favorable to those who have power and riches.Zen is in every way exceptional. Japan was also at war but not a single Zen master blessed the emperor of Japan to be the conqueror.The emperor of Japan had gone to receive blessings from a Zen master, and wondered how to ask him. First he had tried to persuade the master to come to his court. The master refused. He said, “Even if God calls me to his court, I will refuse. I am perfectly happy where I am. If you want to see me, then you have to come. The thirsty has to come to the well.” A clear-cut answer….The emperor finally had to concede, reluctantly, and he went with all his court following him. Not finding a word – what to say? – he asked, “I have always wondered: what is hell and what is heaven?”The master said, “You idiot!” I don’t think any emperor has ever received such a welcome. A poor monk who has no possessions, nothing except himself…but having himself gives him such authority that he can say to the emperor, “You are an idiot!” The emperor became furious. This was too much. He pulled out his sword and was going to cut off the head of the master.The master said, “Wait a little…this is the door of hell.”The emperor thought for a moment. He had been given the answer: anger, violence, destructiveness. He pulled back his sword and the master said, “This is the door of heaven. Do you want to ask any more questions?”The emperor said, “I am satisfied.” He could not manage to ask, “Bless me, that I should be the victor in the great world war.” Just being in the master’s presence, the very idea looked stupid.Zen has never been in any way what Karl Marx calls the opium of the people. It is unfortunate that a genius like Karl Marx had no idea of Zen. He knew, in the name of religion, only Christianity which is the worst religion in the world. He did not know the flights of Gautam Buddha, of Mahakashyap, of Nansen, of Tozan. He was absolutely unaware of the East, and religion is an Eastern contribution to the world. In the Far East, in Japan, it has come to flower in its totality.Daikaku is one of those masters who have come to their fullness, to their fulfillment. Just listen to what he says:Zen practice is not clarifying conceptual distinctions, but throwing away one’s preconceived views and notions and the sacred texts and all the rest, and piercing through the layers of coverings over the spring of self behind them.Daikaku is famous for burning all the scriptures that belonged to the monastery of which he had become the head, the successor. He burned all the scriptures and he stopped one thousand disciples in the monastery from reading them, saying, “This is not a university, you are not here to study something. You are here to transform yourself, to seek yourself; and that is not possible through scriptures. Throw out all these scriptures, holy and unholy, both together.”It was very shocking when Daikaku did it. It shocked almost the whole Buddhist world. But Daikaku was a man of the same strength and the same power as Bodhidharma or Mahakashyap. He did not care what the world said, he knew what he was doing. The only way to reach yourself is to throw away all your preconceived ideas, all your prejudices, all your scriptures, all your religious notions. Anything concerned with the self that has been conceived through the mind has to be thrown away, cleaned out completely.No scriptures can give you the experience of your being. They are really the hindrances – your life spring is covered by those layers of prejudices and conceptions. Unless you throw them away, whether it is the Bible or Shrimad Bhagavadgita or the holy Koran or Dhammapada…it does not matter what it is. Whatever is covering your life spring, throw it away without a single moment of hesitation. Because all that is borrowed is just dust, layers and layers of dust, and you are covered with that dust.All the holy ones have turned within and sought in the self, and by this, went beyond all doubt.He is saying, “It is not only me, but all the buddhas have done the same. They have all burned the whole contents of the mind and cleared the space so that the life springs can flow directly and you can know for the first time your own eternity, your own splendor.”It is a paradox to say it, but it is a fact that all your religious teaching is a barrier to your becoming religious. To know anything about God from others is dangerous. It will prevent you from knowing existence directly, and you will settle for cheap knowledge.Zen’s whole revolution is: don’t settle for cheap knowledge; go for the costly experience. And anything that hinders the way, throw it out. Gautam Buddha has even said, “If I come into your meditations, cut off my head immediately! Nobody is to be allowed to hinder your progress.” These were real lions. Humanity can be proud of these people who did not desire to enslave you, as Catholics, as Hindus, as Mohammedans; whose whole effort was to liberate you from all “isms,” from all churches, and to help you penetrate your own reality. That is the only truth, the only space which is holy.To turn within means all the twenty-four hours, and in every situation, to pierce, one by one, through the layers covering the self, deeper and deeper, to a place which cannot be described. It is when thinking comes to an end and making distinctions ceases, when wrong views and ideas disappear of themselves without having to be driven forth; when, without being sought, the true action and true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know what is the truth of the heart.In these few statements he has covered the whole journey from falsehood to truth, from darkness to light, from death to immortality. What he has said can be condensed, so that you can remember it not as knowledge but only as a finger indicating the moon – just a few hints for your own inner journey.The first thing is, twenty-four hours a day, to remember what you find in your meditations. You will forget again and again, but the gaps of forgetfulness will become less and the length of remembering will become longer. By and by the gaps of forgetting will disappear. There comes a time when you are a whole circle of remembrance, twenty-four hours. Even in your sleep you know you are a buddha.A small story will explain it to you….Ananda, Buddha’s very intimate disciple, was almost forty-two years continuously serving Buddha, day and night, summer and winter. One night when Buddha was going to lie down, Ananda said, “I don’t generally ask any questions, because every question that I could ask, others ask. And I am always here, so I listen to the answer. I know that any question I have is going to be asked by somebody or other; in these years this has become my experience. But there is one question I don’t think anybody is going to ask. It is very situational.”Buddha said, “You can ask.”“The question,” he said, “is not very great. But it has been troubling me for years.”Buddha said, “You could have asked at any time.”Ananda said, “I never wanted to trouble you. The whole day you are working on people, and in the night you are alone with me. The question is that I have been watching you for twenty years continuously…even in the night I get up once or twice to have a look at you to see whether you are all right. What has been puzzling me is that you keep the same posture the whole night. You don’t change sides, you don’t even move your leg. Do you sleep or do you remain awake?”Buddha said, “My body sleeps; it sleeps very profoundly. But as far as I am concerned, I am just a pure awareness. So having found the right position, the one which is the most comfortable, I have not changed it for twenty years. And I am not going to change it till my last breath.”He died in the same posture. Because of Buddha, the posture has become known as the Lion’s Posture. For forty-two years after his enlightenment, his day and night was a continuity of awareness.That’s what Daikaku is saying:To turn within means all the twenty-four hours…Go on turning in. Whenever you find a moment to turn, turn. And it is such a simple act to turn within – nobody’s help is needed. No ladder is needed, no door has to be opened. Just close your eyes and look in. Sitting in a bus, traveling in a train…you can do it any time, and slowly, slowly you don’t even need to close your eyes. The remembrance simply remains, of its own accord.That’s what Daikaku is saying:It is most beautiful when, without being sought, the true action and true impulse appear of themselves. It is when one can know what is the truth of the heart.What is the truth of the heart? The ordinary commonsense view of the heart is that it is the source of emotions like love or hate or anger. Just as the mind is the source of conceptual thoughts, the heart is the source of all that is emotional and sentimental. That is the commonsense view.But when Buddha says “the heart” he means the very center of your being. It is his understanding that your love, your hate, everything, arises out of your mind. And I think he is being absolutely scientific; all psychologists will agree with him.You can experiment yourself. You can see from where your anger arises – it is the mind; from where your emotions arise – it is the mind. Mind is a big phenomenon; it covers conceptual thinking, it covers your emotional patterns, your sentiments. To Buddha, the mind contains all that arises in you, and the heart is that which is always silent and empty and watching.What is the truth of the heart? – Silence and watchfulness.The man resolute in the way must, from the beginning, never lose sight of it…From the very beginning one should remember that we are in search of a place, a space, where nothing arises – no dust, no smoke; where everything is pure and clean, utterly empty, just spaciousness. One should be clear from the very beginning what we are looking for.…never lose sight of it, whether in a place of calm or in a place of strife, and he must not be clinging to quiet places and shunning those where there is disturbance.Zen is not against the world. That is one more of its rebellious attitudes against all religions. All religions somehow condemn the world. All religions praise those who have renounced the world, those who have gone away from it, renouncing the wife, the children, the home.Somebody has some day to do deep research into how many millions of people have left the world in the name of religion and caused to suffer small children, old parents, wives and husbands; who have disturbed the life of many in the name of religion. And do you think these people have found anything? They have simply created many prostitutes, many orphanages, many poor old people, dying without food or medicine. And what have they gained? Not a single one of them has attained to buddhahood.Zen is very clear and straightforward about everything. It is not a question of renouncing the world; the question is of renouncing your mind.Wherever you go, your mind will go with you. Your knowledge will go with you, your prejudices will go with you, your scriptures will go with you. Your idea that you are a Hindu or a Mohammedan will go with you. So what are you renouncing?Zen does not want you to renounce the world but to renounce the mind, so that you can find the empty heart. The empty heart is your purity, your virginity. This empty heart opens the door to the universal and the eternal.Daikaku is saying that people ordinarily do one thing: wherever there is strife or some disturbance, they avoid that place. These are the people who have renounced the world because to be in the world is a difficult task, every moment there is some difficulty. They are escapists.Once and for all it should be clear that the future of religion cannot depend on the escapists. The authentic religious man will live in the world without being disturbed by all kinds of disturbances. He will be simply a watcher, unperturbed. In fact the world is a good place because it gives you an opportunity to test your silence, your meditativeness, your watchfulness. Be in the world but don’t be of it. Be in the world but don’t let the world be in you.It is the ordinary mind’s approach that where things are quiet and peaceful, it is good; there you can meditate. So people have gone to the Himalayas to meditate. And what they meditate on, you will be surprised: they meditate more on the world that they have left behind! Because everything that they have left behind forcibly, follows them in their mindsI have heard two stories. One is about an American billionaire. He became tired of money, tired of women, tired of drugs. Finally he thought, “I have to go to the Himalayas, to find a real master to show me the way to peace.” He traveled to the Himalayas and inquired, “Is somebody aware of an authentic master?” People said, “Yes, there is a man near Mansarovar” – the highest lake in the world, on top of the Himalayas. “He has been there perhaps for sixty years or more, nobody remembers; we have always known him to be there. He is the only man there.”Even the swans which live in Mansarovar leave it for three months and come down to the plains, because for those months the lake is completely frozen. You can walk on it, you can drive over it; it is like solid rock. The people said, “But even in those months that man never leaves the place. Obviously, he must have found the truth; otherwise why should one remain there for sixty years in such arduous conditions?”The billionaire was not to be discouraged; on the contrary, it became a challenge. He was a man who had fought many challenges in his life. He was born a poor man and he became a billionaire by sheer effort and struggle. So he struggled; it was a difficult task to reach there, because no buses go there, no roads go there. He had to find his path by just looking at the map and moving into the unknown.Finally, he found an old man, a very old man. He thought in his mind that if there is any God, he must look like this man! He was very happy, although tired and tattered. He fell at the feet of the old man and he said, “I am coming from America. I am a super-rich man, but I am tired of the world; I have renounced everything.”The old man looked at him and said, “These matters we will discuss later on. Do you have a cigarette on you? Sixty years, and not a single idiot has come here with a cigarette.”The billionaire was very much shocked, but he gave his whole packet, and a lighter, and the old man said, “You are a very religious person.”“But,” the billionaire said, “what am I to do now?”He said, “Go back. And when you come again, bring as many cigarettes as possible.”He said, “This is strange! I had come here for enlightenment…”The old man said, “Do what I have told you. Just this way – going back and coming again, going back and coming again – you will become enlightened.”Miserably, he went away. No one has ever heard that he came back again. But this man, for sixty years, had been waiting for a cigarette.The second story is certainly fiction. This one that I have just told you may be true. The second is that when Edmund Hillary reached Everest he was surprised to see a Hindu sannyasin squatting on the ground there. He said, “My god! We used to think that nobody had ever reached here. How did you manage?”He said, “I come here every day. This is a sort of toilet for me. I live just nearby. But these things we can discuss later on – how much for your watch? Because here it is so difficult to know what time it is…”These people who have escaped from the world, do you think they are thinking about anything else? They are thinking more of the world than you are, because you don’t have to think – it is there! These poor fellows have to think thousands of things which are not there. Mind always desires that which is not there. That which is with you, mind simply accepts; there is no need to think about it.This ordinary conception has prevailed amongst humanity that one should go to a quiet place to meditate, and get away from places which are full of strife, struggle, conflict. But Zen has a totally different attitude – and more psychological. There is no need to leave the world. The world is a perfectly good place – as a fire test. What is needed is to go in, not to go somewhere out.And you can go in anywhere in the world, whether it is the Himalayas or the M. G. Road. You can become enlightened even with a rented bicycle! It does not matter that it was rented. I have heard of people becoming enlightened even on stolen bicycles, because becoming enlightened has nothing to do with bicycles.Daikaku says:If he tries to take refuge from trouble by running to some quiet place, he will fall into dark regions.No other religion has said that. And I authenticate it: The person who escapes from troubles falls certainly into a very dark space, because his very beginning is wrong. He is going away from the trouble. He should have remained in the trouble, untroubled – that would have been some gain. But he has escaped from it, and when there is no struggle, no trouble, no strife.…Sitting somewhere in the Himalayas, the silence that surrounds you is of the Himalayas, not of you. That is not going to help. You have to find your own Himalayas within.If, when he is trying to throw off delusions and discover truth, everything is a whirl of possibilities, he must cut off the thousand impulses and go straight forward, having no thought at all about good or bad.You can see the rebelliousness of Zen. Every religion is concerned that you should be good, you should not be bad, you should be respectable, you should not be condemned by the society. You should not lose your good repute even if you have to be a hypocrite. Just be good, even though the good is not arising on its own but you are forcing it.It is the greatness of Zen.…Don’t have any thoughts about good or bad. Be absolutely a witness, and while you are just a witness, whatever happens through you is bound to be good. The whole world may condemn it; it does not matter. You have to listen only to your own heart. If your heart says “yes, go on,” then go on straight forward. Even if it is against all morality, against all doctrines, against all religions, it does not matter. It should not be against your simple, innocent heart. The only criterion is that it should be spontaneous. Spontaneity is good; non-spontaneity is hypocrisy.Not hating the passions, he must simply make his heart pure.On every point Zen differs from all other religions, and on every point Zen is right. It does not say to you, “Fight with your passions, drop your passions. Unless you drop all your desires, passions, longings, you cannot attain to the truth.” The reality is just vice versa. If you get into this struggle of dropping passions, you will never win. Don’t be bothered by the passions, by the desires. Find the empty heart and its purity and you will find that all passions, all desires are transformed.People always begin from the wrong end. And there is a reason why they begin with the wrong end. The wrong end seems to be rational. For example, they see in Gautam Buddha great compassion. This compassion is arising spontaneously, but they don’t know the empty heart of the buddha, from where this compassion is arising. They can see his compassionate actions, and they logically derive the conclusion that if you do compassionate acts you will become a buddha.The law, the dhamma, does not work this way. In the first place you cannot drop the passions. You can fight, you can wrestle, and you can suffer and you can torture yourself. You can repress, you can become a pervert – as all the monks of all the religions have become perverts, psychologically sick, because they have been fighting against nature.Nobody can win against nature. But they are doing something “rational.” It seems to them that by being compassionate…And their compassion will be bogus, false. You know when your smile is just on the lips, a lipstick smile, it has no roots anywhere inside. It is just there on the lips.I have heard about a politician in America. In America, politicians in an election go from house to house, kissing small babies. In a small park there were at least two dozen babies with one woman. The politician thought, “My god!” And all those babies were dirty, smelly, their noses running, and he had to kiss all of them just to convince the woman that he was the right candidate. Then he told the woman, “Remember, this is my name and I am running for president.”She said, “I will remember. You are so kind.”Then he asked the woman, “Just one question arises – are all these children yours?”She said, “No, not a single one.”The politician said, “Not a single one? What are you doing here?”She said, “I am just keeping an eye on them. Their mothers have gone to a conference.”He said, “Fuck you, you noodle! Why didn’t you tell me before? I had to kiss all these brats – they all seem to be Italians, full of spaghetti – and you didn’t stop me!” All that kissing was just political, diplomatic.Unless your life arises from your spontaneity, from your very empty heart, it is going to be just superficial. And with the superficial you cannot be blissful; with the superficial you are going to remain miserable. Only with the truth is there the beginning of a different kind of life – of joy, of bliss, of dance. Then your whole being is full of songs. Then all your actions are poetic. Then your very presence has a grace, a beauty which is not of the body. It is radiating from the body but it is coming from the deep sources of your own empty heart.Upon his enlightenment a Zen monk wrote:You, before me standing,Oh, my eternal self!Since my first glimpseyou have been my secret love.At the moment of death you cannot think about what movie is running in a certain theater. When death is standing before you, you cannot think of anything else. The Zen monk is saying in this small haiku:You, before me standing, Oh, my eternal self!In the mirror of death he has seen his original face. All things are dropped, all concerns are dropped, all preoccupation’s are dropped.Since my first glimpse you have been my secret love.You are all in search of a secret love. And you are all trying to find it in somebody else. Hence the frustration of all lovers except those who are never allowed to meet. Only those who are never allowed to meet are remembered, for centuries, for their great love.In the East we know Shiri and Farhad, Laila and Majnu. Because they were never allowed to meet by their parents and society they have become symbolic of great lovers. But it is strange: they were never allowed even to meet with each other, and they have become the symbols of great love. And what has happened to the millions of lovers who have been allowed? Not a single one of them has proved to be a great lover. All are simply lousy.Every love affair is a failure, without exception. You may accept it, you may not. One tries to hide the fact as long as possible, but everybody knows what everybody is doing.Your frustration is bound to happen. Your real love is for the eternal self, hidden behind the curtain, and you never look behind the curtain. You are just playing on the stage and befooling.Everybody’s great love is to know the secret of the eternal and immortal life. You cannot find it in another person. When you meet on the sea beach it seems – and to everyone it is the same story – “this woman – or this man – is made for me.” Nobody is made for anybody; everybody is made for himself.You are not some kind of manufactured parts, such that you are made to fit with each other. So when you don’t fit, then the tragedy begins. Before that all is goody-goody. The real test is after the honeymoon. After the honeymoon the lovers are finished, they don’t look at each other eye to eye. The husband goes on reading the same newspaper to avoid the wife….A man was saying to his friend in the pub, “Why do you always remain silent? You don’t say anything.”He said, “The whole credit goes to my wife. She talks and I listen. She does not like any interruption. So after years of listening without interrupting, it has become a habit. Wherever I am, even though my wife is not there, I sit silently.”The failure of love in the world shows a significant fact: perhaps our love is searching for something else, and because we don’t find it in our so-called lovers, the frustration arises. Nobody is responsible, it is just that our direction is wrong. The real lover is within you. The eternal lover is within you. Once you have found it, you are absolutely content with yourself. There is no need for anyone because you are no longer incomplete.Only a buddha is fulfilled.Maneesha has asked:Osho,What is the wisdom of the heart?Maneesha, common sense carries many fragments of truth, but they are never complete. Around the world everywhere it is heard – “the wisdom of the heart.” But the truth is, wisdom arises not out of the heart, it arises out of the emptiness of the heart. But that is known only to those who have reached deepest into the self.But common sense carries fragments of knowledge. It knows that the people who are compassionate, people of heart, have a certain wisdom which is not knowledge, a certain insight, a certain intuitiveness which cannot be taught. They can see things, feel things. They are sensitive to things which are not available to the mind. So people start thinking that there are possibilities of the heart having wisdom.But they don’t know that the heart is your emptiness. And out of your emptiness a clarity, a transparency arises which can see things which you cannot intellectually infer. This is wisdom.To make it complete, Maneesha, it has to be said, “the wisdom of the empty heart.” The heart, as the physiologist knows it, is just a blood-pumping system. Out of your heartbeats no wisdom can arise. Have you ever felt any wisdom arising from your heartbeats? Has any doctor ever heard some wisdom while checking your heartbeats through his stethoscope?This heart is not the one we mean when we are talking about the emptiness of the heart. Actually, we are talking about throwing away all the contents of the mind. Then, the no-mind itself becomes your heart. It is not a physiological thing. It is your no-mind – no prejudice, no knowledge, no content. Just purity, simple silence, and the no-mind can be called the empty heart. It is only a question of expression. What you want to choose, you can choose: the wisdom of the empty heart, or the wisdom of no-mind – they are equivalent.When you are in deep meditation, you feel a great serenity, a joy that is unknown to you, a watchfulness that is a new guest. Soon this watchfulness will become the host. The day the watchfulness becomes the host, it remains twenty-four hours with you. And out of this watchfulness, whatever you do has a wisdom in it. Whatever you do shows a clarity, a purity, a spontaneity, a grace.A Mulla Nasruddin story….He was born in Iran, and in Iran his grave is still there. A strange grave, unique in the whole world. There are millions of graves, but nothing like Mulla Nasruddin’s grave. On the grave there is standing a closed door with a big lock on it. And the lock…Mulla Nasruddin before dying made all the arrangements. “You put the key with me inside the grave, so nobody can open the door.” Even the emperor came to see – “What nonsense is happening! And this man is thought to be a wise man, of course a little eccentric, but loved by everybody.”The emperor inquired of Nasruddin’s disciples, “What is the matter?”They said, “It is not new. He used to carry this door wherever he went. We asked him, ‘What is the matter?’ He said, ‘If I take the door with me, nobody can enter into my house. Obviously, everybody enters into the house from the door. So just to protect the house, I carry the door with me.’ And before dying he said, ‘Fix that door on my grave, lock it, and put the key with me. Any time I like I can open the door and just have some fresh air.’”The emperor said, “All nonsense.”But the emperor also liked the man. The chief disciple said, “There is something in it. He is saying: Don’t think that my death is my death. You are putting my body in the grave but I am still alive. My life is eternal.”But he was crazy always. To make this statement, that life is eternal, he has put up this door: “Any moment, if I want to come out, at least I have the key and I don’t have to ask anybody’s permission. I can open the door, have a little walk, or enjoy around the city. You will not see me, but I will see you.”Mulla Nasruddin was once sent by the emperor of Iran with great gifts to the emperor of India. And Nasruddin praised the emperor of India as the full moon. The rumor reached Iran – there were enemies of Nasruddin, and they said, “You have not chosen the right person to take the message. He has praised the emperor of India as the full moon!”The emperor said, “Let him come back. He will have to answer; otherwise he will lose his head.”Nasruddin came back. The Indian emperor was very impressed by him, and had given him many presents. The emperor of Iran was very angry and he said, “Nasruddin, your life is at risk!”Nasruddin said, “Everybody’s life is always at risk. Do you think your life is not at risk?”The emperor said, “Don’t discuss philosophy, you have to answer. You called the Indian emperor the ‘full moon.’ It is insulting to me.”Nasruddin said, “You are an idiot; you don’t understand the meaning. You are the rising moon, the first-day moon, which is just a small arc, remains for a few moments and disappears. The full moon means the days of decline have come. That Indian emperor was an idiot. He thought I was praising him, but I was simply declaring that ‘Your time has come. Now there is no more growth, only decline.’ And you are an idiot for being angry. You are the rising moon – you have to expand, conquer. You have enough time to become a full moon.”The emperor was very much impressed by the interpretation. Nasruddin’s enemies were simply shocked. They had never thought that he would give this interpretation. Nobody ever thought about it; everybody thought that he had been insulting.Nasruddin is a Sufi mystic, a little crazy, but always tremendously wise. One day he was going to take his disciples to see a rare collection of paintings that had come to the city. Now the question was…He would be riding on his donkey. He asked his disciples, “What to do? If I ride on my donkey in the usual way, then my back will be towards you. That is insulting, and I cannot insult my disciples. If you walk ahead of me, your backs will be towards me. I don’t think you will do that insult to me. So the only possible way is, I will ride on the donkey facing you.”The disciples said, “But the whole town will laugh, and you will make us also look stupid…although there is a point in it. But to go anywhere with you is a trouble.”The procession went on through the town. Everybody looked – what is the matter? Nobody had ever seen anybody riding on a donkey facing backwards. Finally a crowd gathered, and they said, “We will not let you go unless we get the explanation.”Nasruddin said, “The explanation is simple. I don’t want to insult my disciples so I cannot have my back towards them. And I don’t want to be insulted by my disciples, so they cannot walk ahead of me. They have to walk behind me. Now what do you say – how can it be managed? This is the only way.”People said, “It is crazy, but it is the only way. If keeping somebody at your back is insulting, then certainly you are doing the right thing.”A simple man with utter purity – every act in his life is full of wisdom, but on the surface looks a little crazy. He belongs to the same category as Bodhidharma, as Mahakashyap. But he is a little more eccentric than any of them.From the emptiness of the heart, it is not necessary that what arises will be understood by people as wisdom. You will be perfectly at ease with it, and those who understand you will be perfectly at ease with you. But in this world to find people who can understand the wisdom of the empty heart is very difficult and rare.But there is no problem. The man of empty heart does not need any recognition. He is so fulfilled that he may look mad to the whole world, but if it is arising out of his spontaneity, it does not matter. All that matters is that it should not be fake, that it should not be hypocrisy, that it should not be phony. It should be coming out of your heart and its emptiness. Then everything is wise whether people recognize it or not.Who has recognized Mulla Nasruddin? Very few people. Who has recognized Bodhidharma? Very few people. Who has recognized Mahakashyap suddenly laughing? Only Gautam Buddha. Ten thousand monks were present but nobody could understand this eccentric behavior. But it was arising out of the empty heart, from a clarity of vision. Only another man of the same clarity can understand it.Maneesha, the wisdom of the empty heart is understandable only to those who have entered into their own emptiness. To others it will remain a puzzle, a craziness, a madness. And there are so many beautiful buddhas – their behavior was absolutely in tune with the emptiness of the heart, but it was not rational. It could not be understood by the so-called intellectual. It was almost impossible to be understood by the crowd.In Japan there is a doll…it is available anywhere, here too. The doll is called daruma. Daruma is a Japanese nickname for Bodhidharma, and the doll represents something special. It was made, so goes the story, by Bodhidharma. The doll is made in such a way that its bottom is very heavy, so you can throw it any way and it will always fall and sit up immediately in the lotus posture. When Bodhidharma made it, his disciples laughed: “What are you doing?”He said, “This will be a teaching even for small children to be a buddha in every position, in every situation. Look at this doll; throw it any way and it will immediately regain its balance and sit in the buddha posture.”A buddha of the category of Bodhidharma can make a doll far more important than any scripture. The tea you drink…perhaps you don’t know the whole story of it. Bodhidharma was meditating on a mountain in China called T’a. And he did not want to blink his eyes, but it is natural for the eyes to blink. He wanted to keep his eyes open while he was meditating, so he cut off his eyelids and threw them just in front his temple. From the hairs of the eyelids, the first tea leaves grew.That is the story. It is called tea, because it was first found on the mountain of T’a and all the names in the different languages refer to the mountain, T’a. In Marathi it is cha, in Hindi it is chai. But it originates with the mountain, T’a. Of course it is a fiction. But because it grew out of the hairs of Bodhidharma, it keeps you awake.So when you want to be awake…just a cup of tea. But remember, it keeps you awake because it is a product of Bodhidharma’s eyelids. And Bodhidharma was a man of absolute awareness, so some quality of awareness still continues in tea.It is a beautiful story, and its implications are great. Anything that comes out of the empty heart and its wisdom is going to carry some quality for the coming centuries. It may look like a fiction – it is a fiction. But even a fiction can be used to indicate a truth. Tea keeps you awake because Bodhidharma was a man of fully awakened consciousness.Even if you watch Buddha’s statue silently, you will be surprised that slowly your mind becomes empty and you start entering into your own spring of life. That statue is made exactly in the posture that Gautam Buddha used to meditate in. Sitting in front of that statue, something in you starts synchronizing with the posture of the statue. Doing nothing, just sitting, and the buddha starts reflecting in your mirror.But the mirror has to be clean, the mirror has to be empty of content. That’s what we are trying to do every day – washing the mirror, cleaning the dust of the centuries. Every day something of the impurity drops away; something becomes more recognizable as a buddha. Maybe just a glimpse, but soon this glimpse will become your whole life.Before you all become buddhas, a few laughter’s, because after becoming a buddha, laughter does not suit. No buddha laughs. So it is always good to laugh before you become a buddha, because if you laugh when you are a buddha it will be objected to.Good old Olga Kowalski comes stomping down the stairs to find her husband on the couch watching football on television.“Kowalski,” she nags, “how come we never talk anymore? Other husbands talk to their wives. You have not said two words to me all week!”Then Olga furiously steps in front of the TV and demands, “Just say two words!”“Okay,” says Kowalski, stretching his neck around to see the TV. “Shut Up!”Miss Goodbody is teaching sex education to her ninth-grade class. Sitting in the back of the room, reading Playboy and smoking a cigarette, is Chester Cheese’s kid, Wise-guy Willy.“Class,” begins Miss Goodbody, shakily, “today we will discuss sexual intercourse.”Wise-guy Willy puts down his magazine, smiles, and winks at Miss Goodbody.“Ugh…there are eight basic positions for sexual intercourse,” Miss Goodbody says nervously.“Nine,” comes Willy’s voice from the back.Flustered and blushing, Miss Goodbody begins again. “There are eight basic positions for sexual intercourse,” she stammers.“Nine,” interrupts Willy, again.This time Miss Goodbody takes a deep breath and continues, “The first is called the missionary position: the man is on top of the woman and facing her…”“Aha!” says Willy, winking again, “ten!”Paddy and Kowalski are in town for a drinking spree. After a lot of drinking, they decide to go to the hundred-story-high, revolving, Roasting Rhinoceros Restaurant for some dinner.They choose a table overlooking the city lights, but have only been sitting there for a few minutes when both of them feel the need to pee.“Can you tell us where the bathroom is?” Paddy slobbers at the head waiter.“Certainly, sir,” replies the waiter, pointing across the restaurant. “Just go down the passage over there, turn left and go two steps down.”The directions are repeated again for Kowalski, who is not quite sure he knows where he is, or what he is looking for.“Just remember,” says the head waiter, “turn left and two steps down…”So, Paddy and Kowalski set off across the room and down the passage. They take the first door on the left and step inside, into the open elevator shaft.One hundred stories below, Paddy slowly picks himself up off the ground.“How do you feel?” Paddy asks his Polack friend, lying beside him.“Not too bad,” replies Kowalski. “But I don’t think I can manage that second step.”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes. Feel your body to be completely frozen.Look inwards, as deep as possible.It is your own space.At the very end you will find the empty heart.The empty heart is a door to eternity. It is a connection between you and existence. It is not something physical or material. It is not something mental or psychological. It is something beyond both, transcending both.It is your spirituality.Remember, the empty heart makes you a buddha.This moment is blessed.Ten thousand hearts are feeling the silenceand the merger with existence.You are the fortunate ones of the earth.Make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax…just be a watcher of mind and body both.The insistence should be on the witnessing.Witnessing is your secret love.Witnessing is buddha, watching.Catch hold of the experience so that when you come back, you bring something out of your depth – some gold, some diamond, some splendor.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back with a new richness, with a new integrity, with a new individuality.Reborn, sit for a few moments recollecting the experience that you are the buddha.Can we celebrate the gathering of ten thousand buddhas?

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Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Buddha Emptiness of Heart 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,A layman asked Bankei, “Though I am grateful for your teaching of birthlessness, thoughts from constantly applied mental habits readily come up, and I get lost in them and have difficulty remaining continually unborn. How can I apply wholehearted faith?”Bankei replied, “If you try to stop arising thoughts, the stopping mind and the stopped mind become split in two and you never have any peace of mind. Just trust that thoughts are originally nonexistent but temporarily arise and cease, conditioned by what is seen and heard, and have no real substance.”Another layman asked, “When I wipe out arising thoughts, they keep coming up from the traces, never stopping. How can I control these thoughts?”Bankei replied, “Wiping out arising thoughts is like washing blood with blood; though the first blood may be removed, the washing blood still stains; no matter how much you wash, the stain is not removed.“This no-mind is originally unborn and undying and without illusion. Not realizing this, thinking that thoughts are existent things, you roam around in the routines of birth and death.“Realizing that thoughts are only temporary appearances, you should let them be as they start and stop, without grasping or rejecting them. It is like images reflected in a mirror; since the mirror is clear and bright, it reflects whatever comes before it, but doesn’t keep the images.“The enlightened no-mind is infinitely brighter and clearer than a mirror and is also radiantly aware, so all thoughts dissolve in that light without leaving a trace. If you can believe and trust in this truth, no matter how much they come up, it won’t be a hindrance.”Maneesha, Gautama the Buddha marks a milestone in the history of consciousness. The society and the religion and the civilization that existed before him could not be the same after him.It is just a Christian obsession to make Jesus Christ the line that divides the past from the present-day society. And it is also due to the fact that the East has never written history. It has never been interested in historical facts for the simple reason that if everything is illusory, changing, what does it matter who comes to rule? What does it matter what happens in the outside world? It is not the real thing.As far as the eternal and the real is concerned, it is timeless, there is no question of history at all. History can be only of outside events, it cannot be of the inner. And because the whole concentration of the East was on the inner, it never bothered about history. Its concentration was directed more towards how to express the inner to those who are blind, to whose who are living in darkness. How to bring light to them?We don’t know how many buddhas have remained silent. We don’t know how many buddhas preceded Gautam Buddha. We have simply not been concerned about that kind of thing – birth, death…all those things are ephemeral. But the Western attitude is outward. And because Christianity became the world’s greatest religion, it has made Jesus Christ the dividing line between the primitive, barbarian society and the society which exists now. That’s why we always refer to Jesus – “Before Christ,” or “After Christ.”Bertrand Russell was writing the history of the world. He was confronted with the idea that it is absolutely unjustified to divide the development of society with the name of Jesus. The real division happened twenty-five centuries ago with Gautam Buddha. An authentic history should refer to Gautam Buddha. Any incident has to be described as either “Before Gautam Buddha,” or “After Gautam Buddha.”There is no comparison between Jesus and Gautam Buddha. He was not even claiming that he was enlightened; he had not even heard what meditation is. He was only claiming that he was the last prophet of the Jews. His contribution to history is nothing. But Gautam Buddha’s contribution to human consciousness is immense, immeasurable.Bertrand Russell was a very impartial man. But still, childhood prejudices dominate you even in your eighties, nineties. He had long before denied his Christianity. He had written a book, Why I Am Not A Christian, and before the Christian religion expelled him, he had expelled the religion himself. So he was not an orthodox Christian, or even a Christian, but when the question came before him, of what to do with Jesus Christ and Gautam Buddha, he writes in his diaries: “For days I could not sleep. I knew that it was Gautam Buddha, but my deep conditioning, of which I had never been aware, insisted that it had to be Jesus Christ. Jesus Christ is ours; Gautam Buddha is a foreigner.” Finally he conceded to his conditioning.Nobody before or after Bertrand Russell has confronted the problem. It still continues. Even the non-Christians have accepted the idea that history is divided by Jesus Christ.I want to make it clear to you that Gautam Buddha is the dividing line from the past – his past, not our past. Now the time has come again; twenty-five centuries are enough. And that is what his calculation was, that after twenty-five centuries a new humanity should start, a new man, a new culture, a new vision, a new consciousness. According to him we are living in a very fortunate time – a time of tremendous crisis, but of great challenges and uncountable possibilities.I am talking about Zen simply to make the point that all religions are now out of date. Zen has no clinging with the past. It is not a by-product of the past, but rather an opening towards the future. I am not unnecessarily wasting my time and your time. It is not just by chance that I have chosen to speak on Zen.We have come to a point of departure from the society in which we have lived, a moment of tremendous departure for consciousness. The way man has felt up to now has not been healthy. The way societies have structured themselves has been very sick. The whole civilization is almost non-existential.When H.G. Wells was asked, he said that civilization is a good idea, but somebody has to do it – it has not happened yet. We are still living in the shadows of barbarianism. Gautam Buddha has not been heard, he has not been received around the world. It seems almost as if he is a mythological figure. He is one of the most integrated persons, the most awakened human beings that we have produced.The future can be a discontinuity with our past only if the buddha is not a difficult and arduous achievement – and he is not. We can create a society where everyone is a buddha. I don’t say Buddhist, that is an ugly word. The future has not to be dominated by any “ism.” But just the purity and grandeur of the man Buddha is so alluring; he has touched the highest peak possible to man. And he has made it possible now for every man to touch that highest peak. Whenever one man reaches to a certain point in consciousness, that point becomes easily available to anybody who wants to seek it. Gautam Buddha is a pioneer. You don’t have to go through all the difficulties which he moved through. He had to, because there was no precedent. But for you there are a thousand and one precedents.Zen has produced the finest masters, and they are all proclaiming a discontinuity with the past and bringing a new man – the buddha, the awakened man, a man who lives consciously. We are doing this great experiment. These are not ordinary discourses or talks. I am not interested in any philosophy or any political ideology. I am interested directly in transforming you who have gathered around me.This transformation is a simple phenomenon, once understood. What has been asked by a layman to the master Bankei is significant for you all.Bankei is in a way a very simple man, not speaking in philosophical jargon but in day-to-day language, making very clear points. Even a little intelligence is enough to understand him. He is a man who has been on the hilltops of consciousness and has returned to the world to convey the message.A layman asked Bankei,“Though I am grateful for your teaching of birthlessness, thoughts from constantly applied mental habits readily come up, and I get lost in them and have difficulty remaining continually unborn. How can I apply wholehearted faith?”Faith is a wrong translation. Unfortunately all these translations have been done by Christian missionaries. There must have been a word which was something like trust, not faith. But to the Christian both seem to be synonymous.Just a few days ago a man from Japan who is translating one of my books on the Dhammapada – Gautam Buddha’s greatest scripture, “the path of religiousness” – wrote to me, “I was surprised: you don’t know Japanese, you don’t know Pali, you don’t know Sanskrit. And in your talks on the Dhammapada, in many places you have changed words which have been put there by the Christian missionaries.” He was simply amazed because he looked in the Japanese translations and he found that I was right every time. He could not believe how a man who does not understand Japanese can say that instead of faith, there should be the word trust.I can understand his difficulty, but it is not a difficult matter for me. I am not a commentator. When I speak on anyone, I have no commitment except to my own understanding, to my own illumination. And when I say that something is changed in a wrong way, translated wrongly, it does not mean I understand the Japanese or Chinese from which the translation has been done. It simply means that I know the very heart of Gautam Buddha. I know the emptiness of that heart, it is my own experience. No master who has touched the emptiness of the heart can talk in terms of faith. Faith is only for the blind.I have told you the story. There was a blind man who was a great logician, in Buddha’s time. There is no difficulty; eyes are not needed to be a logician. And because he was a great logician, nobody could prove to him that light exists. He argued, and argued so clearly, “You are either just befooling yourself, or you want me to be humiliated as a blind man. But I say there is no light.”And his reasoning was very clear, crystal clear. He said, “I am ready for every experiment. I want to touch it – bring me to where there is light. I want to taste it. I am ready to smell it, I am ready to hear the sound of it.”Naturally the people were at a loss. What to do with this man? He is blind but he is a great debater. As far as arguments are concerned he is always a winner, because nobody can manage to make the sound of light; nothing like that exists…the taste of light, or the touch of light.Once Gautam Buddha was just on the way towards the capital city of Vaishali, and he passed the village where the blind man lived. People thought, “This is a good opportunity. Perhaps this is the last opportunity – if this man can even defeat Buddha through his argumentation, then we are finished! Perhaps light does not exist. Perhaps we are dreaming about light.”That’s what he used to say to people, “You are dreaming. Just cool down, be alert: there is no light, all is darkness.”They brought the man to Buddha. They thought that Buddha would argue with him, but instead of arguing, Buddha said, “You have brought him to a wrong person. He does not need more argumentation, because no argumentation can prove light. He needs a physician, a surgeon.”Buddha had his own personal physician, the best physician of those days, given to him by the king of Vaishali. The physician followed him continuously for forty-two years, till his last breath, just like a shadow taking care of him. He was fragile.He said to his physician, “Take this case in your hands. I will be leaving tomorrow morning, but you remain behind until you are finished with this case.”The physician looked into the man’s eyes and he said, “It will not be much time. I will soon catch up with you. His eyes are only covered with a thin layer which can be removed. Within a few weeks, he will be able to see light.”And after six weeks the physician came with the man to another village where Buddha had gone. The man came dancing. He fell unto the feet of Gautam Buddha and he said, “Just forgive me. I could not believe something which was not my experience; I am not a man of faith. But now that I can see light, a tremendous trust has arisen in me. In your compassion you did not argue about it but you simply diagnosed the case and handed me over to the physician.”Faith is for the blind; trust is for one who has tasted something of the ultimate. The faithful are the followers. I don’t want anybody here to believe or to have faith. I want you to trust in yourself; that if Gautam Buddha can become an Everest of consciousness, he has proved the point that every human consciousness has the same potential. Trust in it, trust in yourself.This distinction has to be remembered. Belief is always in somebody else’s ideology, and faith is in somebody else’s personality.Trust is in your own potentiality.And because a man brings you to your potentiality, you have a tremendous gratitude towards him, not faith. But unfortunately only Christian missionaries have been doing the work of translating; nobody else is interested in translating. And unconsciously, they bring their own conditioning – which is of faith – into their translations. One can immediately say who is the translator of any passage. Is he a Christian, or a Mohammedan, or a Hindu, or a Jaina? Or is he a man of his own understanding, not belonging to any organized religion? Only a man who knows the truth can give a translation the flavor of truth.Christians know only faith – “Have faith in Jesus Christ.” But why should one have faith in Jesus Christ? Do you want to be crucified? – because that must be the ultimate attainment! And I don’t think you will resurrect; neither did Jesus resurrect, he just escaped from the cave.He was fortunate enough that his country, Judea, was under the Roman empire. So the Roman governor Pontius Pilate was not interested at all in crucifying an innocent neurotic. A man who claims, “I am the only son of God” can only be thought of as neurotic. But it is not harmful, let him think it – he is not doing any harm to anybody. Pontius Pilate was of the opinion that Jesus was innocent; he had not committed any crime, and if he enjoys the idea that he is the only begotten son of God, let him enjoy!If you are jealous, you can have some other idea, “I am the only father of God.” I don’t think anybody can refute you, nobody has any evidence. It is just the same as being the son of God. You can be the father of God, or the brother of God. It is, first of all, your imagination, hallucination – it is innocent.If you meet somebody who says to you, “Do you know, I am the father of God” do you think he needs to be crucified? A very nice fellow, he just simply utters in your ear a truth in which he believes. You know that he has gone off the tracks, but that does not mean that he needs a crucifixion. He has to be enjoyed, entertained – give him a party where he can declare “I am the father of God.” Applaud him, and dance with him, because it is so rare to find a God and you have found the father of God! Maybe he can give you some clue where God is hiding.The Jews were too serious. Unnecessarily they harassed Jesus; he had not done any harm to anybody. But every organized religion has an ego, a great ego. Jesus was making Judaism a laughingstock. Riding on his donkey, moving from town to town, declaring “I am the only begotten son of God” – it was not a crime, but it was hurtful to the ego of the Jews. “This man sitting on the donkey…a poor carpenter’s son, and it is well known that he is not born of his own father. To accept him as our last prophet…?”It was difficult to the ego of the Jews; otherwise it was an innocent affair. There was no need to be angry with the poor fellow. He needed psychiatric treatment, just good nourishment, care, and perhaps he might have come out of his neurosis.If I meet him anywhere, just a single “Yaa-Hoo” and he will come down from the donkey: “You can take my donkey, I don’t want to argue!” He simply needed a little hypnotic treatment, a reconditioning, a reprogramming, and he would have been perfectly healthy and would have laughed at the idea himself. But half of humanity believes and has faith in Jesus. This shows the retardedness of mankind.Certainly this phrase “wholehearted faith” is a Christian interpretation. It is not the insight of those who are working on the path which Gautam Buddha traveled. It is not a path of belief or faith. In fact you have to throw away all your beliefs and all your faiths. You have to be clean, unburdened, because you are going to touch the heights. All these burdens will hamper your progress. You are going to know truth itself, so don’t carry any ideas of truth because those ideas of truth will stand between you and the truth. Be completely clean – that is the meaning of the empty heart of the buddha.But the question the layman is asking to Bankei is important for you all. Except for that one word, the whole question is important to every meditator. I will repeat it.A layman asked Bankei,“Though I am grateful for your teaching of birthlessness, thoughts from constantly applied mental habits readily come up, and I get lost in them and have difficulty remaining continually unborn. How can I apply wholehearted trust?”This is the difficulty of every meditator. In different names the problem is the same. The problem is that in your meditations, for a split second maybe you have the glimpse, a taste of the eternal ecstasy. But you cannot keep remembering it twenty-four hours. Old habits, the old mind goes on interfering in many ways. It is a strange phenomenon because it is experienced only by meditators. Non-meditators never experience it because they don’t have the context.A meditator experiences, but when he comes back from those deep layers, back to his ordinary world, to the circumference, the mind starts creating doubt: “You have been dreaming. What nonsense is this eternity? Are you mad, that just by closing your eyes you attain to the ultimate truth?” The mind starts creating doubts.And mind is your old friend – four million years it has taken to develop. Your meditation is very new, very fresh, just a sprouting seed; your mind is a Lebanon cedar, two hundred, three hundred feet tall, almost reaching to the stars.When you come to the circumference with your experience, suddenly there is a conflict between the new experience and the old, four-million-year-old mind. This mind will be almost like a mountain, and your experience is just a roseflower. So again and again you will get caught by the mind.That’s what the layman is saying to Bankei: “I understand your teaching, I am grateful for it. But it is very difficult to remember that I have never been born, I have never died, that I am immortality itself. As I come back to the ordinary life, it is too heavy on the new experience which is just a bud opening. It crushes it completely.”Most meditators drop the idea after a few days, seeing the situation, that it is of no use. It is just a glimpse and then again you are back to your miserable world. And the miserable world is so powerful that you even start suspecting that you were dreaming. Your own experience becomes a faraway echo, as if you have heard somebody else telling you, and not that you have experienced it. It goes against your whole conditioning.So this question of the layman is the question of all meditators.Bankei replied, “If you try to stop arising thoughts, the stopping mind and the stopped mind become split in two and you never have any peace of mind. Just trust that thoughts are originally nonexistent but temporarily arise and cease, conditioned by what is seen and heard, and have no real substance.”He is saying that every meditator comes to this point: he has known a small space of thoughtlessness, so the natural conclusion seems to be that if he can stop the thought process, then he will have that open sky again. But with what are you going to stop the thought process? Even this idea of stopping the thought process is of the mind. So your mind becomes split in two: the stopper and the stopped.Now you will never have any peace. Your own mind is continuously in struggle: one part is trying to stop it, another part is revolting against stopping. And remember, the part that is trying to stop it is very new and the part that you are trying to stop is very ancient. In this struggle, in this wrestling, you are not going to win. Your defeat can be said to be absolutely certain.Many people have started meditation and then they stopped because finally they see this and say, “What is the point of having one simple glimpse of joy? It makes life even more terrible in comparison.” If a blind man for one second sees the light and becomes blind again, now his blindness will be intolerable. Now he knows there is light, and he is unable to see it because he has gone blind again.A meditator has to remember not to struggle with the thoughts. If you want to win, don’t fight. That is a simple rule of thumb. If you want to win, simply don’t fight. The thoughts will be coming as usual. You just watch, hiding behind your blanket; let them come and go. Just don’t get involved with them.The whole question is of not getting involved in any way – appreciation or condemnation, any judgment, bad or good. Don’t say anything, just remain absolutely aloof and allow the mind to move in its routine way. If you can manage…and this has been managed by thousands of buddhas, so there is not a problem. And when I say this can be managed, I am saying it on my own authority. I don’t have any other authority.I have fought and have tortured myself with fighting and I have known the whole split that creates a constant misery and tension. Finally seeing the point that victory is impossible, I simply dropped out of the fight. I allowed the thoughts to move as they want; I am no longer interested.And this is a miracle, that if you are not interested, thoughts start coming less. When you are utterly uninterested, they stop coming. And a state of no-thought, without any fight, is the greatest peace one has ever known. This is what we are calling the empty heart of the buddha.Another layman asked, “When I wipe out arising thoughts, they keep coming up from the traces, never stopping. How can I control these thoughts?”It seems that Bankei has authentic disciples interested in meditation, because all their questions are the eternal questions of meditators. The questioner is saying, “When I wipe out arising thoughts, they keep coming up from the traces, never stopping. How can I control these thoughts?”The very idea of control is of fight. The very idea of control makes you involved. You don’t have to stop them, you don’t have to wipe them out. They will come back! You don’t have to control them, because the very effort of controlling them will keep you engaged in the process of controlling…and a strange fact to be remembered is that the master is as much a slave to his own slave as the slave is a slave to the master. If you manage to control your thoughts, you are stuck with control. You cannot leave that place, you cannot go away for a holiday. You are controlling your thoughts and your thoughts are controlling you.You cannot move into meditation by controlling.You can move into meditation only by being indifferent, just a watcher. Whether it comes or not makes no difference; just let the thoughts flow on their own accord and you stand aloof, just watching. The word watching simply means being a mirror, reflecting and not making any commentary. No mirror makes any commentary. No mirror says to you, “Aha, how beautiful!” It is not interested in whether you are beautiful or weird, sane or insane, standing on your feet or on your head. It makes no difference to the mirror, the mirror simply reflects.The watcher is a mirror. It simply watches and remains empty. No content is caught by the mirror. Things come and go, the mirror does not cling to anything. The mirror is not in favor of something or against it. It has no notions about what passes before it.I have heard about a Hassid rabbi…Hassidism comes closest to Zen. It is a small branch of rebellious Jews. They are not accepted by the orthodox, by the organized religion, but they have a small lineage of very beautiful people. If Judaism has contributed anything to humanity, it is Hassidism – although they will not accept it. They condemn the Hassids because they are doing everything unorthodox, untraditional – not conforming to the organized religion, being independent and rebellious.This Hassid mystic was walking in the middle of the night towards the river, just to sit silently there. A watchman of a great palace used to see him come every night at midnight. Finally it became impossible to resist, and the watchman stopped the Hassid and asked him, “I have been watching for months. Not even a single night have you missed; you go every night at midnight towards the river. What are you doing? I have seen you, I have followed you, because it is my work to keep watch around the palace and at first I was suspicious. This man comes every night, passes by the palace…so I have followed you, but you simply don’t take any note of the palace or anybody following you. You simply go to the river and sit on the bank for hours. What are you doing there?”The Hassid said, “I am also a watchman. Just as you are watching the palace, I am watching my own mind.”As the watching grows, without any struggle, the thoughts disappear. And when the heart is empty, you are the buddha.Bankei replied, “Wiping out arising thoughts is like washing blood with blood…”I told you, he is a very simple man. Without philosophical jargon, he has managed simply, in ordinary day-to-day language, to say something very significant.Wiping out arising thoughts is like washing blood with blood; though the first blood may be removed, the washing blood still stains; no matter how much you wash, the stain is not removed.Fighting with thoughts is simply removing thoughts with thoughts, washing blood with blood. This idea is also a thought, that there should be no thoughts, that “I don’t want any thoughts.” That is also a thought. The watcher is not allowed to have even this prejudice. If they are there, he is happy. If they are not there, he is happy. He is simply unconcerned.This no-mind is originally unborn and undying and without illusion. Not realizing this, thinking that thoughts are existent things, you roam around in the routines of birth and death.Bankei is saying, if you know a silent moment when there is no thought, you will be able to see that these thoughts are not realities. They are made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. They are waking dreams. You don’t have to fight with them, you have just to watch silently. As your watching becomes deeper, they will start disappearing. And in their place arises the experience of no-mind, of emptiness, originally unborn and undying and without illusion. Not realizing this, thinking that thoughts are existent things, you roam around in the routines of birth and death.It is your mind which has been taking you through birth and death in a circle, again and again, one misery after another misery. You have to jump out of this circle – and the only way to jump out is simply to witness.Realizing that thoughts are only temporary appearances, you should let them be as they start and stop, without grasping or rejecting them.Don’t do anything at all.It is like images reflected in a mirror; since the mirror is clear and bright, it reflects whatever comes before it, but does not keep the images.Just be a mirror.The enlightened no-mind is infinitely brighter and clearer than a mirror and is also radiantly aware, so all thoughts dissolve in that light without leaving a trace. If you can believe and trust in this truth, no matter how much they come up, it won’t be a hindrance.Again, I object to the word belief. There is no need. You are watching and you are seeing that the thoughts are disappearing like shadows. It is your experience. This sentence again brings the Christian mind in. If you can believe and trust in this truth…. Truth needs no trust, no belief. You simply know it. And once you have come to know it, you have attained freedom.This knowing is not something like knowledge. This knowing is a transformation. You have moved from the mind to no-mind. You have moved from the body to no-body. You have moved from form to formlessness. It is a transformation. There is no question of believing or trusting or having faith. But I can understand the poor translator’s difficulty. He is doing his best, but his conditionings pop up here and there, unintentionally.I don’t blame these translators, but they have created a difficulty for the West. Just reading them, the Western mind will not be able to understand exactly where they have translated wrongly. I can see where they are wrong. And I can indicate to you that when you see, you see; when you know, you know – no belief, no faith. Those are words belonging to the world of the blind. We are entering into the world of the buddhas.A haiku…just a small statement, but far more valuable than great holy scriptures:When the dreamer wakenshe is absolute absence.You wake up every day – you have this experience – and the moment you wake up, dreams are absent. This is not the ultimate waking. When you wake up in meditation, not only are dreams absent, you are absent. Your absence makes it the empty heart of the buddha.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Yesterday, I remembered to remember my emptiness more often than any other day. I remembered at the tailor's – a crucial criterion. I even remembered during rush hour at Mariam canteen – the ultimate test.I have understood you to say that through making an effort, by and by we will instill in ourselves a self-perpetuating awareness that finally does not need our active remembrance; it will have become a constant backdrop to all we do.This must be different from simply cultivating a good habit, but just how is it different?Maneesha, it is absolutely different from cultivating a good habit. You are not cultivating anything, you are simply remembering. You are remembering your own experience. In cultivating a good habit, you don’t know whether it is really good or just a social convenience. You don’t know who has decided that it is good, because in every society, culture, civilization, different things are thought to be good and different things are thought to be bad.Cultivating a good habit is cultivating something borrowed – that is the difference. I am not telling you to cultivate, I am telling you to remember your own experience as much as possible. Whenever it is possible, remember it. Give it more nourishment.It is just like watering a rosebush, giving nourishment to your own experience. The good habit is not your experience.You should have a look at “good habits.” They are all social conveniences. And they create a certain personality in you which is not authentic; it does not arise from your self. It comes from others – parents, teachers, priests, social leaders.Anything that comes from outside you, beware of it! However good it may seem, anything cultivated makes you a hypocrite. I want you to be non-hypocritical. I want you to be authentically yourself. It is not a cultivation, it is simply a remembrance of your own intrinsic nature.The buddha is not a foreigner to you; he is sitting exactly at the center of your consciousness. We have to constantly look within so that it becomes almost natural, a flowing current. You don’t have to do anything, it is there. That’s why I say it is the simplest thing and, unfortunately, because it is the most simple and the most obvious, it has been neglected. Nobody bothers about who you are. You yourself don’t bother.There was a great fair, and Mulla Nasruddin went to the fair. There was no place in any hotel. One manager took pity on him and said, “If you are ready to share a room, I can manage to convince this person, who is a gentleman – it is a two-bed room which he is occupying.”Nasruddin had no objection; he said, “It is perfectly good for me, if he is ready.”The other man was perfectly ready also, and he said, “There is no problem. A tired man, going from hotel to hotel…there is no problem. I am going to sleep, and he is going to sleep.”Nasruddin entered the room, said to the man, “Hi!” And then, wearing his shoes, his turban, his coat, everything just as he was when he had come in, he went to bed. The man looked a little surprised! And of course, with shoes and turban and coat you cannot sleep, you cannot relax. So Mulla was moving from side to side, and because of his movement the other man could not sleep. The other man said, “Listen, fellow, I have never seen anybody sleeping in his shoes.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “Neither have I heard of anybody, but I am in trouble: I love to sleep naked just as you are sleeping naked…”The man said, “What is the trouble?”“The trouble is, I recognize myself with my turban, with my coat, with my shoes. If I am naked, in the morning who is going to decide who is who? You are naked, I am naked. Neither do I know who I am, nor do you know.”The man said, “The problem is really great! But some solution has to be found, because I have to sleep.”So he found a small toy that some baby must have left behind before they occupied the room. He took the toy and he said, “Let’s do one thing: I will tie it to your foot, so you will know that you are the man with the toy.”Nasruddin said, “A great genius you are! Otherwise I was thinking I would die this night, suffocating, in the coat and the shoes.” So he removed everything and the man tied the toy to his foot. Nasruddin started snoring immediately.Then the man had an idea…”Let us see what happens.” He changed the toy, tied it to his own foot, and went to sleep. In the morning there was havoc! Nasruddin was running out in the open – the whole hotel gathered.The manager said, “What is the matter?”He said, “The matter is so metaphysical. I had gone to sleep with the idea that I am the man with the toy. Certainly I am not the man with the toy; the other man has the toy. The problem is, if I am not Nasruddin, who am I? Certainly I am not Nasruddin because I had the toy; that was my symbol.”The other fellow was awakened and asked, “Do you know who you are?” He said, “I know only that I am the man with the toy.”Nasruddin said, “I had told you before that it was going to create trouble! Now for my whole life I am going to live not knowing who I am. You are Nasruddin, okay – what about me?”We can laugh, but that is how we know ourselves. What is your identity? Just a certain face, which goes on changing. Fortunately it does not change in jumps – it does not know about sudden enlightenment, it only knows about the gradual. It goes on changing, but very gradually so you don’t feel that it is a different face.When you go to bed you have one face; when you wake up in the morning, it is not the same face. But because the change is so gradual, you don’t take note of it. Otherwise everything is changing: your mustache is growing, your beard is growing, your face is becoming older. Everything in you is a flux – but it is very gradual, so it seems almost at a standstill. Otherwise, you don’t have any identity. If things were jumping so fast that in the night you go to sleep and in the morning you wake up and find somebody else’s face…You look in the mirror – “My god, this was never my face!” Or you had been a man and now you are a woman….Nature has managed things to change very gradually but the change is happening, you have to be reminded. And you can feel this change only if you know something within you which is unchanging. Against the unchanging, you can see the changing.That witness is the only unchanging element in the whole of existence. And when you become a witness and a great clarity arises in you, even small changes in you are taken note of, they reflect. You don’t take any care of any change, but your mirror goes on reflecting how you are becoming older, how you are moving from life to death, from death to another womb. Your mirror in its clarity will allow you to know that you are a river, not a tank of water where nothing is moving.Maneesha, the good habit has to be cultivated; you have to force it upon yourself. It is just a thin layer – just a small scratch and you will forget your good habit and your natural response will come out. And your natural response is going to be barbarous because you have never gone beyond your barbarousness.Meditation, to me, is the only civilization, the only culture, the only religion. It takes you beyond everything, above the clouds, and you can see everything in you from a bird’s-eye view. You need not repeat anything; now you can be original, responsible. And to me that is the only good in existence: to respond with awareness, to respond spontaneously, not through cultivation.I have heard about a man who was of such an angry temper that he killed his boy because he had disobeyed. And he forced his wife to jump into the well because she was trying to protect the child. The whole village gathered and the man was very much ashamed. He was so much ashamed that he said, “I will renounce the world. I am going to become a saint.” A Jaina monk was in the city. He went to the monk, and the monk said, “It is a very difficult path.”The man said, “Nothing is difficult for me. You can understand – I killed my child, I forced my wife to jump into the well. Do you think anything is difficult for me?”The Jaina monk said, “You will have to be naked.”The man immediately threw his clothes; even the monk was shocked and surprised. But he did not understand that this was also his angry temper. The monk initiated him, and he became very famous. He was given the name Shantidas; the name means “servant of peace.”After twenty years…he was in New Delhi. One of his friends from the village happened to be in New Delhi, so he thought, “It will be good to see how far Shantidas has gone.” So he went to see him – there was a big crowd of worshippers. Shantidas looked at him…and he recognized him, but he did not show any sign of recognition. A man of his stature cannot recognize a villager, although they have been friends. The other man immediately understood: “Nothing has changed, because he has looked at me as if he has not recognized me – but he has recognized me. I can see it on his face.”So the man came close and said, “I have a simple question to ask. What is your name?”This irritated Shantidas very much. He said, “You don’t read the newspapers? The whole capital knows my name. My name is Muni Shantidas.”The man said, “My memory is very bad. Will you please repeat it?”Now this was too much. He said, “I have told you! And I will repeat it, but remember: if you ask again…You know me perfectly well. My name is Shantidas.”The man said, “Just once more.”And Shantidas took his staff and said, “Once more and I will kill you!”The man said, “There is no need to do that great work. I just wanted to know whether you had changed.”Twenty years of cultivation of all the virtues, and just a little scratch and the old man comes out. All our morality, all our cultivation is superficial. My interest is not in any superficial cultivation but in a revolution, radical, which comes out of your meditation.Before we go into meditation…You will be going to a faraway space within yourself. Just go laughing and joyous. Seriousness I hate – I am really serious! I want my buddhas to be dancing and singing and enjoying. I want my buddhas not to be marble statues but living and breathing and loving.Paddy and Seamus are at the bar of the Pickled President pub. Paddy is telling Seamus all about his recent trip to America.“You know,” says Paddy, “that guy Ronald Reagan, the president of America?”“Yes,” replies Seamus, scratching his head. “He’s that old goat with the pet chimpanzee, right?”“Right,” says Paddy. “Well, he has got an office in this place called the White House.”“Really?” says Seamus. “Is it like the White House pub?”“Probably,” says Paddy, “but in his office, on his desk, he has got a button. He just has to push the button, and – boom! – the world is finished!”“That doesn’t sound like a good idea at all,” says Seamus, slurping at another beer. “My grandfather is less senile than that Ronald Reagan, and we don’t even allow him to push the buttons on the television!”Pope the Polack finds that his Catholic Christian empire is crumbling. He orders all the Vatican researchers to try and find a solution to this impending disaster.One day, Cardinal Catzass comes charging into the papal office.“I’ve got it! I’ve got it!” screams Catzass. “In one of the old manuscripts, it says that God has left his final message on a tiny planet at the edge of the universe, called Hysteria.”Desperate, Pope the Polack empties out the safe of Banco Vaticano, and gives the money to the Russians to build him a rocket to take him to Hysteria.After weeks of training, Pope the Polack, Cardinal Catzass, and a chimpanzee pilot, blast off from earth and hurtle through space towards the distant planet.Light years later, they land at a tiny spaceport in the middle of the Hysteria desert, and the Polack pope does his thing kissing the dirt. On a signpost is written the words: “God’s last message – forty miles.”In full regalia, with his shepherd’s staff, rocket-shaped hat, and space suit, Pope the Polack sets off, trudging through the desert. Cardinal Catzass waves the incense-burner as they go.Ten hours and twenty miles later, both the Polack pope and Cardinal Catzass are on their hands and knees, gasping for water.The next morning sees the pair of Polacks pulling themselves slowly through the sand.That night, they reach the top of a small rise and look at the hills in the distance. There, in flashing neon lights, the whole hillside is lit up with God’s final message to the universe.It reads: “We apologize for any inconvenience.”It is midnight in a dark alley behind the Hoochee Koochee pub, and the fearless lawyer, Harry Hypojerk is wandering around drunk.Suddenly he is approached by a shabby looking guy named Fred the Freak, who is wearing a large black overcoat, a big hat, and sunglasses.“Hey,” says Fred the Freak, “are you a lawyer?”“Yes,” slobbers Harry, straightening up his tie, “I am.”“And,” says Fred the Freak, “do you handle criminal cases?”“Yes, I do,” replies Harry, wobbling a bit.“Would you even help a thief?” asks Fred the Freak.Harry blinks his eyes, adjusts his coat, and says, “Certainly, sir.”“Okay,” says Fred the Freak, pulling out his gun. “Then you can start by helping me with your wallet!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent.Close your eyes, feel your body to be completely frozen.Look inwards, as deeply as you can reach. At the very end you will find your life source.This life source is connected with the universal life.To experience this is to be a buddha, utterly empty of the world but absolutely full of blissfulness, of benediction, of gratitude…of a deep prayer to existence, of thankfulness.Look as closely as you can to the source of your life, the center of your consciousness, because you have to remember it later on while you are on the circumference of life…doing all kinds of things, but never for a single moment losing touch with your innermost life source.Doing everything, but as a buddha.The very awareness that “I am the buddha” is going to change your whole life pattern.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax.Just watch the body, the mind.They are not you, you are the watcher. And the watcher is another name for the buddha.This is a blissful evening – ten thousand people just drowned in an oceanic consciousness of watchfulness.Ten thousand buddhas – there has never been such an assembly.Be very careful and cautious that you don’t lose this watchfulness when you come back from the center to the circumference.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come with all the experience, full of joy, peace and silence.With grace and gratitude, sit down as a buddha for a few moments.This is going to be your final posture; slowly, slowly, you will be settled in your buddha nature. And if we can create ten thousand buddhas, that is enough to save humanity – ten thousand buddhas reaching to every nook and corner of the world, simply spreading love, compassion, awareness.And I don’t think that if the world has so many buddhas, it can be destroyed by criminal politicians.This is a crucial moment, of great responsibility and also of great challenge.It is not only a question of your being a buddha, it is a question of saving this whole planet in its all beauty and greatness.In the past, people used to be buddhas just for their own sake. Today, times are different. You have to be a buddha not only for your own sake, but for the sake of saving the whole world from nuclear weapons and the holders of nuclear weapons.We have to create a great consciousness around the globe. That is our only protection against destructive science and the criminal politicians.Remember: your responsibility is great, but it has to be a joy, not a duty. It has to be your love, your sharing of blissfulness, aliveness, your songs, your dances, your joy.I am not telling you to be missionaries, I want you to be the mission. Missionaries have only carried borrowed knowledge. I want you to be the mission in the sense that you will be spreading your own experience. You will be radiating your own buddhahood. A wildfire has to be created around the globe, of consciousness.This is the only hope for humanity, the only hope for the universe, to have this small planet so alive, so beautiful, so lovely. This is for the first time, that you are required to be buddhas not just for you, but to create an atmosphere in which a third world war cannot happen.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Buddha Emptiness of Heart 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/buddha-emptiness-of-heart-04/

Osho,A monk asked Rinzai, “What is the attitude of the heart which does not change from moment to moment?”The master said: “From the moment you set yourself to ask this question, there is already the difference, and your essential nature and your action become separate.…Do not be deceived. In and out of the world there is not a thing that has a self-nature, nor a nature that is productive of a self. All is but empty names, and the very letters of these names are also empty.“If you take these empty names for real, you make a big mistake. For though they exist, they belong in the realm of dependent change, are like robes to put on and off.“There is the robe of bodhi, of nirvana, of deliverance, of the trikaya, of objective wisdom, of bodhisattvas and of buddha.“What are you seeking in the realm of changing dependence? The three vehicles and the twelve divisions of the teachings, all are so much old paper to mop up messes. The buddha is an illusory phantom. The patriarchs are old monks. You yourselves, are you not born of a mother?“If you seek the buddha, you will be caught by the buddha demon; if you seek the patriarchs, you will be bound by the patriarch demon. Whatever you are seeking, all becomes suffering. It is better to have nothing further to seek.”Maneesha, the clouds and the rain and the silent bamboos, and ten thousand people sitting silently, is a rare phenomenon. This kind of assembly has disappeared from the world. It used to be, when Buddha was walking, or when Rinzai was alive.…You are representative of a forgotten past, which is not the past of the crowd but only the past of the awakened ones.Rinzai’s statement is tremendously significant, but before I say something about it, as a preface….Man’s personality has been divided in concentric circles. The first circle is the body. Within it, another circle is the mind. Within that, another third circle is the heart. And within the third circle, the center is the self. Buddha goes beyond it.The atheists belong to and believe only in the first circle. They deny all other circles as imagination. Mind also is a function of the body. The theists believe in all the four circles: the body, the mind, the heart, and the self. Their insistence is that the first three circles are insignificant or illusory, they are not your true reality. Your true reality is the fourth center.Buddha is breaking new ground. He goes beyond the fourth; he goes beyond the self. No-self, anatta, is your true existence. When you are not, you are. Of course, not in the same form as you have known yourself. You are spread all over the cosmos.This is something unique, for which Buddha fought for forty-two years, because every religion stops at the self, the atma. Buddha is alone in the whole field, in saying that unless you go beyond self, you cannot enter into the universal, into the cosmic. You cannot become the rains and you cannot become the bamboo and you cannot become the roses…Why remain contained in a small bag? Why not be the whole? According to Buddha, to be the whole is the only holiness.Rinzai is making his statement in this context; and very perfectly.A monk asked Rinzai, “What is the attitude of the heart which does not change from moment to moment?”The problem is perennial. The master says something – of course he has to use words, language, concepts, but that is not what he wants to say. That is sheer helplessness, sheer poverty of language; nothing can be done about it. We have to use the marketplace language in a world where neither the body exists, nor the mind exists, nor the self exists, but just a silence. How to convey it? Some word has to be used, some language, to communicate. And immediately the problem arises – the disciple clings to the words.It has to be repeated again and again for the disciple that the word is not the message. The word is just a vehicle of an invisible message. That message is not contained in the word, it is around the word. Don’t cling to the word, just see the hint.But it is very difficult. We are accustomed to understand language by understanding the word. But when you come to a buddha, you have to understand language in a new way. You have to understand the gaps between the words. There the buddha is present. In the words he has to use the mind, but when there is a gap, that gap shows his emptiness, his nothingness, his beyondness.A great Sufi mystic kept a holy book…Everybody thought that it must be very mysterious, because he never allowed anyone to see within it, or read it. He kept it just under his pillow, and when there was nobody around, he would take it from its place and open the book, and would go through all the gestures of reading.It became more and more mysterious as he became more and more famous. Perhaps he is keeping something secret, to be delivered only to the chosen few. Again and again he was asked, “Why don’t you talk about the book?”He said, “I cannot talk about the book. When I am gone, then you can read it; not while I’m here because I cannot explain what is written in the book. But when I am gone it is none of my responsibility. You read it – whether you understand it or not is your business.”It became more and more mysterious. People were trying in every way to at least have a look. When everybody else was gone, somebody would be hiding on the roof, removing a tile and looking. But the moment he would remove the tile, the master would close the book.The moment he died – he was so much loved – but the moment he died, people were more concerned about the book than about his death. They immediately took out the book, and they were shocked and surprised: the book contained nothing! It was an empty book. They turned all the pages…somewhere, perhaps, the message. They went on again and again; perhaps they had missed the page where the message is. But there was nothing at all.For one thousand years, the book had been given from the master to his successor, a disciple. It is very significant; it says, “Don’t look at the words, read the emptiness.”This monk is asking:“What is the attitude of the heart which does not change from moment to moment?”It cannot be his own experience in any case, because the one who knows will not ask such a question. When the heart is empty it has no attitude. If it has an attitude, how can it be empty? When the heart is empty, this question cannot arise.“What is the attitude of the heart which does not change from moment to moment?”The master said, “From the moment you set yourself to ask this question, there is already the difference…”He is making him aware that the moment you ask this question, you have created the difference. Just as the question arises in you, your heart is no longer empty. And anybody who gives you an answer will make your heart again full of attitudes, answers, questions…It will lose its emptiness; and that emptiness is its beauty, its purity, its grandeur.Nobody else has understood the beauty of emptiness, of being nobody, of being just a nothing, a pure silence where nothing moves. Gautam Buddha stands as the highest peak of the Himalayas. There have been many mystics, but Gautam Buddha’s height, his purity, his clarity, is incomparable.Rinzai and others are simply conveying the same experience. Of course they are not so articulate as Gautam Buddha himself, but everybody is trying his best to satisfy the disciple, the questioner.The master said: “From the moment you set yourself to ask this question, there is already the difference…”You are no more the same. The empty heart does not ask anything; everything comes to it on its own accord.You just look at the rains…We have not burned any woman on a funeral pyre; neither have we burned any Shankaracharya. We don’t indulge in such stupid ideas, but Pune has never known such rains as it has known this year. What is the reason? When ten thousand people sit silently, the clouds come by themselves. You just be silent, and everything comes simultaneously to you – and in abundance! Nature is absolutely ready to give up all its treasures to the empty heart.But rather than asking the question, become the empty heart, and you will see miracles happening around you for which you have not done anything. They are sheer gifts of nature to the man who has an empty heart. He deserves it, although he does not demand it; he is fulfilled, although he does not ask for it.His fulfillment is a totally different phenomenon. It is not filled with any objective richness, fame, respectability, or power. He is filled with a deep inner dance, a laughter for no reason, a joy just like a small child. Just being is itself a gift; a blissfulness surrounds him, a great field of silence and presence.And this is for those who are only at the center. Buddha wants you to go beyond the center.In Pali, the self is called atta, and no-self is called anatta. Buddha is the first man in history who has used anatta: no-self is your reality, you don’t have any self. You are just like an onion: you go on peeling it, thinking that beyond this layer you will find something. You find another cover to peel off. You go on peeling, and finally nothing is left in your hands. That nothing is anatta.You are neither the body, nor the mind, nor the heart, nor even the self. You are just a pure awareness beyond all kinds of cages. But don’t ask a question. Rather experience it, because it is not a question-and-answer thing. It is not something to be believed, it is something to be lived.Rinzai says,“The moment you ask, your essential nature and your action become separate.…Do not be deceived. In and out of the world there is not a thing that has a self-nature…”He is very clear. Not a single thing in the whole world has a self-nature, because if things have self-nature, then they will never be able to merge into the universal. They will always remain separate islands; tiny, imprisoned in their own body-mind-self.He is really a man of courage to say,“There is not a single thing that has a self-nature, nor a nature that is productive of a self. All is but empty names, and the very letters of these names are also empty.“If you take these empty names for real, you make a big mistake. For though they exist, they belong in the realm of dependent change, are like robes to put on and off.”You have been in many bodies, in many species. You have changed your clothes many times, you have changed your residence many times; you have changed your address and name many times. It has been for centuries that in sannyas you are given a new name. It is indicative: you consciously change the name so that you know it is just a fiction. The old name had become a great reality; the new name is not yet conditioned. It is symbolic, that everything in you is continuously changing, eternally. Even your self is not the same, it goes on changing. Then what remains?Rinzai is very straightforward. He says, “There is the robe of bodhi,” – even enlightenment is a robe, don’t get identified with it – “There is the robe of bodhi, of nirvana, of deliverance, of the trikaya – the three bodies we have talked about. But these are all changing layers; nothing of them is to be made a permanent home. “…of objective wisdom, of bodhisattvas and of buddha.” Even if you think you are a buddha, don’t get identified with it, it is just a passing phase. It is just a bridge to nothingness. The most perfect bridge, of course, but still a bridge.“What are you seeking in the realm of changing dependence?” Where everything is changing, what are you seeking? Even the seeker is changing while you are seeking. Stop seeking, stop searching, just be. And you will be surprised: the last stop is the self. It is a kind of feeling of am-ness, is-ness – but it too is just a last stop, not yet a home. One step more, from self to no-self. Just disappear without any condition, as a perfume disappears into the air.Gautam Buddha’s contribution is certainly the greatest that any man has made to humanity.“What are you seeking in the realm of changing dependence? The three vehicles and the twelve divisions of the teachings, all are so much old paper to mop up messes. The buddha is an illusory phantom.”Other religions would be very much disturbed. No Christian can say that Jesus Christ is a phantom; no Hindu can say that Krishna is a phantom. This much courage has been shown only by Zen masters. It is not that they don’t love Buddha – they love him, they worship him – but truth is truth. The buddha of your conceptions is an illusory phantom. You have to go beyond it. You have to be simply nothing.“The patriarchs are old monks. You yourselves, are you not born of a mother?”If you are born of a mother, then you are bound to die sooner or later. Every birth makes it certain that you are going to die. Everything is so illusory; what are you seeking?This is a totally different approach from that of any other religion. They all tell you to seek and search. But Rinzai is saying, “Stop all seeking and searching, and just be.” And look deeply into your being, and even your being will start melting like ice in June. Not even a trace will be left of you. You will have merged into the totality of existence.On the surface it is frightening; that’s why Zen could not become a worldwide phenomenon. If you tell a person “I can teach you how to be poor,” he will say, “Get lost! I am already poor.”But if somebody says, “I can teach you how to be rich,” then certainly you will respect the man and will listen to his wisdom. There are thousands of books around the world, telling people how to be successful, how to be rich. I have not seen a single book which says how to be poor, how to be a failure.And Buddha was teaching how to be nothing! People have asked him, “What kind of teaching is this? At least right now we are. We may be in misery, we may be in trouble, but at least we are. Teach us how not to be in trouble, how not to be miserable.…Rather than that you teach us just to disappear!”But Buddha knows better. He knows that as long as you are, you are going to be in misery, you are going to be in trouble. The very separation from the cosmos is the source of all your miseries. It may take different forms, but the real form, the reality, is that you have taken yourself apart from this vast existence.So Buddha said, “I am trying so that you will not have any trouble, any misery. Just be nothing; then how can you be troubled? Who will be troubled?”He has found one of the greatest truths ever found: that you and your misery are not two things. You are the misery, you are the problem. Your mind tells you that this is not so: “We can change the misery.” That is true.…The misery you can change, but you will change it for another misery. You can go on changing – everybody is doing that – from one misery to another misery. But you never come to realize that the real misery is that you are. You are separate from existence.Buddha is hard, but absolutely true: until you dissolve yourself into the totality, you will be troubled. The very separation is the cause of your hell.“If you seek the buddha, you will be caught by the buddha demon…” These Zen masters have a courage totally unknown to any other religion.“If you seek the buddha, you will be caught by the buddha demon; if you seek the patriarchs, you will be bound by the patriarch demon. Whatever you are seeking, all becomes suffering.”Seeking, in short, is the source of suffering.Do not seek, just be.Don’t go anywhere, just remain at your center. A small movement, and you have missed the point. And this center of your being is just the center of a soap bubble. But to reach to the center is to have at least reached to the door of the temple.Now don’t be afraid, and enter the door of nothingness, of no-selfness, of anatta. Let your whole being be filled with the sense that “I am not; existence is.”To understand Gautam Buddha, or his disciples who have attained to this nothingness, is absolutely impossible with the mind. Mind will always want to be. The mind will always think, “What a strange teaching, to make so much arduous effort not to be. With this much effort, you could have become the richest man in the world. With so much effort, you could have become a prime minister, a president. And this strange fellow has himself dropped his kingdom, and is now teaching people how to be nothing.”I don’t think…if somebody writes a book, like Dale Carnegie – Dale Carnegie’s book has sold second only to the Holy Bible. How To Win Friends And Influence People is the title of his book. And he has certainly made many friends – there are Dale Carnegie Clubs all around the world, where his book is read. They run classes, and schools, and courses. Looking at his book, you will see: he is creating a science of hypocrisy. Whether you want to smile or not, you should smile – even at a stranger, because one never knows, tomorrow you may need him.I have been doing just the opposite: how to influence people, and increase your enemies! And I think I am more successful than Dale Carnegie.Zen could not become a worldwide experience for the simple reason that nobody is ready for that great explosion in which you are lost. But think for a moment: what are you? What are you going to preserve? And what is the point, what will you do with it? Even if you discover your self, then what are you going to do with it?You will create new miseries, new troubles, new engagements, new appointments, new love affairs …because you cannot just be. Otherwise you will start thinking to yourself, “Have I gone mad?” No girlfriend, no boyfriend, just sitting in your room, being nobody…You will jump out of your room, take your rented bicycle, and run away to find someone! You know that there will be troubles, but it is better: at least those troubles keep you alive. Just a good fight in the pub, coming home drunk, staggering, but at least you are.But what is the point?Zen’s experience is that unless you go beyond self and start enjoying being nobody; unless nothingness becomes your blissfulness, you have missed your life completely. It is the greatest challenge that can be given to any human being. And only those who have the lion’s heart have followed the path of Zen – even in China, just a small stream; in Japan a very small stream.When I was arrested in America, the first telegram came from a Zen master in Japan, to Ronald Reagan, with a copy to me. It said, “You are doing the worst, most stupid thing that one can conceive of.” The jailer came running to me and he said, “Who is this man?”I said, “I don’t know, but certainly he is a man of understanding.”The jailer said, “He may be a man of understanding, but he does not know manners – calling the president stupid!”I said, “You don’t know about Zen! When somebody is stupid, they call it stupid. You can inform the president that I agree with the Zen master.”Zen has been a path of the very few chosen ones who have guts enough even to disappear.“Whatever you are seeking,” says Rinzai, “all becomes suffering.”Western psychology has not come to this understanding. We try to help people out of one suffering, and another is coming on. Nobody except Zen has come to the realization that every seeking becomes suffering. It does not matter what you are seeking – money, power, richness, fame, or even if you are trying to be a buddha – you are creating suffering for yourself.“It is better to have nothing further to seek.”Just stop! So when I say during your meditations…I am not saying that you have to become a buddha. That will become a seeking, and a suffering. I am saying you are a buddha; just recognize it, and there ends the matter. Once you recognize you are the buddha you will melt, when the time and season is right, into the ultimate reality. To be the buddha is only the beginning of the end; but what a beautiful beginning, and what a beautiful end. Without any struggle, allowing existence to take over, is the greatest ecstasy in the world.Rinzai has made a very strong and honest statement. I hope it will be helpful to all of you who are on the path of meditation. Remember, this is the path of disappearing.A haiku by Uko:Cuckoo,take me up to whereclouds drift.He is saying the same thing: take me up to where clouds drift, into the universal, into the sky; I don’t want to remain confined in the body, the mind, the heart, and the self. Just take me away from all these.This is what Gautam Buddha calls freedom. Less than that is a compromise.Maneesha has asked:Osho,I think I heard you say recently that when we are aware of our emptiness, when we are conscious – even if it is only for an instant – we are in the same state that you are always in. But, isn't it that your state of consciousness is not just quantitatively different from ours – in that you are conscious twenty-four hours a day – but is qualitatively different?I love you and I love that space of emptiness that I feel. Why then this reluctance to accept that my emptiness is the same as yours?Maneesha, it is an ancient question, whether there is any relationship between quantity and quality, or no relationship. Science has finally decided on the fact that they are interchangeable.In a very ordinary experiment, you can boil water to ninety-nine degrees; it will not evaporate. The moment it comes to a hundred degrees, it will evaporate. Now certainly, the evaporated water and the liquid water, although they are both water, have a qualitative difference.On the other hand, if you go on lowering the temperature the water becomes solid ice. Ice, water, vapor – the inner thing is the same, but their outer expression is not only quantitatively different, it is qualitatively different. For example, you cannot quench your thirst with vapor. In the first place, to catch hold of it in a glass is going to be a difficult task; and even if you catch hold of it, it is now nothing but H2O. It has disintegrated into its basic elements.Do you think that, by repeating “H2O,” like a transcendental meditation, your thirst will be quenched? You simply need water. H2O, the mantra, will not do.I can understand your reluctance to accept it. It is because of your love. The more you love me, the more you will see the heights of my consciousness and the more you will see the depths of your consciousness. Your love is going to reveal the dark valleys of your being, and the sunlit peaks of my consciousness. And because you love me, you cannot simply shut your eyes and deny that there are any sunlit peaks. Your love will grow more, to the point that you have to travel the path from your valleys to the sunlit peaks of the mountain.The only thread between the master and the disciple is that of love. It is not belief, it is not faith, it is pure and simple love. You have seen in the master your own ultimate realization; you have seen in the master what you can be. Just a little turning in, and you will be the same.And your reluctance is natural. You have loved me; you would not like to be equal to me, that seems to be insulting. But it is not insulting, it only logically looks insulting. Your love turns into a deep gratitude.I will tell you about Sariputta, a famous philosopher at the time of Gautam Buddha. He became a disciple of Gautam Buddha just by seeing him. He himself had thousands of followers, but the moment he saw Buddha, he told his disciples that now they were free: “If you want to remain with me, you can, but now I am in a strange love with this man.” And he became enlightened within two years. The day he became enlightened, his eyes were full of tears, and he was holding Buddha’s feet. Buddha said, “Why are you crying?”He said, “I cannot accept that I am equal to you. It is just impossible for me to think that now there is no difference between my consciousness and yours.”Buddha said, “Sariputta, come to your senses! It is my whole effort to bring you to the same consciousness, to the same height, as I am. Don’t be worried about the fact that you have become an equal. You have always been an equal; it’s just that you never realized it. Your gratitude is enough, but don’t feel reluctant to accept your buddhahood.”This is going to happen to many of you. But don’t be reluctant. Your mind will say, “You can rise as much as possible, but don’t rise to the height of your master.”There are teachers in the world, fakes, frauds, who would not like you to rise to their heights – if they have any. The authentic master is insistent that you should become the same, you should dwell on the same heights. That is, in a way, the definition of an authentic master. For him, you are already the same, you just don’t recognize it. The whole effort is to bring the recognition to you.The rains have come to listen to your laughter. Poor rains, nobody laughs at them. Nobody even says hello; on the contrary – people are carrying umbrellas. That is just insulting.Pope the Polack is invited to the White House to give a special speech on the role of the Vatican in saving the world. As he is speaking to a group of people on the lawn, he coughs, and his false teeth fall out onto the ground and break.Seeing the situation, a nearby guest digs into his pocket and pulls out a set of dentures. Embarrassed, the pope fumbles around with them, but because they are too big, he cannot get the teeth into his mouth.Then the guest reaches into another pocket and offers another set of false teeth. But this time they are too small.The guest pulls out a third set from his back pocket, and the toothless Polack shoves them into his mouth. These teeth fit.Nervous, but happy, Pope the Polack turns to the guest and says, “Wow! That is great. Are you a dentist?”“Nope,” replies the guest, with a wink, “I am an undertaker!”It will take a little time for you to get it. But in the middle of the night, don’t forget to get it!Father Fumble, the newly ordained priest, goes for some practical Catholic experience with his teacher, Father Fungus.The two priests sit together inside the confessional box of the Sacred Virgin’s Chapel, and listen to all the crimes against God Almighty.“I have fornicated with two strange men this week,” confesses Katie. “Please forgive me, Father.”“You are forgiven, my child,” says Father Fungus. “Just put forty dollars in the money box and say ten Hail Marys.”“I have been adulterous with my neighbor,” pleads Polly, the next sinner.“You are forgiven, my daughter,” says Father Fungus. “Twenty dollars in the box and ten Ave Marias.”“So,” says Fungus to Father Fumble. “Do you get it? All the rates are written in this little book, and if you have any problems, I will be upstairs.”Father Fumble sits alone in the confessional, and in comes the next customer.“Father,” confesses Betty, “I have just given my boyfriend Boris a blowjob.”“Blowjob?” says Father Fumble, thumbing through his book. “Blowjob?”Then he shouts upstairs, “Hey, Father Fungus! What do I do for a blowjob?”“Tell her to put ten dollars in the box,” calls back Father Fungus, “and send her up here!”This you get perfectly well!Swami Deva Coconut manages to get a job on Nancy Reagan’s personal staff. One day, he overhears Nancy complaining to Ed Meese that she and Ronnie are having a lot of trouble with their love life.At a suitable moment, Swami Coconut takes Nancy aside and suggests that she should try mounting on top of her husband, instead of lying underneath in the traditional missionary position.Nancy’s Fundamentalist Christian morals are rather shocked, but she is so desperate that she agrees to give it a go.The next morning, a delighted Nancy meets Coconut in the library.“It was like magic,” gushes Nancy, breathlessly. “It was wonderful. But tell me, Mr. Coconut, how did you know a simple thing like that would make all the difference?”“Easy,” replies Coconut. “Everyone knows that Ronald Reagan can only fuck up!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent.Feel your whole body to be frozen.Close your eyes.This beautiful evening, this great rain, this tremendous silence, will be of help to you to go inwards as deeply as possible.Go in…Deeper and deeper.You have to cross all the lines I told you about…the body, the mind, the heart. Reach to the self, the center; and then you can take a jump into eternity, into the ultimate cosmos.Then you can open your wings, and fly in the sky.The whole effort of meditation is to give you a taste of ultimate freedom. So don’t be afraid of anything – there is nothing to be afraid of.It is your own sky, it is your own truth, it is your own originality.This is the buddha in you. Recognize, remember – and remember to remember afterwards.To be a buddha is just a remembrance, it is not an achievement.You are already it.To make it clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, let go.The body will be dying, see it as a corpse; with it the mind will be gone.Just a watcher remains eternally with you.It is your essential nature, but the watcher is not the self.The watcher is a no-self, it is nothingness.It is the empty heart, it is an opening into the universe.Let the experience sink deep in every fiber of your being, because it has to be your very life style. In your actions it has to be present. Around the clock you have to carry a remembrance of your being a buddha, and this will transform all your actions and responses.This is the miracle…because we don’t cultivate any morality, we simply awaken your buddha. And all morality, all truth, all sincerity, and all honesty simply follow your remembrance of the buddha, as a shadow.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come back as buddhas, without any hesitation. Bring out with you the experience of the innermost core.Sit down for a few moments, without any reluctance, as a buddha. It is your right, your birthright. It is nothing like an achievement, it is just remembering a forgotten language.You are a buddha whether you know or not. It is better to know it, because then it transforms your whole life, brings new joys and new flowers, new blessings, new understandings, new clarities and perceptions. It is a total change.Morality has to be cultivated; it is false. But to remember one’s buddhahood…the morality comes as a shadow, on its own. Then it has a beauty, a tremendous grace; then you are not doing it, it is simply happening.To enter into the world of spontaneity and happenings is the only reason why you are here. We are not searching or seeking anything. We are simply trying to remember who we are, what it is that is the center of our life. Finding the center, it will not be long before suddenly you will realize: this center is also the center of the whole existence – we are all connected in the roots.And the experience of being one with existence is the greatest and the most valuable experience that is possible for consciousness.You are getting ready to face a miracle: inch by inch, you are moving closer and closer to the cliff, which I call the center. One step more, beyond it, and you will know that you were never separate from existence; you have never been born, and you have never died – you are an eternity.The joy that it brings, and the ecstasy that it brings, and the dance that it brings…it makes your whole life a celebration.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Buddha Emptiness of Heart 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Daio said to Genchu:Since ancient times, the enlightened ancestors appearing in the world relied just on their own fundamental experience to reveal something of what is before us: so we see them knocking chairs and raising whisks, hitting the ground and brandishing sticks, beating a drum or rolling balls…Daio continued:Even though this is so, eminent Genchu, you have traveled all over and spent a long time in monasteries. Don’t worry about such old calendar days as these I mentioned – just go by the living road you see on your own; going east, going west, like a hawk sailing through the skies. In the blink of an eye you cross over to the other side.On another occasion Daio said to Kusho:The cause and conditions of the one great concern of the enlightened ones is not apart from your daily affairs. There is no difference between here and there. It pervades past and present, shining through the heavens, mirroring the earth. That is why it is said that everything in the last myriad eons is right in the present.We value the great spirit of a hero only in those concerned. Before any signs become distinct, before any illustration is evident, concentrate fiercely, looking, looking, coming or going, till your effort is completely ripe.In the moment of a thought, you attain union. The mind of birth and death is destroyed and suddenly you clearly see your original appearance, the scene of your native land; each particular distinctly clear. You then see and hear just as the buddhas did, know and act as the enlightened ancestors did.Maneesha, one who is interested in knowing who he is has two ways open to him. One is the way of knowledge: reading scriptures, studying old scholars, collecting as many concepts about one’s being as possible. That is the cheaper way. There would be nothing wrong if it were only that it is cheaper, but it is wrong, too.The second way is not to bother about others. Howsoever valuable those scriptures may be, they cannot give you even a single glimpse of your fundamental nature. A thousand buddhas together cannot force you to become a buddha.It is your essential right to know your fundamental nature or not to know it. You cannot be forced by teachers, by parents. Yes, they can force knowledge upon you, they can force ideologies upon you. They do force religion, without understanding that if you are full of ideologies you become almost crippled, prevented from knowing your own nature. You are so burdened with borrowed knowledge that you cannot travel to the higher mountains. You have to drop all your weight. As you go high even breathing becomes difficult; even to have your clothes on becomes difficult. You have to drop all weight, you have to become weightless.What is true in mountaineering is also true in the inner world of consciousness. If you want to go in you will have to cut through, in a single blow, all the knowledge that has been given to you. Just burn it! It is better to be ignorant on the path – because at least ignorance is innocence – than to be knowledgeable.Knowledgeability is the greatest hindrance to knowing, because you think as if you already know. But there is no “as if” in existence. Either you know it or you don’t know it. And there is no way of communicating it through words; all words will be misunderstood. Only the presence of a living master, a wordless silence, can perhaps become a glimpse, a triggering point in you. It is not being done by the master; it happens in your receptivity, in your openness. Something clicks. There is no other word to replace the word click.Daio is saying to Genchu:Since ancient times, the enlightened ancestors appearing in the world relied just on their own fundamental experience to reveal something of what is before us…Those who have known – their difficulty is that of communication. You know the taste of salt but you cannot convey it through language. Language has limitations, and the experience of your fundamental nature is of the unlimited. To bring the unlimited to the limitations of language is a tremendously risky task. Even though it is done with absolute accuracy, it is going to fail. Seeing this, the ancient masters have not relied on scriptures, have not even relied on language. They are their own authority; it does not matter whether all the scriptures of the world say something else. They know the taste of truth. Their authority is not derived from their scholarship; they are the authority unto themselves.It brings a problem, because they cannot use scriptures; they cannot use ordinary means of communication. Hence, they used anything that was in front of them.…So we see them knocking chairs and raising whisks, hitting the ground and brandishing sticks, beating a drum or rolling balls…Anything, just to wake you up. Because the question is not of teaching you a philosophical understanding; the question is of existential awakening.When for the first time the West became aware of Zen masters, they thought, “These people are absolutely crazy! Somebody is asking about truth and you hit him?” Obviously, it looked crazy – and the more so because the person who is being hit, in deep gratitude, bows down and touches your feet! The West was completely puzzled. When Zen books started being translated for the first time, the Western philosophers were hitting their heads. They had never heard that by slapping a man who is asking a question, you are answering him. They had no idea what was implied in this hitting or slapping. One Zen master even threw a man from the second-story window to the ground. The man had come to ask, “What is truth?” Not only did the master give him fractures, he jumped on top of him and asked him, “Do you get it?”And the poor fellow had to say, “Yes, master.”This kind of incident was absolutely unknown outside the Zen tradition. But you have to understand it, what is implied. When a Zen master hits, he is saying, “You are the truth, and you are asking about it? Are you kidding? You are the buddha and you are asking what the buddha is?” By hitting you he is simply saying, “Look at yourself, rather than asking like a beggar from one place to another. Just go in and look.” His hitting is a shock; in that shock perhaps your thinking may stop, there is every possibility. You were not expecting a hit; you had come with deep humbleness, touching the feet of the master….And sometimes it has happened that the person has not even asked the question and the master has hit him, because his very coming and touching the feet means he has some question to ask. It does not matter what question, you deserve a good hit! It is throwing you back to yourself; it is saying in an existential way that you are the answer – don’t seek it anywhere.Having no other way to communicate, they devised anything that might wake you up, throw you upon yourself. Asking a question means you are putting the responsibility on the master to answer you. But his answer cannot be your answer.Nobody else’s answer can be your answer. Your answer has to grow within you, just as a rose grows. That’s what the master is saying by hitting you: Don’t go anywhere, just go in; stop asking, stop begging, because you are already in the kingdom of the buddhas but you have not looked in. Perhaps a good hit, perhaps the master throwing the disciple from the window may awaken him from his somnambulistic state – the state in which we all are…half asleep, half awake, just at the minimum awake.The major part of our being is fast asleep. According to modern psychologists, only one part out of ten is awake; nine-tenths are fast asleep. With this much sleep within you, it is impossible to know the truth, to know love, to know the nature of existence.Daio is saying that these ancient masters had to fall back on strange methods, but there was simply one reason: in some way to wake you up.Daio continued:Even though this is so, eminent Genchu, you have traveled all over and spent a long time in monasteries. Don’t worry about such old calendar days as these I mentioned – just go by the living road you see on your own.He is saying all the old masters and the buddhas and the patriarchs are old calendars – don’t be bothered about them. Follow the living stream which you see with your own eyes – no belief, no faith, simply be clear. Zen requires of the disciple a clarity, an intelligence, an awareness, which have not been required by any other religion in the world or by any other philosophy in the world. Its requirement is absolute.Daio says, “Don’t worry about such old calendars. Just go by the living road, from where your life is coming.” From whatever point your life is arising, that is the living road. It is not outside you. You have to dig deep within yourself for the roots and for the way that connects you with the universal existence. It is simply an internal affair.Just go by the living road you see on your own – don’t ask me and don’t ask anyone else what the living road is. Just close your eyes and see for yourself what the living road is. You are alive – that much is certain; it is proved by your questioning. You are breathing. Just close your eyes and find out where all these branches are joined to the trunk, and where the roots are hidden in the universal energy.This is the living road, and nobody can point it out to you. You have to find it yourself.Just go by the living road you see on your own; going east, going west, like a hawk sailing through the skies. Don’t be worried – wherever it leads, go. Finally it will bring you to the very center of existence.In the blink of an eye, you cross over to the other side. The happening happens only in the blink of an eye. The distance between the buddha and the no-buddha is so small, the distinction between the awake and the asleep is so small, that just in the blink of an eye you have already moved to the further shore, to the other shore.It is to be understood clearly: the road is not very long. To call it a road is simply symbolic; there is no other way to say it. It is simply a change of vision: you were looking out, you close your eyes and you look within. And you go on, deepening, inside, as far as you can, and you are bound to find the source of your life.It is just as if a roseflower were trying to find the source of its life. Where is it going to find it? It will have to move within, into the branches, towards the roots, from where it is getting all its nourishment and all its life.We also have roots, but they are invisible.Zen is nothing but a discovery of our roots. The man who knows his roots is called the buddha.On another occasion Daio said to Kusho: The cause and conditions of the one great concern of the enlightened ones is not apart from your daily affairs. There is no difference between here and there. It pervades past and present, shining through the heavens, mirroring the earth. That is why it is said that everything in the last myriad eons is right in the present.The past – immense past, beginningless past – is behind you. But where has it gone? An immense future – eternal future, endless future – is ahead of you. Where is it hiding? Zen’s understanding is that in the present moment the whole past is hidden, and in the present moment the whole future also is hidden. The present moment contains the whole universe – past, present, future. If you can manage to understand the present moment, you have understood the whole phenomenon of eternity.Before Albert Einstein, everybody thought that the atom was the smallest particle which existed. Up to Einstein nobody had been able to split the atom, so it was thought to be the last division of matter that we could make. It was impossible to cut the atom in two parts; the atom was a solid entity. But Albert Einstein managed to split the atom, and found that by splitting it, a tremendous energy which is hiding in it explodes.Nobody had ever conceived that in such a particle, which is not even visible to the eye, so much energy is contained that it can destroy a big city like Hiroshima or Nagasaki within three minutes. It consumed both cities leaving behind only traces, ruins, skeletons….I have been sent by a friend a picture of a small girl, who must have been going up the stairs to the first floor of her house, carrying her books to do some homework. She was just half way up the stairs when the atom bomb fell on Hiroshima and everything was burned within three minutes. He has sent me the picture of the girl. She was burned with her books, and her image remained imprinted on the wall – just the shape of her body, and the small bag in which she was carrying her homework.Just as the atom was once unknown…and now we have gone hundreds of years ahead of Albert Einstein. Now we are able not only to divide the atom, we can divide the divisions of the atom. Those divisions of the atom carry even bigger power sources, condensed.The same is true about the moment of time. It contains all past and all future…and of course, the present.So the man who is meditating forgets all the past, drops all longings for the future. It is enough to know the present. By knowing it, by entering into its complexities, you will know the whole universe. And when you reach to your life source…that too is atomic, an individual life source. But it has to be connected with the universe in some way; otherwise you cannot live. So once you find your life source, you have found the way. Just in the blink of an eye, you are on the other shore. You have entered into the universal existence.Zen is perhaps the only scientific approach to religious experience.We value the great spirit of a hero only in those concerned. Before any signs become distinct, before any illustration is evident, concentrate fiercely, looking, looking, coming or going, till your effort is completely ripe.All is hidden in the looking, in the watching; in seeing so fiercely that your whole energy is concentrated. Then existence cannot remain a mystery to you. In that concentration you become ripe, and you deserve that all the mysteries be open to you. In the moment of a thought you attain union – just in a moment.Once you have reached your life source, then it is only a question of a moment, the blink of an eye, and you have found the union with existence.The mind of birth and death is destroyed and suddenly you clearly see your original appearance, the scene of your native land; each particular distinctly clear. You then see and hear just as the buddhas did, know and act as the enlightened ancestors did.Knowing the source of your life, and taking a quantum leap in the blink of an eye to the other shore, is the union with the whole, the cosmos. After this union you behave like a buddha. You cannot do otherwise. Your actions, your gestures, your words or your silences, your movement or your no-movement, will have the same quality as that of any buddha. All buddhas participate in the same cosmic source.Zen is not in search of any God. Its search can be said to be union – the union with the whole. And the union makes you all that is, has been, will be. Nothing is left out of the whole, and you become one with it.The first missionaries who had come to Japan to convert people to Christianity were amazed by the Zen masters. When they came across a Zen master…because others had told them, “Don’t bother us. You just transform a certain Zen master whom I have loved, and if he changes to Christianity, even if he goes to hell I am ready to go with him. But don’t bother with me. You just change that Zen master.” And the missionaries approached the Zen masters with their gospels. The Zen masters laughed; they said, “You don’t understand religion at all and you are converting people into religion. You don’t have the taste yourself.”One missionary was very angry. He opened the Bible and read the Sermon on the Mount. It is a beautiful sermon and he was thinking, “Now, let us see what this fellow says.” After three or four lines the Zen master said, “Shut up! I can say only this much, that this guy, whoever has written these lines, will become a buddha sometime in the future. He is on the path. This much I can certainly say, that some day he will become a buddha. But don’t take it seriously, because you will also become a buddha one day. And remember, for becoming a buddha, Buddhism is not necessary.”That was the great approach, that for becoming a buddha, Buddhism is not necessary. Nothing is necessary; the buddha is already asleep in you, just some situation is needed in which he can be awakened. All Zen monasteries were doing only one thing – creating situations so that the buddha is awake. It is not something to which you are converted, it is your own nature.The Christian missionaries were at a loss, because these Zen masters never talked about God. They said, “What is the point? You don’t even know yourself and you are talking about God. Who has seen God? And what will you do even if you meet him?” It will be a very awkward situation. God standing before you…you will find yourself in a very weird space – what to do now?I have told you the story of Rabindranath Tagore. In one of his best poems he wrote, “I have seen God many times but he was always far away beside a star. I followed but by the time I reached there he had moved to some other place, far away. It had been going on and on for many lives. Finally I reached the place, the house where it was written on the door: Here lives the Lord of the World, Father God.”He was just going to knock and became suddenly aware: “Just think twice – what am I going to do if I meet him? I am not prepared at all. After meeting him there is nothing to do. Your whole life has been structured in searching for God. You know how to search, you know how to fast, you know how to pray, but you don’t know.…When you have met God, there is no point in fasting and there is no point in searching and there is no point in prayer. What are you going to do? You will be suffocated!”Seeing the situation, he took his shoes in his hands, out of fear that when he went back down the steps God might hear the sound of the shoes. He might open the door and say, “Where are you going?” And then he ran away as fast as he could.The poem has a tremendous beauty. It says, “Since then I am again searching. I know where God is, so I avoid only that place! But I go on searching because in searching there is so much joy, and I am thought to be a great saint. I am enjoying the great adventure of searching for God. There is only one thing I have to remember – not to go to that place again! But the whole world is available to search, except that house.”Zen has never bothered about God; neither has it said anything against God. That is a very strange situation to understand, because people either believe in God or not. But Zen is simply unconcerned. There is no question of belief or disbelief; it simply puts God out of the way. It is unnecessary luggage.Zen has taken only the essential point, and that is the source of your life. Just go deepening on that road so that you can reach the final transformation, from the individual to the universal.Just before his death Basui turned to the crowd that had gathered around and said in a loud voice:Look straight ahead.What is there?If you see it as it isyou will never err.He is talking about inside. These are his last words; he is saying, “Look straight forward!” He is not telling anybody, he is simply saying it to himself, Look straight ahead. What is there? – just a pure clarity, a silent sky, an eternal silence. If you see it as it is, without any preconceived ideas, without any religions and philosophies – just as it is – you will never err. You will never make a mistake. You will reach directly like an arrow, and hit the moon.Zen’s concern is absolutely you – you in your original nature.Maneesha has asked:Osho,Is it because you speak from your own fundamental experience that your words spontaneously impress one as true, as unequivocal common sense, even though the listener may not have had such experience?From the first sentence of yours that I ever read – before I could have developed the eyes and ears of love – there was no decision to choose to accept that you were right. You simply were – whether it suited me or not. I just don't get it: how is it that others could possibly feel otherwise?Maneesha, you can speak on the authority of others, but then your words are dead corpses, like the dry roses you can find in Holy Bibles. But when someone speaks from his own experience it is a living phenomenon. You may agree with it, you may not agree, but it leaves the impact on you that you have been in contact with someone who knows.I am not authoritarian, but I am an authority. And you have to understand the difference between the two. The authoritarian is always within quotation marks. He is a great scholar, you cannot dispute him. His argument is very valid, supported by the scriptures. His authoritarian attitude is derived from scriptures, from the past, from others’ experiences.I am not authoritarian but certainly I am the authority. I say only that which I know. And because I say only that which I know, you may agree with it or not, it does not matter; its truth rings a bell in your heart. And whenever something rings a bell in your heart, don’t listen to the mind – the mind may not agree. Listen to the heart because the heart knows better.The heart is ancient; the mind is a very recent development. And the mind’s development is from outside experiences. The heart knows something of the inner, it knows nothing of the outer. So when your heart rings a bell, whether your mind agrees with it or not, don’t be worried; you are very close to the truth.If any person’s presence simply overwhelms you …that is the only intimate communion between a disciple and a master. That is the only way the disciple can decide that he has found his master. He is overwhelmed, he is surrounded by the master’s presence from all sides. The mind may be freaking out, because mind is always afraid of being overwhelmed by someone. The mind is basically egoistic and to be overwhelmed means the ego may be gone like a shadow. Mind is afraid of truth, mind is afraid of reality, because mind consists of all kinds of illusions, lies. Truth will expose it; hence it avoids the truth.But you are fortunate, Maneesha. If your heart says that you have found a man who is speaking on his own authority, then a revolution is possible in your very life, too. And that revolution is happening day by day, it is not something that stops. It goes on happening until you are completely burned and dissolved.That fortunate moment will also come. It is not very far. This is a good beginning.Before you enter into the living way, inwards, don’t forget to come back again. I am always afraid for Sardar Gurudayal Singh. I have even ordered a grave to be made ready, because some day somebody may not come back. And Sardar Gurudayal Singh is standing in the queue almost at the front, very close. He will laugh and simply go away. We will celebrate…and he knows that there is no need to be worried. But he goes on coming back, because one never knows what joke I am going to tell.I will miss him also, because he is the only man in the whole world who laughs before the joke is told. Such trust is very difficult to find. But I warn you all: go deep, but don’t go too far. When Nivedano gives the call to come back, be a good boy!Jesus and Peter are sipping their iced tea while sunbathing on the shore of Lake Galilee.A group of children nearby start throwing rocks in the water. They laugh and shout and kick up the sand.His peace completely destroyed, Peter sits up. “Hey! You kids!” he barks at them. “You get outta here!”But Jesus pushes up his Ray-Ban sunglasses, wipes the sand off his face, and says, “No, Peter. Let the children come unto me.”Five minutes later, the noise is deafening as screaming kids, splashing water, and flying sand fill the air. Peter, hung over from last night’s wine, gets totally pissed off. “I said, you kids just get the hell outta here!” he screams.But again Jesus sits up, wipes the sand off himself, raises his hand and says, “Peter, I told you: let the children come unto me – so that I can kick their little asses!”Klopski is sitting with Seamus at the Dancing Duck Pub, sipping his beer.“Hey, Seamus,” says the Polack, “how do you do so well with the girls?”“Easy,” says Seamus. “You have to be sophisticated, and you have to have a gimmick.”“Sophisticated is easy,” says Klopski, swallowing down his tenth beer. “But what is a gimmick?”“Well,” replies Seamus, “for example, I painted a white circle on the dashboard of my car. The girl usually asks me what it means. Then I very casually explain that it stands for purity. The conversation generally turns to abstract white things, like virginity. From there it is easy to talk them into it.”“Okay,” says Klopski, “I think I got it.”The next evening Klopski paints a white circle on the dashboard of his car, and then goes to pick up his date, Lucy.“That is rather unusual – having a white circle on your dash,” says Lucy to Klopski.“Yes, it is,” replies Klopski, thinking quickly as he adjusts his tie. “Do you wanna fuck?”“You are drunk!” shouts the barman of the Groggy Doggie Pub, at Paddy, who just has slipped slowly onto the floor again.“I’m not drunk at all!” insists Paddy, picking himself up. “In fact, I’m not even drunk a little bit, and I’ll prove it to you. Now, you see that cat just coming in the door? Well, it has only got one eye.”“You’re drunker than I thought,” says the barman. “That cat is going out!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes.Feel your body to be completely frozenLook inwards, straight to the very source of your life.Go deeper without any fear.Only this way has anyone found himself as a buddha. This is the only living road that leads you to your cosmic home.Without hesitation go on, go on.Gather all the experience of silence, the bliss and the benediction.To make it more clear, Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, watch your mind and body, separate from you.You are only a watcher.This point of being a watcher is the buddha.Recognize your buddha nature; it is just a mirror – reflecting everything but unaffected.Nothing leaves a mark on your watching. The mirror remains empty.This emptiness can at any moment take a quantum leap, and you will find yourself on the other shore.Just in a split second you can be one with the whole.This union is the authentic goal of religiousness.A beautiful evening…Unfortunately, how many are able to enjoy it?So few, but we have to spread this fire, this cool silence, just like a breeze around the globe.This silence is going to become the womb for the new man to be born.You prepare the way.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back.But come back like buddhas, with great dignity, with grace, with silence.Sit for a few moments, just gathering, remembering, collecting the experience of your silent moments.You have to remain a buddha twenty-four hours.It is not an action, it is your nature.It has to be expressed in all your actions, in your words, in your silences, in your songs, in your dances.But you remain the watcher, the buddha.Can we celebrate all the buddhas?

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Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Buddha Emptiness of Heart 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Bukko said:At the beginning you have to take up a koan.The koan is some deep saying of a patriarch. Its effect in this world of distinctions is to make a man’s gaze straight, and to give him strength as he stands on the brink of the river bank.For the past two or three years, I have been giving, in my interviews, three koans: “The true face before father and mother were born,” “The heart, the buddha,” and “No heart, no buddha.” For one facing the turbulence of life-and-death, these koans clear away the sandy soil of worldly concerns and open up the golden treasure which was there from the beginning, the ageless root of all things.However, if after grappling with a koan for three or five years, there is still no satori, then the koan should be dropped; otherwise it may become an invisible chain round one. Even these traditional methods can become a medicine which poisons.In general, meditation has to be done with urgency, but if, after three or five years the urgency is still maintained forcibly, the tension becomes a wrong one and it is a serious condition. Many lose heart and give up as a result.An ancient has said, “Sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, sometimes hot on the trail and sometimes resting at a distance.”Bukko continued:So this mountain priest now makes people at this stage throw down their koan. When it is dropped and there is a cooling down, in due time they hit on what their own true nature is, as the solution of the koan.In concentration on a koan, there is a time of rousing the spirit of inquiry, there is a time of breaking the clinging attachments, there is a time of furious dashing forward, and there is a time of damping the fuel and stopping the boiling.Since coming to Japan, this mountain priest has been making the pupils look into a koan, but when they have done this for a good time, he tells them to throw it down. The point is that many people come to success if they first have the experience of wrestling with a koan and later reduce the effort; but few come to success at the time when they are putting out exceptional effort.So the instruction is that those who have not yet looked into a koan absolutely must do so, but those who have had one for a good time must throw it down. At the time of zazen they throw it all away. They sleep when it is time to sleep, go when it is time to go, sit when it is time to sit, and so on, as if they were not doing zen at all.Maneesha, before I discuss what Bukko is saying, I have to introduce you to the word koan.It is something like a puzzle that cannot be solved – basically insoluble. For example, how you looked before you were born – there is no way to solve the problem, there is nowhere to find the answer. Or the koan – the most famous one – the sound of one hand clapping. Now, one hand cannot clap; for clapping the other hand will be needed.So first you have to understand the meaning of koan. It is some kind of statement which has no answer anywhere, and the master gives it to the disciple to meditate on and find the answer. From the very beginning the disciple knows, and the master knows, there is no possible way to find the answer. But it is a great strategy: when the mind cannot find the answer – and the meditation has to be very urgent, with total energy focused on the koan – the mind feels almost impotent. It looks here and there, brings out this answer, that answer, and gets hits from the master for bringing a wrong answer.Every answer is wrong, because the very function of the koan is not to get the answer; the very function of the koan is to tire your mind to such a point that it gives up. If there were an answer, the mind would find it. It does not matter whether you are very intelligent, or not very intelligent – no intelligence of any category can find the answer.But naturally, mind tries and tries. And the disciple comes every morning to see the master, to tell him what he has found in the twenty-four hours. In the beginning, the disciples think perhaps they may be able to make it out….A disciple was given the koan of one hand clapping. He heard the sound of the wind passing through the pine trees, and he thought, “Perhaps this is the sound of one hand clapping.” He rushed to give the answer to the master, but before he could even open his mouth he was beaten.He said, “This is too much! I have not said anything.”The master said, “It does not matter whether you have said anything or not – you were going to say something.”The student said, “But at least you should have heard it first…”The master said, “It does not matter, whatever you say is going to be wrong. Just go and meditate!”When disciples become accustomed, they don’t rush to the master with answers. They know there is no answer. Knowing that there is no answer, mind gives up. And the whole strategy is very subtle, to put the mind aside; tired, exhausted, it has no desire to function anymore.The moment you put the mind aside, you have entered into the world of meditation. It has nothing to do with the koan, but the koan helped to tire the mind.Bukko is a very practical master; most of the Zen masters are not so practical. They speak from their peaks of consciousness; Bukko is speaking from the same ground as where you are. Hence, he is of much more help than the great masters who speak from a faraway peak of consciousness. Bukko knows that even if they shout they will not be understood; it is better to come down to the dark valley and talk to people in such a way that they can somehow get the point, that mind is of no use in the internal journey. That is the point: that mind is a hindrance, not a help; a wall, not a bridge.And Bukko is very compassionate in going into the details – no other master has gone into the details – and even giving warnings that the method is not a hundred percent foolproof. No device can be; even the method itself can become a hindrance.At the beginning you have to take up a koan, says Bukko. The koan is some deep saying of a patriarch. Its effect in this world of distinctions is to make a man’s gaze straight, and to give him strength as he stands on the brink of the river bank.Your mind is very wavering, wobbly. A koan concentrates all your energies. A koan has not to be done in a lukewarm way, that is dangerous. It has to be done with totality, so you can exhaust the mind quickly – as quickly as possible.Zen masters have experienced that the longest period is three years – if you cannot get tired in three years that means you are not putting your total energy into it. You are saving energy, you are not going really hot. If you go really hot, then in a single moment you can see straight: there is no answer. And with the very experience that there is no answer at all, mind drops by the side. You have entered the space of your being.But if you go on doing it so-so, the danger is that after three years…if you have not got it yet, then it is better to drop the koan. It is not going to help, it is now going to hamper and hinder. It has become just a habit. Sitting silently, and just by the way, with many other thoughts coming and going, one thought is also there: What is the sound of one hand clapping? But you are not totally concentrated so that only the koan is there and nothing else.Bukko says, The koan is some deep saying of a patriarch. Its effect in this world of distinctions is to make a man’s gaze straight…to put his whole energy straight on a single point; to make his consciousness like an arrow – not going in all directions, a part here and a part there, a part in the past and a part in the future, and you are doing the koan with whatever small bit is left which has not gone anywhere. This way you will never come to the end; on the contrary, this will become your habit. You will do the koan your whole life, it will never bring meditation to you.So if within three years a koan has not dropped by itself, with the mind, and you don’t enter into being, into the silence of being where there is no question and no answer – then please stop the koan. Don’t let it become a habit; don’t let it become a mental conditioning.The first thing is to make your gaze straight, and to give you strength as you stand on the brink of the river bank.For the past two or three years, I have been giving, in my interviews, three koans: “The true face before father and mother were born….”Not only you, but before your father and mother were born – your true face. There is no way to find where you were, what your true face was….Second, “The heart, the buddha.” Find the heart which is the buddha.And the third, “No heart, no buddha.” These three koans he has used. There are a thousand and one koans – anything which is insoluble, which looks beautiful but when you start working on it, you find that you have come to the end of the road; it does not go anywhere.For one facing the turbulence of life-and-death, these koans clear away the sandy soil of worldly concerns and open up the golden treasure which was there from the beginning, the ageless root of all things.The koan can do a miracle, although it is just a device. The question is with what urgency, with what totality, you make your whole mind concerned only with the koan, twenty-four hours. It is not something that you do for one hour and forget about it.It is a monastery method. Remember, there are methods which are individual and you can do anywhere, and there are methods which are monastery methods; you can do them only in a monastery, where you are allowed to meditate twenty-four hours, where there is nothing else to do but to meditate.The koan is a monastery method. If you can put in all your energy, not leaving a small chunk of your consciousness aside, as is the habit of people…They never stake everything. For safety, for an emergency, they keep holding something back. They never put all they have into the method.I have heard, Mulla Nasruddin was caught traveling without a ticket. The ticket checker was puzzled, because Mulla opened all his suitcases and threw things all over the compartment, and finally, the very effort of his search…He had looked into every pocket except one pocket on the left side of his coat. The ticket checker noticed it and he said, “Your effort proves that certainly you have the ticket, and it has got mixed up because you are carrying so much luggage. So don’t be worried, when you get off you can look for it. But one question I have to ask you: You have looked into everything else, why don’t you look in your left-side pocket?”Mulla said, “Don’t mention that!”The man said, “Why? When you are looking, then why are you saving that one pocket?”He said, “That is my only hope, that perhaps it may be there. If it is not there, then it is certain – it is nowhere. I cannot drop my hope. First I will have to look through everything.”And he was not only looking into his own suitcases, he started looking into other people’s! The ticket checker said, “You stop! These are not your suitcases. Are you a madman? You are not looking in the pocket where I think the ticket is, and you have started opening other peoples suitcases?”Mulla said, “I will search first throughout the world; only as a last resort, when everything else is finished, will I check in my left pocket. That is my only hope!”People always keep something aside, they never put everything, in totality, at the stake. And what they put aside keeps them divided. They cannot be total; they remain only a part involved and a part not involved.So the first thing the koan does is to make you completely straightforward, pointing to a single goal, like an arrow. If this is done, soon your mind will be tired. But if you are saving some energy, your mind will always rejuvenate itself. The saved energy will never allow you to be so tired and so exhausted that you simply drop the koan, you simply say, “I am fed up; I am finished. This is stupid – there cannot be any sound with one hand clapping!”At that exhausted moment, mind stops – tired, utterly fed up. With the mind stopping, even for a single moment, in the blink of an eye you are on the other shore.For one facing the turbulence of life-and-death, these koans clear away the sandy soil of worldly concerns and open up the golden treasure which was there from the beginning, the ageless root of all things.A very simple device, if done rightly, can open up the cosmic treasure – your ultimate home.However, if after grappling with a koan for three or five years, there is still no satori, no enlightenment, then the koan should be dropped.This is what I call a compassionate master. Bukko is very much concerned with the disciple – not just saying the ultimate truths, but almost trailing along with him by his side, as a fellow traveler, making him aware of every pitfall.If, for three or five years, there is still no satori, then the koan should be dropped; otherwise it may become an invisible chain round one.You will have started thinking that this is a kind of mantra, a religious ritual – every day you do it. Nothing happens, but perhaps sometime you will accumulate enough virtue…. But what virtue can you accumulate by thinking about a koan like the sound of one hand clapping?These are not mantras that you go on repeating all your life; these are absolutely scientific devices. But one has to do it with totality, then it can open the door. If you do it half-heartedly, then please don’t do it, because doing it half-heartedly you will never come to the gate. You will go on repeating your nonsense – because it is nonsense; you have to remember that it is nonsense that you are repeating. There is no sound of one hand clapping, and there is no face that you can find anywhere before your parents were born.These are not puzzles that you can, with great intelligence, solve. They look like puzzles, but they are not puzzles; they are simply absurdities. But the absurd is capable of tiring the mind. Only the absurd can tire it – anything rational, the mind will manage; anything reasonable, the mind will manage; anything logical, the mind will manage. Only something absurd…Mind cannot manage the absurd; it can go nuts but it cannot solve the problem. Before it goes nuts you have to drop the problem.Remember that either your koan can drive you nuts, if you are doing it half-heartedly, or it can make you a buddha if you are doing it totally, wholeheartedly. The whole question is of urgency and totality.Before the koan becomes a chain, a bondage, it has to be dropped.Even these traditional methods can become a medicine which poisons.In general, meditation has to be done with urgency, but if, after three or five years, the urgency is still maintained forcibly, the tension becomes a wrong one and it is a serious condition.It can drive you mad. Just think: for five years, day and night, a person is thinking about the sound of one hand clapping. He will go mad! It will become such a psychological condition that he may want to stop it but it will not stop. It will go on and on inside in him, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Even in his sleep it will continue. The moment he opens his eyes, the first thought will be, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” Before going to sleep, the last thought will be, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?” And the same will continue through the whole night like an undercurrent.Bukko is making it clear: “Remember that even medicine can become poison. It can become out of date; you should not use it beyond its limit.” And if you want to do it within its limits, then do it so totally that you are finished before the time limit on the medicine is finished.On every bottle of medicine, there is a date, a last date beyond which you should not use it. On every device there is a time limit, and if you want to experience the eternal in you, then don’t go slowly; then be fast, before the time limit on the device is finished.And always remember that it is a nonsense device, there is no answer for it. It is not meant to have an answer; its purpose is there, and the purpose is to exhaust your mind. So put in your total energy, so it is exhausted quickly. The quicker you exhaust the mind, the sooner the realization, the transcendence, the opening of the doors of your eternal treasures.In general, meditation has to be done with urgency, but if, after three or five years, the urgency is still maintained forcibly, the tension becomes a wrong one and it is a serious condition. Many lose heart and give up as a result.An ancient has said, “Sometimes quickly and sometimes slowly, sometimes hot on the trail and sometimes resting at a distance.”Bukko continued:So this mountain priest now makes people at this stage throw down their koan. When it is dropped and there is a cooling down…Because you were going with full speed, your mind was becoming hotter and hotter, on a single point for years.Bukko says, “I tell my disciples, now it is time to drop it, and let the mind cool down.”…There is a cooling down, in due time they hit on what their own true nature is, as the solution of the koan.When the mind cools down, that is almost the equivalent of mind being put aside. In one case it is sudden enlightenment, in the other case it will be called gradual enlightenment.I don’t use koans for the simple reason that you are not in a monastery. The method is basically a monastery method – nobody has made the distinction before. My people are in the world; they cannot put their totality into meditating twenty-four hours. It is enough for them to put their totality into it for a few minutes and just have a drink of their eternity, of their immortality, just to have a glimpse of the roots. And don’t continue it, just let it remain like a faraway echo surrounding you. A fragrance – just as when you pass a rose garden, even if you don’t touch the roses, your clothes will carry the fragrance of the roses.You are in the world, and I want everyone of my sannyasins to be in the world. I don’t want you to be in a monastery, because a monastery takes all your twenty-four hours, destroys all your capabilities for creativity. And most often people become so tired that they leave the monastery and enter another monastery. This is a constant phenomenon in Japan: people who get tired of one monastery move into another monastery. And because they don’t have to work at anything – food is supplied by the monastery, clothes are supplied by the monastery; their only work is to concentrate on the koan – either they become fed up with the monastery and they think something is wrong with the koan because nothing is happening and three years have passed, or they go nuts. Their urgency and totality takes a wrong turn and they go mad.This happens constantly in Zen monasteries. In fact, every Zen monastery has a special retreat place for monks who go mad. But their method to bring the mad monk back into the world is very simple. Modern psychiatry and psychology should study the method because what they cannot do in ten years time is done within three weeks in the monasteries. And in fact, nothing is done; just in the monastery, in a faraway place in the bamboos, hidden by the side of a river, is a small cottage. The man is left alone there, and is told not to talk to anybody. Anyway, nobody passes by there except the man who brings the food every day. But he is not allowed to talk to the man; neither is the man allowed even to make gestures or to say hello.Three weeks sitting silently, nobody to talk to, nothing to do…the mind cools down.What psychoanalysis cannot do in fifteen years, the Zen monastery has been doing for one thousand years for thousands of monks.Nobody goes to visit for those three weeks; the man is just left alone. At first he talks to himself; then slowly, slowly the heat goes away, he cools down. A beautiful scene: the flowers, the bamboos, and the river; and no other man around. And as he cools down, he is brought back to the monastery.But in any case, one should not do a method in such a way that it drives you mad. And the reason why people go mad through certain methods is that they are trying to be clever. They keep a certain amount of energy on the side – in the left pocket! – so they are never total. And unless they are total, the mind cannot be put aside. So totality is really the function, the purpose of a koan.I am not using it, and I will not tell anybody else to use it unless he is part of a monastery where he has no mundane work to do, where he is completely dependent on the society. But when you are dependent on the society, you cannot be rebellious. That’s why Zen masters have achieved buddhahood but their buddhahood is not a rebellion; it is not a revolution.I want my buddhas to be rebellions. But you can be a rebel only if you don’t depend on the society. If you are independent in your working, in your earning, you can be rebellious against all orthodoxies.It is very cunning, but perhaps without any intention, that rich people, emperors, all donate to the monasteries. It is very good for them: they are earning spiritual virtue, opening a bank account in heaven. And on the other end, they are keeping those people from ever becoming rebellious. They have crippled them completely; they have forgotten how to do anything. They are not asked to do anything but just sit and meditate on the koan – which is an absurdity.It is by chance – and I will say only by chance – that someone becomes enlightened through a koan, because one has to keep repeating it for at least two or three years, constantly involved in it.Remember the difference, that going out of the mind is not going beyond mind. Going out of the mind is very easy. Many people go mad without any koans, but perhaps they have also a certain koan of their own. Maybe it is money, maybe it is a woman or a man. They drive themselves mad, continuously thinking about it.I know a man who drove himself mad because of money. He was so much in love with money that it was almost impossible to believe it. If you had a hundred-rupee note in your hand, it is yours but he would touch it, just to feel it. And you could even see his saliva coming out!I became friendly with the fellow, so he used to come to my place and I would give him a few notes just to play with. He would be so happy. Finally I heard that he had been forced into a madhouse, because it became a difficult situation. He started stealing, he started borrowing and would never repay, so the whole city became aware. And he would never purchase anything because he would have to give up the money.Money was his god – it is many people’s god, it is their koan. It is also just like a koan, insoluble: however much you have, your desire is always for more. It is insoluble. Even the richest man in the world is not satisfied with his riches, he wants more.In concentration on a koan, there is a time of rousing the spirit of inquiry, there is a time of breaking the clinging attachments, there is a time of furious dashing forward, and there is a time of damping the fuel and stopping the boiling.Since coming to Japan, this mountain priest has been making the pupils look into a koan, but when they have done this for a good time, he tells them to throw it down. The point is that many people come to success if they first have the experience of wrestling with a koan and later reduce the effort…That’s why I say Bukko is a very practical and pragmatic teacher. He is not like a Bodhidharma, a sword – in one blow your head is gone. He is more businesslike. He says that even if you have not attained satori, enlightenment, it helps just to get hot. If it is not enough to evaporate, he starts telling you, “Cool down, drop it.” His experience is that even this little bit of heating up, and then cooling down, gives a certain space, a gap, a comparison between the two states. And through that gate, through that small acquaintance with the difference between the heated mind and the cool mind, a person may come to success rather than at the time when he was putting out exceptional effort.But this is, in my understanding, a very businesslike approach. Perhaps somebody may have attained enlightenment in this way, but I will not say that this is a principle; it can only be an accident.I don’t use koans at all, because my people are to put their totality into meditation for five minutes, and that’s enough. Then just the remembrance of it will transform their lives. And going inwards just for a few minutes has never driven anyone mad. You can go as deep as possible, with your totality, because you know Nivedano is sitting there and he won’t allow you to go beyond the limit. Just as you are coming close to the limit, where you can lose your mind, Nivedano’s drum immediately calls you back.We are not to lose the mind; we have to go beyond the mind, and use the mind from the space of being beyond. Mind is a good mechanism; we are not against the mind. We simply don’t want the mind to be dominant, to be the master. We want our consciousness to be the master and mind only a functionary, a servant.Bukko says: So the instruction is that those who have not yet looked into a koan absolutely must do so, but those who have had one for a good time must throw it down. At the time of zazen they throw it all away. They sleep when it is time to sleep, go when it is time to go, sit when it is time to sit, and so on, as if they were not doing zen at all.This part in itself is beautiful. This part can be of immense help to you. While you are doing your meditations, do them totally. Forget the whole world, as if for those few minutes there is no world; only you and this space that you are running towards with the speed of light, like an arrow, to hit some unknown center of your being.And just gather the experience, the joy, the blissfulness, and come back. Come back with your buddhahood as a fragrance around you. And then watch – in your day-to-day life, working, all kinds of things – just out of the corner of your eye, remember. You may be chopping wood, or carrying water from the well – you are a buddha. Although nobody has seen Gautam Buddha chopping wood and carrying water from the well – so many disciples loved him that they managed to chop the wood for him and carry the water from the well.Before you gather a few buddhas around you, you have to chop the wood and you have to carry the water. But don’t forget that you are a buddha. It is a good opportunity, before other buddhas start chopping your wood!This last statement is beautiful:Be a buddha, but don’t be an exhibitionist. Don’t try to convince others that you are a buddha – that’s what mad people do. It is enough that you know you are a buddha. You don’t have to convince the neighbors that you are really a buddha.I used to go to madhouses….One of my friends was the governor of one of the states, so he allowed me – I could visit any madhouse in the state, or any jail, wherever I wanted to go. Otherwise, it is very difficult to see mad people.You cannot change their opinion, whatever opinion they have. If they think that they are a railway train, they will go by your side making the noise of the train. They will not bother that you are standing there…they are going somewhere. They are a train and you cannot convince them otherwise.I asked a madman who was going like this, “Do you have any passengers?”He said, “I am just an engine and I’m shunting. I am not going anywhere, just shunting from this room to that room. I am only an engine, I don’t care about passengers!”And he was so serious. I said, “It would be good to connect a train with you.”He said, “I don’t like the idea. Why should I bother with any passengers and trains? I am enjoying myself perfectly.” And he went on.The superintendent said, “We have tried. It doesn’t work – nothing works.”You cannot change the mind of a madman. And I am making this statement for a particular reason: don’t have such a mind, which cannot be changed. That’s what fundamentalists have – fundamentalist Christians like Ronald Reagan. You cannot change their minds, and that is a sign of madness. An intelligent man is always available to change, if a better argument is given to him. You cannot change the fundamentalist; he has decided, and decided for eternity.There is no way to convince even Jesus that “You are not the son of God.” Thousands of people tried it: “Listen, don’t make unnecessary fuss! And you look like a clown, sitting on a donkey, followed by a few idiots and claiming that you are the only begotten son of God. You are a humiliation to our religion!”The Jews were trying hard to convince him – “You are just a carpenter, remember? Your father is Joseph and your mother is Mary, remember?”But a fundamentalist….In a crowd, Jesus was speaking and somebody said, “Your mother is standing outside.” And it hurts what he said; he said, “Tell that woman that I don’t have any relatives here! My father is in heaven.”Now telling that poor woman – she had not seen him for years, because for years he had been wandering in Kashmir, in Ladakh, in Tibet. In the Bible there is no account about what happened for seventeen years of his life. And he lived only thirty-three years; only three years, the last three years, are depicted. What happened to the seventeen years before? One mention of the time when he was thirteen is there, and after that there is a big gap.The mother had not seen him for so long, naturally the poor old woman…And he insulted her, he did not even give her an appointment. He is no ordinary man, these relatives drag him down to humanity. He is a son of God, he is divine, he is not human.You cannot change the mind of a fundamentalist. And to me, the fundamentalist is equivalent to the madman. A reasonable man, an intelligent man, is never fundamentalist. He is always ready and available to change anything if he can find a better argument, a better idea, a better solution. He is flexible, he is not adamant and stubborn. He is ready to bend, to change, to transform.I want you never to be a fundamentalist. Always remain vulnerable. To be vulnerable to existence is the most beautiful experience.But for that, you need some acquaintance with existence – from your inner being, not from outside. You know the stars from the outside, but you have not known the universe from your inside. From your very roots you have to come in contact, and that contact will be your liberation. That contact will make you a buddha.You are a buddha; just a little dust has gathered on the mirror.I am reminded of Michelangelo.…He passed through the market where marble shops were. And he was a sculptor, perhaps the best the world has known. He saw in front of a shop, on the other side of the road, a big marble rock. He asked, “How much will it cost?”The owner said, “It will not cost anything, because for ten years it has been lying there and I have not found anybody to be interested in it. If you want it you can take it – I need more space for other rocks and that rock is taking too much space. But I don’t think anybody can make anything out of it. It is a strange rock, the shape is strange.”So Michelangelo took that rock, and after two years working on it he created the world’s most famous statue of Jesus – he has just been brought down from the cross and Mary, his mother, is holding him in her lap. The statue is of the cross and Jesus and the mother, and life size.Michelangelo was certainly one of the greatest men as far as sculpture is concerned. Jesus looks as if he is just going to come back to life – so alive. You can see every muscle of the man, you can see the holes which the nails have made in his hands….Just a few years ago, a madman destroyed that statue. Nobody ever thought that anybody would destroy such a beautiful statue – it was in the Vatican. And in front of the court the madman said, “I had to destroy it because I want to be as famous as Michelangelo. Now my name will always be remembered along with Michelangelo: he made it, I destroyed it.”But when the statue was ready, Michelangelo invited the shop owner to see what had happened to the rock. The shop owner could not believe his eyes. He said, “You have done a miracle! How have you managed?”Michelangelo said, “No, I have not managed anything. Just as I was passing down the road, I heard the rock saying, ‘Hidden in me are Jesus and Mary. You just have to take out a few chunks here and there, and Jesus and Mary will reveal themselves.’ I have not created Jesus or Mary, I have simply removed the unnecessary marble and left only what is needed to make Jesus and Mary and the cross.”This is really the experience of a meditator. As you go deeper you hear…not in words, but something more like a magnetic pull, towards a buddha which is hidden inside you at the very source. And once you have touched those roots, once you have known your buddhahood just for five minutes, it is enough to be able to remember it twenty-four hours. Slowly, slowly it will change your whole life into a beauty, a grace, a tremendous ecstasy.You don’t have to do meditation twenty-four hours. I am against monasteries and monks because they are an absolutely unnecessary load on the society. And particularly in the East, where there is so much poverty, these monks are heavy on the whole economy.In Thailand, just two years ago, they had to pass a law in the parliament that nobody can become a monk without getting a license from the government. Because one person out of every four was a monk. The other three had to supply everything to the monk. It was a tradition that every family should give one son, particularly the eldest son, to the religion, to the church. They were one fourth of the population; the whole population is poor, and these vagabonds, thinking that they were doing something spiritual, were just being parasites.I don’t want anybody to be a monk, I want you to be in the world. Meditation need not to be done twenty-four hours; meditation is just a small glimpse – and then carry out your work. Slowly, slowly that glimpse will start radiating in your actions, in your silences, in your songs, in your dances.There is no need to waste twenty-four hours and become a parasite. And when you become a parasite on the society, you cannot rebel against the society. You cannot say a single thing against any superstition.My people can be sannyasins and yet absolutely rebellious, because they are not dependent on anyone. Their meditation is their own personal affair.Why are all the religions against me? Because I am introducing a new kind of sannyasin in the world; and the fear is that if this fire catches hold, like a wildfire, then sannyasins will be the most rebellious people in the world. They will destroy all superstitions and all stupidities, and they will not agree to anything that goes against their consciousness.This is the reason that twenty-one countries have decided in their parliaments that I am a dangerous man. And strangely enough, not a single man in those parliaments has asked, “What do you mean by dangerous?” Everybody understands, it seems, that the danger is in giving individuality to religion, is in giving rebelliousness to individuals. And no vested interest wants it. They are ready for monks, they are ready to give donations to monasteries, but they are really afraid of people who are buddhas and rebellious at the same time. And to me, a buddha who is not rebellious is not much of a buddha. He is just a rotten piece!A poet wrote:In the eveningif it were rainwe should seek shelter,but thinking, “it is only mist”we go on and become drenched.He is not talking about the rain outside, he is talking about your inside. Don’t be afraid – get drenched in the mist, in the mystery. And when you come back, come back a totally different person. The one who has gone in should be left behind, and you should take a new face – your original face.Dropping the mask and bringing out your original face is the whole alchemy of meditation.An old man for the first time had come to a big city, and he was standing amazed, looking at the high skyscrapers. And then he saw an old woman, a very old woman, entering into a cabin. He did not understand that it was an elevator. He watched to see what happened, and when the elevator came down, a young woman came out.He said, “My god! If I had known, I would have brought my old woman with me. This is great science!”But exactly this happens. When you go in, you are an old mask; when you come back, come back as a fresh, original face. This everyday experience, slowly, slowly, will become your twenty-four-hour silent experience. There is no need to say to anybody that you are a buddha; they themselves will understand. You cannot hide a fire; you cannot hide a buddha either.Maneesha has asked:Osho,This unspeakable that you are trying to communicate to us, this ungraspable that we are trying to get – sometimes it seems profoundly mysterious, sometimes it seems embarrassingly obvious. Is it either of these – or both together?Maneesha, it is both together.From one standpoint it is obvious. For those who know, it is obvious. For those who don’t know, it is very mysterious. But it is the same thing. Our effort is to move from the point of obviousness to the point of mysteriousness…turning your simplicity into innocence; bringing back your childhood fragrance and freshness.Buddha is not a foreigner; buddha is your innermost core – where nobody else has been able to reach; otherwise they would have changed its face. It is the place where only you can go – that’s why it has remained original. Otherwise, society would have colored it, managed it in such a way that it becomes useful and purposeful for the society. But nobody can reach within you except you.And certainly when you know your mysterious existence, you don’t want to be anyone else. You have come to the point where the whole cosmos welcomes you home.(A flash of lightning streaks through the darkness outside the hall, followed by thunder and a steady, gentle rain.)Now the clouds have come…. As long as you are going to laugh, the clouds are going to come to listen. They come at the right moment.Dogski staggers home late one night after drinking about a thousand beers. When he comes into the bedroom, he discovers his wife lying half-naked on the bed, and a strange man in the act of removing his pants.“For the last time, lady,” says the man, thinking furiously, “if you don’t pay your gas bill right now, I’ll shit on the floor!”Max Muldoon gets drafted to fight in Ronald Reagan’s new war in the Middle East, and he does not like the idea at all. He does everything he can to avoid being in the army, but somehow finds himself in General Grimguts’ Marine platoon.One day, Max is in the front line of battle. The noise is terrifying as bullets and bombs fly all around him. Max looks up in horror and then throws down his gun.“I have had enough!” he shouts, and he starts running away from the front lines.Many people try to stop him as he runs, but Max pays no attention to them. He runs and runs until he bumps right into General Grimguts himself.“Stop!” roars Grimguts.“What for?” shouts back Max.“I am ordering you to stop!” shouts the General. “I am your commanding officer!”“My god!” replies Max, quite surprised. “Am I that far back already?”Sixteen-year-old Sally tiptoes into the confession box in the Holy Martyred Virgins’ Church, where Father Fumble is sitting.“Father,” whispers Sally, “I have sinned!”“Tell me all about it!” replies the young priest.“Well, Father,” continues Sally, “my boyfriend Willy came home with me the other day, and I took him to my room.”“Really?” says Father Fumble. “And what happened in there?”“Well, Father,” continues Sally, “Willy pushed me back onto the bed and started taking my clothes off.”“Really?” says Father Fumble. “And what happened next?”“Then Willy took off his clothes and jumped on top of me!” sobs Sally.“Ahem!” coughs Fumble, clearing his throat. “And tell me, my child, did you feel his organ coming between your legs?”“I’m not a musician,” replies Sally, “but I would say it felt more like a flute!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent…close your eyes. Feel your body to be frozen.Look inwards with your totality,straight ahead.Just a little moreand you will be encountering your real self.It is raining outside, but insideit is only mist.Get drenched in it.Drop your mask, and when you come back,come back with your original face.Your original face is the buddha.To get hold of it totally…Nivedano…(Nivedano)Relax…just watch the body and the mind, and remember you are neither. You are the watcher.This already beautiful evening becomes more ecstatic by your watching. Just watching, you will feel utter emptiness.The emptiness is the name of buddha himself.This silence…you have all become one in an oceanic consciousness.Boundaries are lost,limits are forgotten…Collect this experience, because you have to carry it twenty-four hours – in all your actions and gestures, words and silences.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but come backwith your original face.Silent, peaceful, graceful – a buddha.Sit like a buddha for a few seconds, and remember it twenty-four hours.It is not an achievement, it is just a remembrance of your forgotten self.It is obvious, but it is mysterious also.Can we celebrate the gathering of the ten thousand buddhas?

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Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Buddha Emptiness of Heart 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Shoitsu said to Chizen:In the school of the ancestral teachers, we point directly to the human mind. Verbal explanations and illustrative devices actually miss the point.Not falling into seeing and hearing, not following sound or form, acting freely in the phenomenal world, sitting and lying in the heap of myriad forms, not involved with phenomena in breathing out, not bound to the clusters and elements of existence in breathing in, the whole world is the gate of liberation. All worlds are true reality.A universal master knows what it comes to, the moment it is raised. How will beginners and latecomers come to grips with it?If you don’t get it yet, for the time being we open up a pathway in the gateway of the secondary truth. Speak out where there is nothing to say; manifest form in the midst of formlessness.During your daily activities responding to circumstances in the realm of distinctions, don’t think of getting rid of anything. Don’t understand it as a hidden marvel – with no road of reason, no flavor, day and night, forgetting sleep and food, keep those sayings in mind.If you still don’t get it, we go on to speak of the tertiary, expounding mind and nature, speaking of mystery and marvel. One atom contains the cosmos, one thought pervades everywhere. Thus an ancient said:“Infinite lands and worlds with no distinctions between self and others, ten ages past and present are never apart from this moment of thought.”Maneesha, the whole point of Zen, its whole philosophy, its whole theology, is contained in the present moment. If you can stay in the present moment, the doors of wisdom will open on their own. In a thousand ways the same thing has been said, again and again: This moment contains everything – the whole universe – past, present and future. This moment is all. If we can enter into this moment’s reality, we will be entering the very center of the universe, the very source of life.Zen’s interest is not in gods, not in paradises. Its interest is absolutely life, known in its eternity, with all its joys and celebrations. It is a religion of celebration. It is not sad, serious. Because it is not going to achieve anything, it cannot fail. Its victory is absolutely certain because what it is seeking is already there within you. It is everybody’s life source. Combined, it becomes the life source of the whole universe. We are just small branches coming out of the universal source.The moment you realize your universality, all your anxieties appear to be so trivial, so tiny…just the very realization of your eternity makes them disappear, they become shadows. The moment you realize your life source, they lose their reality. In other words your anxieties, your problems and your anguish are real if you don’t know yourself. That is your life, if you don’t know your life source.What has come to be known as existentialism in the West must have preceded Gautam Buddha in the East. Existentialism says life is nothing but anguish, anxiety, angst; it has no meaning. There is only failure; that is your destiny. It gives a very dark color, a very negative approach, to existence. Listening to the modern existentialists one can only feel that perhaps suicide is the only way out. Life in every possible way is going to be full of anxiety.My own understanding is that before the time of Gautam Buddha there must have been the same kind of feeling in the East, that life is meaningless. I know the names of at least three people who were very famous in those days, but all their literature has been destroyed because their whole point of view was against life. One was Sanjay Belattiputta, another was Ajit Keshkambal, and the third was Gosal. These three people were as intelligent as any Gautam Buddha. But they preached that life is meaningless; all the meaning that you give to it is your imagination. It is just a hope that keeps you going on, through all the sufferings, through all the meaningless incidents. And from the cradle to the grave, you will not find a single place where you can rest. It is just restlessness.But with Gautam Buddha, things took a different turn – a turn which is enormous. The West needs a Gautam Buddha; otherwise the idea of meaninglessness, anxiety, anguish, is bound to create the idea of suicide as the way out. Gautam Buddha accepts everything that existentialism says, but he says life is meaningless and full of anxiety because you have not gone deep enough into your being. On the surface it is all turmoil, just as you see in the ocean: on the surface there is so much turmoil but in the depths there is absolute silence.The deeper you go into the ocean, the more silent…absolute silence. And attaining the absolute silence you start looking at things with different eyes. The same things are there, the world is the same, but because you now have different eyes, you start seeing in a different way. The same roseflower becomes so beautiful that there is no need for it to have any purpose; just its beauty is enough unto itself. The song of a cuckoo may not have any meaning but it has a beauty, a grandeur which penetrates to the very heart. And if the heart is emptied by meditation, it gives you a glimpse of authentic music, spontaneous music. Everything around you starts taking a different shape, a different context. The only change that is needed is that you go from the surface to the center of your being.Now this point is very important to understand, because a few have escaped the surface by renouncing the world. They think it is the world that is creating a disturbance, it is the world that is responsible for our anxieties. That has been the traditional attitude of the sannyasin, of the monk. Just leave this world, hide behind a monastery or behind a mountain, just to attain a little peace.But I know that even hiding behind a mountain, your mind will be the same as it was in the marketplace. It will create troubles and anxieties there, too. Perhaps more than ever, because the cold winter will come and you don’t have enough clothes, the hot summer will come and you don’t have a roof, a shelter. And from where are you going to get your food? Again you will have to come by the back door, as a beggar, to the same marketplace that you have renounced.All these so-called saints who have renounced the world have simply become dependent on the world, parasites, but they have not attained any new vision. So the way that takes you away from the turmoil is not the right way. The right way is to go as deep into the turmoil as possible, because in the depths there are no waves, there is no turmoil.My sannyasin is not to renounce anything in the world. Everything is beautiful. If it does not appeal to you, something is wrong with you. Go inside. First seek and search the source of your being, of your life. Once you have caught the roots of your being, then come out and open your eyes and you will see the same world but with a new color, with a new intensity, with a new love, with a new beauty. The same world is no more the same because you are no more the same. By transforming yourself you have transformed the whole world.It is absolutely right when Gautam Buddha says, “The moment I became enlightened the whole world became enlightened. Everything appeared to me to be a buddha, either awake or asleep. I could see, even in the flowers or grasses or stones, buddhas fast asleep.”The whole of existence is by its very nature nothing but consciousness, and consciousness can be of different depths. The stone may be very fast asleep. You cannot wake it, but that does not mean that there is no life source hidden in the stone. The stone grows. The Himalayas are growing one foot taller every year. Just stupid fellows! Already they are the tallest mountains in the world, but the same stupidity that human beings have…they go on growing.Some older mountains in India – the oldest mountain is Vindhyachal – have stopped growing millions of years ago. Seeing that there is no point…what are you going to do, unnecessarily growing high? Just enjoy. You cannot enjoy while you are involved in achieving something. When you are not involved in achieving, when there is no desire to reach somewhere, you can enjoy the moment, here, now.Zen is the religion of here and now. Always remember this context in whatsoever statements we are discussing. It is a totally different approach from that of other religions. Even the Buddhists don’t accept Zen, because Zen has such rebelliousness, such independence that it cannot accept any authority unless it is the authority of your own experience. Even Buddhists think of Zen as a little eccentric, outside the mold, not belonging to the vast stream of Buddhism.But as far as I am concerned, it is the essence of Buddha’s very heart. Without Zen, Buddhism is as dead a religion as any other religion. It is Zen which still brings flowers, it is Zen which is still a garden; all the other religions have become deserts. But why does it go on bringing flowers? Because its dependence is not on scriptures, on tradition. Its very world is limited within you, and if you change, the world around you has to change accordingly.A man like Gautam Buddha, just by being awakened, changes the character of everything around him. His vision, his radiance, his presence…at least for him it is a different world.These small statements by Zen masters have to be very carefully heard. You are not to agree or disagree. If you start agreeing or disagreeing you miss the point.Listen silently as if you are listening to the sound of a river, or the sound of the wind blowing through the pine trees. Just hear it, without bringing your mind in to say, “Yes, it is right,” or “No, it is not right.”Any statement or interpretation by your mind is going to distort the whole thing. The statement is not linguistic. It is not the language, it is something invisible, side by side with the language, that is being transmitted. So if you silently hear, the language does not matter. Your silence grows deeper – that’s what matters. What the language was saying is immaterial, it was just a vehicle.Just a few days ago Anando brought me the news. I have never thought about it, and I don’t think anybody has ever thought about it – they have just discovered that electricity does not run in the wires but along the sides, next to the wire – a fellow traveler, not inside the wire. It takes the help of the wire, but – this is a very significant discovery – the electricity is not in the wire itself.To me, it takes on a new significance: the words of the master are not the real message; the words are just like the wires for electricity. Alongside the wires runs a message invisible to the eyes, only able to be understood by an empty heart.Sit silently, in utter emptiness. Your agreement or disagreement are not needed. Just your silence deepening, your emptiness becoming more and more empty, and you have understood without even bothering about the words. Those words were all arbitrary.Shoitsu said to Chizen:In the school of the ancestral teachers, we point directly to the human mind. Verbal explanations and illustrative devices actually miss the point.The question is, how to indicate to you the way to your own heart. Shoitsu is saying that Verbal explanations and illustrative devices actually miss the point – most of the time. Once in a while, a person has understood that it is not language or philosophy, but the words are used just like a wire and running alongside is a life, an energy. That energy can be absorbed only by your empty heart. If the heart is full of things, too much furniture…life energy will not enter a space which is too full. It enters only into utter emptiness.Shoitsu is saying, we point directly to the human mind.What are we doing here? I talk with you, but that is only a preparation so that in meditation I can point directly to your heart. A certain preparation is absolutely needed to cut away all garbage, to throw out all the scriptures, to expel all the ancient buddhas and siddhas, so that you are left absolutely alone. From that point meditation can start. When your heart is utterly empty, it is not difficult to point to the source of your being.Not falling into seeing and hearing, not following sound or form, acting freely in the phenomenal world, sitting and lying in the heap of myriad forms, not involved with phenomena in breathing out, not bound to the clusters and elements of existence in breathing in, the whole world is the gate of liberation. All worlds are true reality.If you have concentrated your life energy in the empty heart, then all that is false simply disappears and only the real remains. Then the whole world is real, then there is no need to say that it is illusory. It has been said to be illusory by those escapists who wanted to run away from it. They needed some excuse. They called this whole world, all relationships, everything, illusory – just like dreams.I have always wondered…I have met with many escapist saints and I have asked them, “If you really see that this world is illusory, made of the same stuff as dreams are made of, why are you escaping from it? What is the point? According to you the world does not exist. You are renouncing a non-existential world!”If the world does not exist, then why not enjoy it? Have good, nice dreams – drop nightmares! Sort things out: whatever is a nightmare, drop it.And that is what happens when a man reaches his center. That which is a nightmare – and your whole life up to now has been a nightmare – simply disappears. And a tremendously beautiful world arises out of the ashes of the old world that you used to know. It looks the same but because your vision is different, it is not the same.Not a single saint I have met – and I have been roaming around for almost thirty-five years and I have met almost all kinds of saints, Hindu, Jaina, Mohammedan, Christian – not a single one has been able to answer a simple question: if the world is illusory, then it does not matter, let it be there; where are you going? Escaping from a world that is illusory is so stupid an act. If the world is real there is some point in escaping from it if you don’t want it. But it is illusory! And if illusions arise out of your mind, then wherever you go, the illusions will arise.A great saint was dying and he said to his successor, a young man, “Remember one thing: never allow a cat in your life,” and he died. A big crowd had gathered to listen to the last statement of this great saint…and what a sentence! “Never allow a cat in your life.” The successor said, “My god, why should I allow a cat in my life in the first place? And this is the whole religion?” But an old man – who was also a disciple, but was not chosen as a successor because he was too old; he was himself going to die within a year or two – said, “You don’t know, there is a long story behind it. He has just given you the punch line.”He said, “Then I must know the whole story.”The story was that when the saint renounced his wife and children and his home and went into the Himalayas, he lived near a small village. Otherwise, from where will you get your food? But the villagers were happy that they had a saint of their own, so they made a small bamboo cottage for him.The Indian monks used, in place of underwear, just a long strip of cloth called langot. It is a “mini” – mini-est – because just a long strip…they wrap it around themselves. They were allowed to have only two langotis. But a trouble arose: some rats came into the house and they started chewing on the langot. The man was in a great difficulty; he had only two langotis and soon they would be gone. So he asked the villagers, “What to do? because my sect does not allow a saint to have more than two langotis. That’s the only possession allowed.”They said, “Why don’t you take a cat from the village? She will kill the rats.” It was a perfectly rational solution. So the villagers gave him a good cat, and the cat killed the rats. But the problem was, now he had to beg for his food and the cat also needed something to eat, because the rats were finished. So he had to beg for some milk for the cat.The villagers said, “This is a small village…the best thing for us is that you have a cow. The whole village can contribute some money and purchase a beautiful cow, and in that way you will become very independent. You can have enough milk for yourself and for your cat.”It looked right, so a beautiful cow was brought in. Now the problem was that the cow needed grass. So every day he had to go to the village to beg for the grass. People said, “This does not look right. A great saint asking for grass? In fact no saint has ever asked for grass; it is not conventional.”He said, “But what to do? My cow, my cat…”So they said, “A simple solution: we are villagers, we don’t know much about your philosophy. One woman has become a widow; her husband has died, and she has nobody. So we will persuade her. She will be really happy to serve a saint and then you don’t have to come every day. We will clear some ground by the side of your hut so she can grow grass, she can grow wheat…and she will take care of you in sickness, in illness.”The idea was right – it was always right. It was not much effort to persuade the woman; she was alone and the saint was young…there was a possibility, a hope. So she immediately agreed. She started taking care, and you know how things grow….Basho says, “The grass grows by itself.” In fact many things grow by themselves. So grass started growing, they fell in love…the woman was beautiful, the saint was young. What more is needed? They worked in the field, they started growing wheat and they started growing grass. The cat was very happy and the cow was very happy, everything was perfect. But then the ultimate – children came in, and then he thought, “My god, that’s what I had left behind! I have renounced the world – this is the whole world again! It grew so slowly that I was not aware until the children came.”Now, just because of the cat the whole world came in. The old man said, “That was the punch line. He told you, ‘Remember not to allow a cat,’ because behind the cat the whole world comes in. He was talking about his own life story, how he again became engaged in the same world – taking children to the school…and people started laughing at him: ‘What kind of saint are you? You are keeping a woman! You have fallen down from your greatness.’“But what to do now? Once you have fallen, you have fallen; it is very difficult to rise again. He thought many times to renounce again, but he thought – what is the point? Those rats are everywhere. Again the same story will start. It is better to be silent.”Your mind, your body, both need certain things. You cannot renounce the world, you can only become a beggar. But to become a beggar is not to become a saint. My understanding is clear, that you should be in the world. There is nothing to be afraid of; you should just concentrate your life energy within yourself and that makes all the difference. You remain in the world and yet you are not in the world. You are in the world but the world is not in you. And to me, that is the true definition of a sannyasin: remaining in the world, just like a lotus flower, remaining in the water but untouched by it.A universal master knows what it comes to, the moment it is raised. How will beginners and latecomers come to grips with it?If you don’t get it yet, for the time being we open up a pathway in the gateway of the secondary truth.I don’t agree on that point. Shoitsu is saying that if you cannot understand the direct pointing to your heart, then we have to descend a little lower – but that will be “secondary truth.” That will be just like the moon reflected in water; it will not be the true moon. It will be only a reflected moon. In language, truth at the most can be just a reflection. So he is saying that if you cannot get it directly, instantly, then we will have to come down to language.I don’t agree with the statement because my understanding is that you have to begin with language. You have to begin with the reflection of the moon in the water. And if you have seen the reflection in the water you can be told to look up a little: “It is only a reflection; the reality is there high up in the sky.” Language is not a secondary thing to be used when the first has failed. Language is the primary thing, to create the background for pointing directly to your innermost heart.Speak out where there is nothing to say; manifest form in the midst of formlessness.During your daily activities responding to circumstances in the realm of distinctions, don’t think of getting rid of anything.On that point I am in agreement with him.…don’t think of getting rid of anything. Don’t understand it as a hidden marvel – with no road of reason, no flavor, day and night, forgetting sleep and food, keep those sayings in mind.If you still don’t get it, we go on to speak of the tertiary,The third step, if you don’t understand the language, he says then we will have to descend even a little lower. I think that I not only disagree with him, but it is humiliating to the disciples to say, “We will have to speak on a third level.”…expounding mind and nature, speaking of mystery and marvel. One atom contains the cosmos, one thought pervades everywhere. Thus an ancient said:“Infinite lands and worldswith no distinctions between self and others,ten ages past and presentare never apart from this moment of thought.”Shoitsu is putting the bullocks behind the cart – of course there will not be much progress. The bullocks have to be in front of the cart; the words, the language, have to be a primary preparation for the ultimate understanding of your life source. There is only one way, and that is pointing directly to your heart. There are not some lower ways, some higher ways; there is only one way.He is saying, “We will try the second way, and if even that does not work, we will go still lower.” This is happening because he is putting things the wrong way round. The bullocks have to be ahead of the cart, and then everything is okay. Language, concepts, words, all have to be used in preparing the ground for emptiness. And you know by your experience here that it works. I am talking to you, I am using words and concepts; still a great silence is being created within you.This silence can be deepened by meditation. And when you are deep in meditation, silent, just a watchful witness, the direct pointing by the master can happen. I don’t have to explain it to you because you go through the process every day.A Zen poet, Kanzan wrote:Talking about food won’t make you full,babbling of clothes won’t keep out the cold.A bowl of rice is what fills the belly;it takes a suit of clothing to make you warm.And yet, without stopping to consider this,you complain that buddha is hard to find.Turn your mind within!There he is!Why look for him abroad?This small haiku says much more than Shoitsu, and clearly. Two things:Talking about food won’t make you full; babbling of clothes won’t keep out the cold. A bowl of rice is what fills the belly; it takes a suit of clothing to make you warm. And yet, without stopping to consider this, you complain that buddha is hard to find. Turn your mind within! There he is! Why look for him abroad?You have been looking for him outside for centuries, for many, many lives. It is time to give a chance to your interiority. Look for him withinwards, and what you have not found outside, you will find, without fail, inside. Nobody in the whole history of consciousness has failed to find the buddha if he has looked withinwards. Without any exception, everybody who has looked in, has found the buddha. You cannot be an exception. You cannot be, because life itself in its purity is the buddha.Maneesha has asked:Osho,When we function from the periphery, when we function out of unawareness, it seems that our energy gets caught up somehow and so our maximum energy is not available. Is it true that when we function from our emptiness, we could have access to unlimited energy?Maneesha, what you are asking is almost true. Just on one point you have to be reminded – that when your energy is not involved in anything…Your last sentence is, “we could have access to unlimited energy.” When your energy is not involved in anything, you will not be there. So the question of your access to unlimited energy does not arise. You will be ultimate energy; it will not be something that will be available to you. You will have merged with it, you will be it.Never think in terms of separation. It is just one experience: you and the cosmos becoming one. There is no need…the whole cosmos is you, so never think in terms of access, achievement. Those words are wrong words. They are perfectly usable in the ordinary world, in the ordinary-world matters, but as you enter in, you are entering into a different dimension of being where you have never been. All your words will defy you. Whatever you experience will not be possible to express. And finally there will be no one to express it.The ultimate experience is when you disappear, when there is nobody but pure awareness. It will not be your awareness or my awareness, it will be simply awareness.Before we enter into the meditation, Sardar Gurudayal Singh has to be given a chance….Popova the Russian mouse gets a visa to visit the West. Her friend, Barbarov the elephant, hears the news and wants to go along too. After a little hesitation, Popova agrees to take her friend with her.The little mouse bakes a beautiful loaf of French bread, slices it in half down the middle, and puts one half along either side of big Barbarov.At the Moscow airport, the police officials check Popova’s papers and her baggage, and then wave her through. Barbarov, the elephant, is stopped.“Where are your papers?” asks a policeman.Popova the mouse turns around, really pissed off. “What’s the matter with you guys?” she squeaks loudly. “Can’t I even take a sandwich with me?”Swami Jivan Joke is sitting with his girlfriend, Ma Bliss-abyss, at the back gate.“Isn’t it wonderful?” coos Bliss-abyss. “This is our third anniversary of being together, and everything is so spiritual!”“It is?” asks Jivan Joke, shaking and trying to learn how to smoke a beedie.“Sure!” smiles Bliss-abyss, winking at several of her new boyfriends. “We’ve been together for three years, and now we are experimenting with the other side – being apart and free!”“Oh, that!” says Joke, twitching nervously, and trying to stay centered.“Yes,” giggles Bliss-abyss, “and with all this new energy and all these new friends…!”“My god!” interrupts Jivan Joke. “Are you ovulating again?”“No, silly!” replies Bliss-abyss, “but since tonight is our anniversary, what shall we do?”“Well,” says Joke, closing his eyes and trying to meditate. “Let’s do like everyone else I know is doing – let’s go in and celibate!”General Jackass, now retired, is walking down the street one day when he sees Donald Dixteen. Donald used to serve as the general’s valet during the last war.General Jackass is very happy to see Donald, and shaking hands, tells Donald that he is looking for someone to take the job as his personal butler.“You’ll have exactly the same duties you had with me in the army,” smiles the general. “You can begin by waking me up tomorrow morning at eight o’clock.”Donald takes the job, and the following morning, he rushes into the general’s bedroom and shakes him until he wakes up.Then he slaps the general’s wife on the ass, and shouts, “Okay, baby! Here’s your twenty dollars, it’s time to go home!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes, feel the body to be completely frozen.Look inwards, as deep as possible, because the life source is not very far away. It is just in your empty heart. An absolutely concentrated look into your being, and you have encountered your buddhahood.Your very life source is also the life source of the whole universe.Deeper and deeper, so that you can gather the inner experience and bring it out into your daily life.Slowly, slowlyyour buddha has to becomeyour very expression, your very lifestyle.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Let go. Just be a watcher…The mind is there, the body is there,but you are not the bodyand you are not the mind.You are just the watcher.This watcher is called the buddha.Watching, witnessing, silently your heart becomes empty. And the empty heart is the buddha.Let it sink deep, in every fiber of your being. This is the most precious moment – when you are just a witness and a tremendous silence surrounds you.It is a great, blissful evening.Your recognition of your buddha natureand your recognition that you are one with the whole…There are not ten thousand buddhas herebut just one consciousness.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back.But come back not the way you had gone in; come back more gracefully, more peacefully, more like a buddha.Sit down for a few moments to recollect the experience, to remember the space you have gone into, to remember the path that you have followed.Whatever you have experienced in your witnessing is going to affect and change your twenty-four hours’ life.Unless meditation becomes a revolution, a revolution of your whole character, it is not meditation.Meditation liberates you from yourself and brings the new, original face which we have named the buddha. Remember in your day-to-day work who you are. Let your inside affect your activities, your gestures, your language, your relations.Can we celebrate the ten thousand buddhas?

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Buddha Emptiness of Heart 01-08Category: ZEN AND ZEN MASTERS

Buddha Emptiness of Heart 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Engo said:The enlightened man enjoys perfect freedom in active life. He is like a dragon supported by deep waters, or like a tiger that commands its mountain retreat. The man who is not enlightened drifts about in the affairs of the world. He is like a ram that gets its horns caught in a fence, or like a man who waits for a hare to run against a tree stump and stun itself.The enlightened man’s words are sometimes like a lion crouched to spring, sometimes like the diamond king’s treasure sword. Sometimes their effect is to shut the mouths of the world-famed ones, sometimes it is as if they simply follow the waves coming one after another.When the enlightened man meets others who are enlightened, then friend meets friend. He values them, and they encourage each other. When he meets those who are adrift in the world, then master meets disciple. His way of dealing with such people is farsighted. He stands firm before them, like a thousand-fathom cliff.Therefore it is said that the way of the absolute is manifest everywhere: it has no fixed rules and regulations. The master sometimes makes a blade of grass stand for the golden-faced buddha, sixteen feet high, and sometimes makes the golden-faced buddha, sixteen feet high, stand for a blade of grass.On another occasion, Engo said:The universe is not veiled; all its activities lie open. Whichever way he may go, the enlightened man meets no obstruction. At all times he behaves independently. His every word is devoid of egocentricity, yet still has the power to kill others.Once the delusive way of thinking is cut off, a thousand eyes are suddenly opened. One word blocking the stream of thought, and all non-actions are controlled. Is there anyone who would undergo the experience of dying the same death and living the same life as the buddha? Truth is manifest everywhere.Maneesha, this is the last talk of the series called The Buddha: The Emptiness of the Heart.It is very appropriate – exactly the right time – that you have brought the great master Engo’s statement about the enlightened man.For centuries man has been thinking about the definition of enlightenment. A long succession of efforts have been made, but nobody has been able to bring a perfect definition of enlightenment, or of enlightened men. Engo comes very close, almost to the point; hence he has to be heard with absolute silence. He is saying something which is difficult to say. His effort is tremendously valuable.He says about the enlightened man:The enlightened man enjoys perfect freedom in active life.That is the foundation of his following statements; it has to be understood, with all its implications.The unconscious man lives according to others – either following them or denying them, but the focus is always the other. So there are followers and there are anti-followers; there are theists and there are atheists. But at the very foundation they are no different. One is positively in favor of some doctrine and one is negative, reactive, against the same doctrine, but both are hanging on to something other than themselves. They are other-oriented.I am always reminded of Jean-Paul Sartre, and his statement that “the other is hell.” He may have made it in a different context, but in itself the statement is valuable. I want you to know: the other is hell because the other takes away your freedom. It may be done very lovingly, without any bad intention. It may be done with all good intentions but that does not matter: the ancient saying is that “the path to hell is paved with good intentions.”The parents, the teachers, the neighbors, the friends – all are continuously giving a shape to your life, a style to your life. If you look into your mind you will find many voices together: your father is speaking, your grandfather is speaking, your mother, your brother, your teachers, your professors. But one thing you will not find there is your voice. Your voice has been completely repressed by other voices.Layer upon layer, you have lost track even of your own voice, of your own self, of your own face. So many masks…When a small child comes into the world, he is just a clean slate; and you immediately start writing on his slate without even bothering to ask his permission. You make him a Christian, you make him a Hindu, you make him a Mohammedan; you make him anything you want to make him – and you don’t understand that consciousness is not something that you can give a mode to, a certain pattern. What ultimately happens from all your efforts and intentions is a hypocrite, a person who knows that he is doing something but his heart is not in it. He becomes phony; he becomes a slave of all the others who surround him. Not only the living ones but the dead ones also are creating your slavery.Engo’s statement is, The enlightened man enjoys perfect freedom in active life. He is not a slave to any tradition, to any culture, to any civilization. He lives according to his own spontaneity, according to his own awareness.And that is one of the troubles: the enlightened person is bound to be misunderstood, because the whole world is full of slaves. They cannot understand the language of freedom.It is almost like selling eyeglasses to a world of blind people. Even if they have the glasses, they are of no use – they cannot see, they don’t have the eyes.A man went to one eye specialist and asked him, “Check my eyes. Do you think I will be able to read if you prescribe glasses?”The eye specialist said, “Of course you will be able to read.”He wrote the prescription and the glasses were made. But the man said, “By the way, I must inform you that I don’t know how to read.”The specialist said, “You are strange! You should have said this before, because even with glasses, if you don’t know how to read, you are not going to read.”People are carrying scriptures which describe freedom, which even talk about freedom from scriptures. People are worshipping statues of persons like Gautam Buddha whose last words were, “Remember these are my last words, my last wish: my statues should not be made.” Ten thousand sannyasins were listening, and as it happened, there are now more statues of Gautam Buddha in the world than of anyone else. A single temple in China even has ten thousand Buddhas. The whole mountain, miles long, has been carved into Buddha statues.It is strange blindness. It is strange misunderstanding….And a man of freedom is bound to be condemned by slaves because the slaves cannot accept the idea that they are slaves. So anybody who is enlightened and becomes a man of freedom, becomes a danger to millions of egos. His freedom to fly across the sky with open wings is bound to be condemned by all those who are crippled, who are caught in cages. The cages may be of gold – very precious, cozy, a good shelter – but the joy of being on your own wings in the sky, unlimited, with no barriers, no boundaries, is much more valuable than any golden cage.Engo says, The enlightened man enjoys perfect freedom in active life. He is not bound by any morality, not bound by any rules, not bound by any ethos, not bound by any society, any civilization, any culture, any education. He remains true and honest to his own being. He does not care whether his action is going against the society, whether his action is going against the scriptures. All that he is committed to is his own spontaneous response. He has no other commitments. He cannot be a Christian or a Mohammedan or a Jew or a Jaina. He can only be a human being without any fetters.But naturally he has to suffer. He has to suffer because the whole crowd is of slaves, blind people. They feel hurt – deeply hurt – by his presence, by his freedom. They continuously compare, and feel deep down guilty that they have never stood up for their own freedom. They have remained sheep, just part of a crowd; they never declared their individuality. And now there is a man of absolute freedom.Those who have any intelligence will fall in love with this man of freedom; but very few people have intelligence. Most people live without any intelligence in their life – a robot life, almost mechanical. They all are going to be against such persons – in the name of religion, in the name of morality, in the name of society. Their excuse is that these people are dangerous: if everybody starts functioning according to his own truth, then there will be no society, no state, no nation, no army, no war.The whole society is committed to such stupid things that a man of enlightened freedom cannot be committed to any of them. He cannot be Indian or French or Chinese; the whole earth is one for him. His every action is according to his own consciousness, not according to any teaching of some dead, so-called wise person. He has his own eyes to see; why should he listen to others? He has his own ears to hear; why should he listen to others? He has his own consciousness to decide; why should he follow the ten commandments of Moses, or the Sermon on the Mount of Jesus, or the Shrimad Bhagavadgita of Krishna? They may be beautiful, but they are not going to guide your life.The moment you have guidelines from others, you are spiritually a slave.In other words, Engo is saying the enlightened man lives according to his own life source, without any consideration or compromise with the crowd. He is absolutely an individualist and he wants everybody else also to be individualists.There is nothing more valuable than freedom because only in freedom can you blossom to your ultimate potential. As a slave you are crippled, you are cut, you are in a mold; you are in chains, you are in cages – different sizes of cages, different forms of cages….But remember one thing: that which has not arisen within you is always some kind of slavery.The first definition of the enlightened man is perfect freedom in active life. He is bound to be condemned, because the crowd gets disturbed. The crowd gets disturbed because such a man is going to destroy their slavery, which they think is a very cozy and safe lifestyle.I am reminded of a story.In a mountainous region, a man of freedom rested for a day in a caravanserai. That caravanserai had a beautiful parrot, and the owner had taught the parrot…The parrot was continuously asking for freedom – “Freedom!” It was strange….The stranger, an enlightened man, could not believe this whole thing. Because first you put him in the cage, and then you teach him to repeat “Freedom!” If the owner is honest, he should give him freedom!In the night, he could not resist. He woke up, opened the door of the parrot’s cage, and told the parrot, “Now the doors are open and the whole sky is yours. Get out!”And the parrot was clinging to the cage, and still shouting loudly, “Freedom, freedom!”Finally the man said, “This is strange – the door is open! Why are you clinging to the cage?”He forced his hand inside, took the parrot out – it was very unwilling, gave a good fight, scratched his hand – but the man took the parrot out, and threw it into the sky. Then, feeling a deep relief, he went to sleep. In the morning, the first thing he heard was, “Freedom!”He looked out and the parrot was inside the cage; the door was still open….Outside the cage it is such a vast life, one becomes afraid. There are enemies; there will be days that are too cold, there will be nights that are too hot, there will be times you will have to go hungry. There will be nobody continuously protecting you.Once you have become accustomed to living in a cage, freedom becomes a very dangerous idea.Twenty-one countries have decided about me, that I am a dangerous man. I have not killed a single ant in my whole life; I have never used even a paper knife, and the parliaments of twenty-one countries decide that I’m a dangerous man. And nobody asks, “What is the definition of danger? Why is this man dangerous?”I am not a terrorist, I am not teaching people how to make bombs, I am not an anarchist. But the danger is that I spread the fire of freedom. I wake people up, saying that unless you demand your freedom – from all kinds of chains, handcuffs, from all kinds of cages – you can never be a Gautam Buddha. You will never know the joys and the blessings and the ecstasies of freedom. You will never know your own eternity. You will always be afraid of death, not knowing that death is a fiction – it is very superficial, it occurs only on the surface. Inside, life continues forever and forever.But to know all this you need freedom. And this freedom is not social or political or economic; this freedom is spiritual. You need to go inside yourself and find that space which has not yet been chained. Finding that space from where your life arises, you will attain enlightenment and freedom together; they are two different names for the same, single experience.Engo says:He is like a dragon supported by deep waters or like a tiger that commands its mountain retreat. The man who is not enlightened drifts about in the affairs of the world.Just watch yourself. What have you been doing in the world? Just drifting like deadwood, no direction, no dimension, no clarity, no vision. Just following a crowd – not even knowing where you are going, just trusting that the crowd must know: if so many people are going, then we must be right because so many people cannot be wrong.And the reality is, so many people cannot be right! To be right is a very unique experience; to be right is to be enlightened.Beware of this unconscious calculation that because the whole world is doing something, it must be right; so many people cannot be wrong. This is the arithmetic we have been living. So we stumble, we grope in the darkness; we follow this man, we follow that man, and we never think, “If we are alive, then there must be a source within us – has to be – otherwise from where does our life come?”Without knowing this source, even if you are following a buddha you are going to go astray. Because every individual is so unique, you can never follow anybody.The man who is not enlightened drifts about in the affairs of the world.Your life, if it is not enlightened, is nothing but a drifting.A strange incident happened….I had gone to enroll in a college, and they gave me a form to fill out. One young man of my age was also holding a form in his hand. He looked at my form and he said, “What subjects are you filling in?”I said, “That is none of your business. You fill in your subjects.”He said, “I don’t know what subjects to fill in.”So he looked at my form, and because I had filled in philosophy, psychology and politics, he filled in the same. I said, “This is very strange.”He said, “No, because I don’t know what to do with my life.”We graduated from the same college, and then I changed to the university. And it was such a surprise: when I entered the office that same fellow was waiting there with his form! He said, “You have come! I have been wondering what to do; it has been such a joy to fill in the form according to you. Now what are you going to study for your post-graduation?”I said, “This is very stupid.”He said, “No, it has been a great relief that at least somebody knows where he is going, and I am following.”So he looked at my form, and filled in his accordingly: philosophy, religion, psychology. I said, “This is not a right way of living. It is becoming a carbon copy.”But he said, “I am perfectly at ease. If you are taking these subjects, they must be the best subjects available in the university.”I said, “I have no objection…”In one of my post-graduate classes, the professor was a very orthodox brahmin from Bengal – so orthodox that I have never come across anybody else like him. He would not teach with open eyes because there were two girls in the class: girls he cannot look at, he is a celibate. It was a good opportunity, so I slept all the time. And he thought that perhaps I was also a great celibate!So there were those two girls, and this boy who had been following me. The professor was very inquisitive. One day he got hold of me in the library and said, “It is very rare to find people these days who are committed to celibacy.”I said, “You are under a wrong impression.”He said, “Wrong impression?”I said, “Why are you closing your eyes?”He said, “I am a celibate and I don’t want to see any female face.”I said, “That is true, that is also my reason – because both those girls are not worth seeing! But it is not celibacy. Day after day, those same two girls; I simply keep my eyes closed.”He said, “My god! We are doing the same action but our reasons are so different.”And that boy was the only other person in the class. He was such a great follower, but he was at a loss for what to do – to close his eyes because I was closing mine, the professor was closing his and just those two girls…But he was very much interested in those girls, although the girls were not showing any sign of interest in him. He was very disappointed. He told me, “You will have to help me. You have always helped – since I entered college you have been of great help; now you have to help.”I said, “What is the problem?”He said, “The problem is that I try in every way to talk to those girls but they don’t take any interest in me; they don’t even care about me. They pass by me as if I am not there – it hurts.”I said, “You have to do something rightly.”So I wrote a love letter for him, and I said, “Tomorrow you deliver it yourself.”He said, “This is very dangerous; you have made me sign it. You have written all these things and if I am caught, if the girl freaks out, or anything…”I said, “You don’t be worried; I will prepare the girl, because I have taken the responsibility. That’s why I am saying tomorrow you deliver it. Just give me one day’s chance to prepare the girl.”I told the girl, “This boy is very poor – spiritually poor – he needs compassion.”The girl said, “What can I do?”I said, “You don’t have to do anything. He will deliver a love letter to you tomorrow; you accept it with a smiling face.”She said, “You are creating trouble. I don’t like that fellow.”I said, “There is no question of liking or not liking; you can even hate that fellow. But receiving the letter, just like a nice lady…it is not against any manners, any etiquette.”She said, “If you say, I will accept the letter.”Then I said, “It is not the end. You have to write a letter too.”She said, “My god! You are creating trouble for me. If my father comes to know” – and her father was the collector of that city – “if he comes to know…He is a dangerous fellow, he can even shoot. He goes on shining his gun every day, and he has told me, ‘Don’t get involved in any love affair; otherwise somebody is going to be shot!’”I said, “I will prepare your father, you don’t be worried. If anybody is going to be shot, I am the fellow who is ready because I have nothing to lose. It is perfectly good, he can shoot me. But you will have to write a letter, because this fellow just needs a hope. Don’t write too many sweet things, just…”She said, “Okay, I will try. But I don’t know, I have never written a love letter.”I said, “My god…I will write it.” So I wrote a love letter and she signed it.A few love letters were exchanged and finally the girl came to me to say that, “My father seems to be getting suspicious. You have put me into trouble, because now that boy has at least seven letters signed by me.”I said, “That boy is not a real person, he is a carbon copy. Don’t be worried about him. I will take back all your letters.”I told the boy, “Listen, the father of the girl is very dangerous and he keeps polishing his gun.”He said, “My god! And you never told me before? Where does he live?”I said, “He is a collector and he lives in the city, three or four miles away from the university. But now your life is in danger.”He said, “You wrote those letters…”I said, “It does not matter who wrote them. What matters is who signed!”He said, “Now save me somehow, I don’t want to get into trouble. If I had known that love means trouble, I would not have fallen in love.”So I said, “You give all those letters back to me.” He said, “Then what will happen to my letters which are in the girl’s hands?”I said, “I will take back those letters too.”He said, “Don’t forget! because those seven letters will keep me always falling in love. Just I have to copy one letter, because I cannot manage…you have made such beautiful letters. I don’t care that the girl is lost, but those letters I would miss my whole life!”I took back the letters from both sides.After ten years, I found him in another city. He had become a professor, and he had a wife and children. I said, “You managed perfectly well.”He said, “The whole credit goes to you. Those letters worked miraculously. I tried them on many girls and was refused, but this girl…”And I saw why this girl…because she was not much of a girl. She even had some mustache growing! I said to him, “You are a fool! You should have at least asked me. I would have managed some other girl. There are so many girls – the whole world is full of girls, and you are such a nice looking fellow.”He said, “Something is wrong with this girl?”I said, “It is not a girl at all! Look at her mustache.”I have come across only two women: one was this girl, and one was the daughter of one of my principals; she had a little beard. I think it is perfectly good, there is no harm, but I said to that fellow, “You are an idiot from the very beginning, and without my help you should not have taken this step.”He said, “Now it is too late. I have got three children.” All ugly! I told him, “It was absolutely certain that you would do something nasty like this.”He said, “Is there something wrong with my children?”I said, “Will you ever mature? I don’t think so, in this life.”He said, “But everybody says, looking at my children, ‘How nice they look!’”I said, “Whenever somebody says to a woman that her child looks very nice, that simply means that the child is ugly.”I told him about an incident that happened in a bus:A woman was holding her child, and an old drunkard came across, looked very closely at the child, and said, “My god! This must be the ugliest child in the whole world!”The woman started crying and weeping; these things are not to be said. But a drunk fellow…The bus was stopped, because the driver said, “It doesn’t seem right that the woman is crying.” So he went to the woman, and he said, “Don’t cry. That fellow was a drunk. And I don’t know what he has said to you, but I will bring you a cup of tea.”So he brought a cup of tea and gave it to the woman, and said, “Just drink the tea and forget what that drunkard did. And I have also brought a banana for your monkey.”People never think, what kind of children they are having. That drunkard was at least honest, and the driver was also honest.But unconscious people go on doing things without any reason and rhyme. The unconscious man is basically a follower in every dimension of life. He doesn’t have the sense to find a direction for himself. He is always looking for somebody to guide him. He is bound to fall into a long dark night which has no end.One thing has to be decided by every individual – particularly my people have to decide it – to find your own life source, to find out what your potentials are, and let them grow. Even if you go against the whole world, at least you will be fulfilled in your freedom. Otherwise you become just driftwood; anybody can give you a shape, anybody can give you a direction, anybody can give you guidelines.Engo continues:He is like a ram that gets its horns caught in a fence, or like a man who waits for a hare to run against a tree stump and stun itself.The enlightened man’s words are sometimes like a lion crouched to spring, sometimes like the diamond king’s treasure sword. Sometimes their effect is to shut the mouths of the world-famed ones, sometimes it is as if they simply follow the waves coming one after another.When the enlightened man meets others who are enlightened, then friend meets friend. He values them, and they encourage each other…to go even beyond enlightenment.When he meets those who are adrift in the world, then master meets disciple. His way of dealing with such people is farsighted. He stands firm before them, like a thousand-fathom cliff.Therefore it is said that the way of the absolute is manifest everywhere: it has no fixed rules and regulations. The master sometimes makes a blade of grass stand for the golden-faced buddha, sixteen feet high, and sometimes makes the golden-faced buddha, sixteen feet high, stand for a blade of grass.You all know about a Zen master who was staying in a temple, just for the night. It was a cold night, and in Japan the Buddha statues are made of wood – in India they are made of marble; you will not find even one single wooden Buddha in India. But in Japan they use wood, and very aesthetically.There were three Buddhas in the temple, and it was a very cold night, so the master took one Buddha, and built a fire.The priest of the temple lived nearby. He suddenly saw light and fire inside the temple. He came running, he said, “I was from the very beginning suspicious; your every activity seems to be out of tune with others. What have you done? You have burned one of my Buddhas! I gave you shelter, and this is the way you have shown your gratefulness!”The master took his staff and started looking in the ashes – Buddha was gone. The priest said, “What are you doing now?”He said, “I am looking for the bones.”The priest said, “You are really crazy! It was a wooden Buddha, and wood does not have bones.”The master said, “You are intelligent, you can understand. Now look: the night is only half gone and it is so cold. You have two Buddhas more, and while a living buddha is suffering from cold, you are protecting your wooden Buddhas. Just bring one of the Buddhas here!”The priest just took hold of the master and forced him out of the temple, shouting that “You will destroy my whole temple!”And in the morning he saw that the same master…just in front of the temple there was a milestone. The master has picked a few wildflowers and has put those wildflowers on the stone, and is sitting in deep meditation by its side.The priest said, “My god! He has destroyed a Buddha in the night, and now on a milestone he has put flowers as if it is a Buddha – and next to it he is sitting in deep meditation.” So he came out, shook him and said, “What are you doing?”He said, “I am worshipping the Buddha. If you can worship wood, what is wrong in worshipping a stone? Your Buddha was a little shapely, a well-cut design. My Buddha is raw. But it is a perfect Buddha as far as meditation is concerned. I can use anything to show my gratitude; the whole existence is one.”A man of enlightened freedom can make a blade of grass stand for the golden-faced buddha, sixteen feet high, and sometimes makes the golden-faced buddha, sixteen feet high, stand for a blade of grass.He is not confined by any rules and regulations; he is not confined by any etiquette or manners. His freedom is total. He acts out of his spontaneity, love, compassion, but he does not follow any rules. You cannot expect of a buddha that he will do the same thing tomorrow that he did today. He will say, “Today is today, and tomorrow is tomorrow. Today this is my response, in this context; tomorrow the context will be different, and my response is going to be different. I respond to situations not with any prejudice, but with a pure, empty heart.”On another occasion, Engo said:The universe is not veiled; all its activities lie open. Whichever way he may go, the enlightened man meets no obstruction. At all times he behaves independently. His every word is devoid of egocentricity, yet still has the power to kill others.Once the delusive way of thinking is cut off, a thousand eyes are suddenly opened. One word blocking the stream of thought, and all non-actions are controlled. Is there anyone who would undergo the experience of dying the same death and living the same life as the buddha? Truth is manifest everywhere.The enlightened man lives a life of freedom; he also dies a death of utter freedom. Neither life can make him a slave, nor death.Gautam Buddha himself, one day in the early morning twenty-five centuries ago, told Ananda, “Call all the monks together under those two saal trees” – which he always loved; he used to sit under those saal trees for meditations or for his talks. He said, “Arrange a bed for me under those saal trees because I am going to leave the body. And inform everybody that if they want to ask any question, they should ask.”All the monks gathered, they had tears in their eyes. But Buddha said, “Tears won’t help. If you have any question you can ask, because tomorrow I will not be here.”The elder, enlightened disciples said, “You have spoken for forty-two years; you have said everything that is needed for a seeker. We don’t have any question; just relax peacefully.”So Buddha closed his eyes. He said, “First I will leave the body, then I will leave the mind, then I will leave the heart and disappear into emptiness.”A man from the nearby town, who had been postponing for thirty years because Buddha was coming and going through his town again and again…he wanted to meet Buddha, he wanted to ask something, but there was always some excuse – a customer suddenly came, and now he cannot leave the shop, or his wife is sick, or some other business, or he has to go to somebody’s marriage. So many times Buddha passed through the town, and he had the idea to meet him.He suddenly heard that Buddha was going to die. Now no excuse could prevent him. He rushed to the outside of the city where Buddha’s campus was. And he went there and said, “I want to ask one question!”Ananda said, “Now we have told him there is no question, and he has closed his eyes. We don’t know how far he has gone, but we cannot call him back. It will be too ungrateful. He has passed through your town so many times, what were you doing?”He said, “Always some excuse…”But Buddha opened his eyes. He said, “Ananda, let him ask the question so that in the coming centuries nobody can blame me that somebody asked a question and I did not answer.”“But,” Ananda said, “you were almost dead!”He said, “Almost, but not completely. I had left the body, I had left the mind; I was just going to leave the heart when I heard. It does not matter if I delay a little more before disappearing into the ultimate emptiness, but this poor fellow should not remain unanswered.”A buddha lives in freedom in his life, and lives in freedom even in his death. Death for him is just an episode like other episodes of life.Kanzan wrote:People ask the way to cold mountain.Cold mountain? There is no road that goes through.Even in summer the ice doesn’t melt.Though the sun comes out, the fog is blinding.How can you hope to get there by aping me?Your heart and mine are not alike.If your heart were the same as mine,then you could journey to the very center!Kanzan is saying that followers are not needed. Following is a kind of aping, it is not human. But there is a different way of being with a master and that is to bring your heartbeat in tune with his heartbeat. Then you can travel as a fellow traveler to the ultimate center of existence. This can be remembered as a criterion: if anybody tries to be your master, in a very subtle way he is trying to impose a slavery on you.The authentic master is master of himself. He does not want followers, he wants friends, fellow companions, fellow travelers, who are ready to be in tune with his heart, in tune with his emptiness. The people who pretend to be masters and are followed by others…they even count!I met one shankaracharya and he asked me immediately, “How many people follow your philosophy?”I said, “Neither do I have any philosophy, nor have I met any follower. I have friends all around the world. At the most I can say that I am in love with thousands of people. Their hearts have come to a certain synchronicity with me but they are not my followers.”But that old shankaracharya said, “Unless you have followers, a great following, you cannot be counted as a great master.” He said, “I myself have five thousand followers.”I said, “You can believe that you are a great master, but according to me you are a great slave-creator. You are taking people’s freedom. You cannot be a compassionate sympathizer; you are really bragging about your followers the same way somebody brags about his money, somebody brags about his political power. You are not an authentic master.”That night in Firozabad I had to speak. The shankaracharya had called a meeting and he had invited me, not knowing much about me. And in the morning in the discussion it became clear that he had been absolutely wrong in inviting me because on every point I discussed with him I had told him, “You are absolutely wrong.”In the meeting that night – there must have been at least fifty thousand people there – he had arranged for four criminals to be standing behind me, so that if I said anything against the tradition or scriptures, then they should immediately put out the light and hit me as much as they could.But his secretary became a little worried, so he came to me just as I was leaving for the meeting. He said, “This is the situation. My suggestion is that you should not go, because this is his sheer violent mind. He could not win on a single point in the morning discussion” – and it was a small group of his great disciples. “It is very risky for you to go.”I said, “Don’t be worried.” When I arrived I told the people gathered there, “You see the four persons standing behind me? These are all criminals, they belong to your town and you know perfectly well who they are. What can be the purpose for them to stand behind me? Their plan is that the moment I start speaking they will put the lights off and hit me or kill me. What do you want? Should I start? Just raise your hands! I don’t care about my life; I only care about my freedom. If you are ready to listen, then at any risk I am going to speak. But you can see this violence in the mind of your shankaracharya. These are his people.”Those fifty thousand people raised their hands, and shouted that I should speak, and “If anything happens to you the shankaracharya will not leave the stage alive.”I spoke, and I hit him as hard as possible. Those four criminals – everybody recognized them; they were from the town – simply disappeared, because this was very dangerous; now they could not put the lights off. Fifty thousand people were with me.And they were all really the shankaracharya’s people, but they could see that this was sheer violence; it did not show the intelligence or wisdom of an old shankaracharya. It showed his stupidity. If he could not answer he should accept defeat, but this is not the way to behave. And he had invited me to come – from Bombay I went to his place. I was alone, all the people were his people, but even his people could see that this was not the way of any enlightened person.The enlightened person is not violent. And to make somebody a disciple, according to me, is a very subtle violence. You are destroying that person’s individuality. You are taking his freedom in your hands.In this place everybody is an individual; nobody is superior and nobody is inferior. This is a gathering of people who are in love, of people who are in an inquiry for truth. This kind of gathering has disappeared from the world. You are living these moments here with me – it is almost the same climate as Gautam Buddha created, the same climate as Mahakashyapa created. It is a different air, it is an air where everybody’s potential is respected, loved. Where everybody’s freedom is the ultimate value.Maneesha has asked a question:Osho,I find it more difficult to disidentify from my feelings than from my thoughts. It seems that this is because my feelings are more rooted in my body. Are feelings closer to the head, in fact, than to the empty heart?This is a fallacy created by the poets. Your thoughts, your feelings, your emotions, your sentiments, all are centered in your head. It is just a fallacy to think that your feelings are in the heart. Your heart is just a blood pumping station.When we are talking about the empty heart, we are really talking about the empty mind. Buddha has used the word heart instead of mind because mind has become associated with the idea that it is only the process of thinking, and the process of feeling is in the heart, and the heart is deeper.These ideas have been created by the poets. But the truth is, you can call it empty mind or you can call it empty heart; it is the same. Emptiness – you are just a watcher and all around there is nothing with which you are identified, there is nothing to which you are clinging. This non-clinging watchfulness is the empty mind, no-mind, or empty heart. These are simply words. The real thing is emptiness – of all thoughts, feelings, sentiments, emotions. Only a single point of witnessing remains.And you will find it difficult. Disidentifying from thoughts is easier because thoughts are more superficial. Disidentifying from the feelings is a little difficult because they are deeper, and they are rooted more in your biology, in your chemistry, in your hormones. Thoughts are just floating clouds. They are not rooted in your chemistry, in your biology, in your physiology, in your hormones, they are just floating clouds without any roots. But feelings have roots, so it is difficult to uproot them.It is easy to become watchful about the theory of relativity. It is difficult to be a witness of your anger, your love, your greed, your ambition. The reason is they are rooted more deeply in the body. But if you can disidentify yourself from the body, there is no difficulty.And, Maneesha, being a woman it is a little more difficult. There are differences between men and women….Mulla Nasruddin was reading his newspaper and suddenly called his wife and said, “I have caught four flies: two are males and two are females.”The wife said, “My god, how did you manage to know their sex?”He said, “Easy! Two were reading the newspaper with me for hours. And two were sitting on the mirror, completely glued.”So it is a little difficult. But witnessing is such a sharp sword – it cuts thoughts, feelings, emotions, in a single blow. And you know it by experience now: as you go deeper in your meditation, the body is left far behind, the emotions, the thoughts…only the witnessing remains. That is your authentic nature. The emptiness of the buddha’s heart…when you are so empty, you are one with the buddha. You are one with all the buddhas of all times, past, present, future.Another question:Osho,Recently, I said I felt aware of an emptiness inside, and how strange it was to relate to life feeling like that. You suggested I act all those things one has to do in everyday life.When I don't remember to act, most of my communication with people – to a greater or lesser extent – feels something like Engo's ram with its horns entangled in a fence.But, remembering to act, I feel disengaged from people; there is a distance from people, and so they don't affect me. Yet curiously, the better I act as if I am loving, the more loving I feel.Can you explain this?It is part of hypnotizing yourself. This is an ancient strategy: “Act as if you love.” That “as if” will be forgotten soon and you will start thinking that you love. But this love is the love of the hypocrite.I don’t want you to begin with “as if.” Just be the buddha – why “as if?”Look at Sardar Gurudayal Singh. Do you think he is laughing “as if?” This is a spontaneity. I am not telling you to do anything as an actor. Be authentic, be honest, be totally sincere whatever the consequence, but never move from your center of truthfulness.Now Gurudayal Singh has laughed and I have to tell a joke. He starts it and I cannot disappoint him.“What are those two insects doing, Daddy?” asks Little Gertrude, who is walking around the garden with her father.“Well,” mumbles her father, “you remember what I told you about the birds and the bees? That’s what they are doing.”“But they are not birds and bees,” protests Gertrude.“I know,” says her father, “they are called Daddy Long Legs.”“Oh!” says Gertrude, thinking for a while. “So that means,” she continues, “that the one underneath is a Mommy Long Legs, and the one on top is Daddy Long Legs.”“No, it’s not quite like that, dear,” replies her father, “they are both Daddy Long Legs.”Gertrude thinks again for a moment, and then stomps on the insects.“Why did you do that?” asks her surprised father.“Why?” repeats Gertrude. “I’m not having that sort of thing in my garden!”There is a Saturday night shoot-out in the O.K. Saloon, and the air is thick with lead bullets.Suddenly, the doors swing open, and in walks a man who strides straight across the room and up to the bar. Immediately, all the shooting stops.The barman pops his head up from behind the counter. “Friend,” he says, “that took real courage to walk through those blazing guns without even looking left or right!”“Not at all,” replies the man, looking around, casually. “You see, I owe money to everyone here!”Olga Kowalski comes bouncing enthusiastically downstairs in her new Kung Fu outfit.Kowalski takes one look at her, and puts his hand over his face.“Good God, Olga!” groans Kowalski. “Now what are you doing?”“I’m taking Kung Fu lessons,” says Olga, proudly – and she playfully slices the air with her hand, giving Kowalski a punch on the neck.“It is just in case,” explains Olga, “some sex-fiend tries to rape me on some dark night.”“Why bother?” remarks Kowalski, slurping his beer. “It will never get that dark!”“And Miss Willing, is this the man,” screams the clever lawyer Boris Babblebrain, and pointing, “who you claim has violated you, and forcibly taken advantage of your hot, naked, helpless, female body?”“Yes! Yes!” shouts Miss Willing, excitedly. “That is the man who did it to me!”“And please tell the court,” continues Babblebrain, his nose in the air as he strides over to the jury, “just when did this carnal and erotically perverse act occur?”“Yes, sir,” replies Miss Willing. “As I remember, it was last June…and July, and August!”Nivedano…(Drumbeat)(Gibberish)Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Be silent, close your eyes.Let your body be completely frozen.Look inwards, just as a witness.The mind is there, the body is there, but you are neither the mind nor the body. You are just a watcher, a pure witness. This witnessing is the way to your life sources.The deeper witnessing becomes, the farther away is the mind, the body; the deeper you go, the closer you come to an illumination, to an explosion of light.Suddenly you recognize, you are a buddha.All around is emptiness. Just at the centeryou are the buddha, the watcher.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Relax, to make it completely clear that the body is separate, the mind is separate, you are only the witness. In life, in death, everywhere you are a witness.This witness never dies.It is your eternity.This is your buddha.Remember it – you have only forgotten.It is not an achievement, it is just a remembrance. Hence it is easy to carry it around the clock doing all kinds of things, actions, gestures…you can still allow a small stream of remembrance that you are a buddha. But remember it is not “as if.”The buddha is your authentic nature.Nivedano…(Drumbeat)Come back, but don’t come the way you have gone in. Come with a new grandeur, with a new grace, with a new bliss…with a taste of your authentic nature.You have been to your own roots and those roots go deep down into the universe. Now you are becoming acquainted with the path…it will become deeper every day, more and more, as you gather courage, as you start feeling more peace, more silence, more transformation.Your remembrance of being a buddha will continue, sitting, walking, waking or sleeping. This is the greatest treasure you can find in the universe – this empty heart of the buddha.Can we celebrate the buddhas’ gathering?

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Meditativeness and science are difficult to reconcile. Yet painting a picture, writing a poem, and solving a scientific problem all bring the same joy; the same joy!Why is it so difficult to be meditative and a scientist?Why has there never been a society in which the inner and the outer sciences, the science of gentleness and love and the science of aggression and death, live in harmony?The very effort to reconcile the polar opposites is wrong – you will never succeed in it. It is like trying to reconcile day and night, it is like trying to reconcile life and death. You need not reconcile them, you have only to see that they are reconciled. Day and night are moving perfectly in rhythm; life and death are like two wings of existence.Once you see that the polar opposites can’t exist separately, once you have seen that reconciliation is not needed at all, that they are already reconciled, that awareness will help you to move from one pole to another without any problem. They are totally different phenomena – polar opposites – but all polar opposites are also complementary.Science is concentration; it is mind, it is effort. Meditation or religion is a totally different world; it is relaxation, it is let-go – it is not concentration at all. It is not one-pointedness, it is no-pointedness. So how can you reconcile them? How do you reconcile work and rest? But you work hard in the day, and at night the rest comes of its own accord. You have earned it; your hard work brings rest.Philosophically reconciliation is not possible: work cannot be rest, rest cannot be work. If you try to create a synthesis you will destroy both, the beauty of both. Work is work, rest is rest. But work done well brings rest, and if you have rested well in the night; in the morning you will feel so vital, so alive, so full of energy, that work is needed. Rest brings work, work brings rest – it is a circle. Reconciliation is already there: day brings night, night brings day; life brings death, death brings life. They are half-circles; with both together the circle is perfect and complete. But please don’t try to reconcile them in theory, in philosophy.In existence watch, and see how polar opposites are functioning together, hand in hand, as complementaries. That has not been done yet; in fact, humanity was not mature enough to do it up to now. Everything needs a particular time, a particular maturity.The East has lived religiously – that is one pole – and because it has lived religiously it has not been able to produce science. The West has lived scientifically, and because of its science it has lost track of religion. Now for the first time, the East is no more East and the West is no more West. The earth is becoming one, the earth is becoming one global village. This is the time when the reconciliation can be seen, can be understood.Man is entering into a new phase, a new consciousness is about to dawn. For at least ten thousand years, as far as consciousness is concerned, nothing new has happened. There have been buddhas and there have been Albert Einsteins, but we are still waiting for a buddha who is also an Albert Einstein or an Albert Einstein who is also a buddha. The day is coming closer and closer.In his last days Albert Einstein was very much interested in meditation, in religion. His last days were full of wonder. He said in his old age, “I used to think when I was young that sooner or later all the mysteries of existence would be solved, and I worked hard. But now I can say that the more we know, the more mysterious existence turns out to be. The more we know, the less we know, and the more we become aware of the vastness…”Science has not been able to demystify existence. Now this is recognized not by ordinary technicians but by geniuses, because they are the pioneers; they can see the dawn very close by, they are the prophets. Albert Einstein says that science has failed in demystifying existence, that on the contrary it has mystified things even more.For example, it was so easy in the old days, just a hundred years ago, for the scientist to say that all is matter. Now matter has disappeared; in neo-physics there is no entity called matter. The deeper the physicist went into the world of matter, the more matter was not to be found at all – it is pure energy. How to define energy now? Is it material? Energy cannot be material; energy is something totally different from matter. Matter is static, energy is dynamic; matter is a noun, energy is a verb. Matter is measurable. That is exactly the meaning of the word matter; it comes from measure, the root means measurable. Matter can be measured, that’s why it is called matter. Energy is immeasurable, it cannot be called matter. And as the physicist has entered into the world of energy, he has become more and more puzzled; never before has he been so puzzled.Mystics have always been in awe before existence. The physicist is for the first time in awe, because he has for the first time touched something very vital; otherwise he was just looking from the outside. A stone is just a stone from the outside. The physicist now knows that the stone is not just a stone – it contains universes. A single small pebble that you can hold in your hand contains so much atomic energy that the whole universe can grow out of it, contains so much atomic energy that the whole universe can be destroyed by it. It is not just a pebble any more and it is not solid any more. You are holding it in your hand and you know it is solid, but your knowing is no longer scientific. It only appears solid; it is liquid. And it looks so available, manipulatable, you can do things with it. But you don’t know its mysteries which are not manipulatable, and the mysteries are really immense – almost as immense as the mystery of God itself.The modern physicist is using the language of the mystics for the first time. Eddington said, “The universe no longer looks like a thing but like a thought.” This, from the mouth of a scientist, a Nobel prize-winner – the universe looks like a thought and not like a thing? That means the universe is more consciousness than matter. And matter has been analyzed, our penetration has become deeper; we have come across atoms, electrons, neutrons – and we are utterly mystified, at a loss even to express what we have come across. We don’t have the language, the right language for it, because we have never known it.Now the right language has to be found in the words of the mystics. A buddha will be helpful, a Lao Tzu will be helpful. And scientists are looking into the words of the buddhas to find the right language, because these are the people who have been talking about paradox, mystery. And now science is coming across paradoxes.The greatest paradox is that the electron behaves in such a mysterious way that the scientist has no language to express it. It behaves simultaneously as a particle and as a wave. This is impossible, inconceivable for the mind. Either something is a particle or it is a wave; the same thing cannot be both at the same time.You know Euclidean geometry: either something is a point or something is a line; one thing cannot be a point and a line together at the same time. A line means many points following each other in sequence; a single point cannot function like a line. But that’s how electrons are functioning – simultaneously as a point and as a line, as a particle and as a wave. What to make of it? How to say it?The scientist is dumb. Now he knows that the mystics, who have always been talking in paradoxes, who have been saying God is far away and very close by, must be saying something through their experience. The mystics who used to say that life and death are one, not two, for the first time are becoming relevant to the scientist’s mind. A new science is arising which says it is a science of uncertainty. No more certainty – certainty seems to be too gross.Twenty-five centuries ago Mahavira used to begin each of his statements with a perhaps. If you asked him, “Is there a God?” he would say, “Perhaps.” In those days it was not understood at all – because how can you say, “Perhaps”? Either God is or is not. It seems so simple and so logical: “If God is, God is; if he is not, he is not. What do you mean by ‘perhaps’?”Now it can be understood. Mahavira was using the same language in religion that is being used by Albert Einstein in physics. Albert Einstein calls it the theory of relativity. Mahavira has called his philosophy exactly the same: sapekshawad – the theory of relativity. Nothing is certain, everything is flexible, fluid. The moment you have said something, it is no longer the same. Things don’t exist, Mahavira says, but only events.That’s what modern science is saying, that there are no things in the world, but only events. And we cannot say anything absolutely, we cannot say, “This is so.” Whenever somebody says absolutely, “This is so,” he is behaving foolishly. In the past he was thought to be a man of knowledge; the more certain he was, the more it was thought that he knew. The uncertain person, the hesitating person, was thought to be ignorant.That’s why Mahavira could not influence the world very much; he had come too early, he arrived before his time. Now is the time for him – now he will be understood by the scientist, by the highest intelligence in the world. But he was talking to people, the ordinary masses, who could not understand his syatvad, his “perhaps-ism.” People wanted certain knowledge: “Is there a God?” And Mahavira would say, “Perhaps. Yes – in one way it can be said yes, and in another it can be said no. And both are right together, simultaneously.”Now the time has come. Ananda Prabhu, don’t try to reconcile things – that will be a false phenomenon. Just watch, just look deep into things as they are. They are already reconciled; there is no conflict in existence. All contraries are complementaries.You say: “Meditativeness and science are difficult to reconcile.” If you try to reconcile them it is not only difficult, it is impossible. It cannot be done. You will go mad – the very effort to reconcile them will drive you crazy. Avoid such an effort. Rather, on the contrary, simply watch.Life is paradoxical. It is already a synthesis of paradoxes; the opposites are already meeting in it. All that we need is a pure mirror-like consciousness, so that whatsoever life is, it is reflected. And you will see in that reflection the meeting of the opposites: the meeting of East and West, the meeting of religion and science.You say: “Yet painting a picture, writing a poem, and solving a scientific problem all bring the same joy; the same joy!” Yes, they can – because art is just in the middle, equidistant from religion and science. Art has the qualities of both. One aspect of art is scientific, the technological aspect. Hence the scientist can paint and enjoy painting, and will have the same joy, and the mystic can also paint and will have the same joy as in prayer, as in meditation. Although both are doing the same thing, the mystic’s painting will be totally different from the scientist’s painting.You can look: modern painting in the West is too much under the influence of technology. It has lost beauty; it is no longer helpful in bringing you to the divine presence that permeates existence. On the contrary, it simply reflects the insane mind of man. Looking at Western painting you will feel dizzy, nauseous, ill.Zen masters have also painted, but their painting is totally different. Watching a Zen painting you will feel uplifted; a feeling of subtle joy will arise in you. You would like to dance or sing or play on your flute. The Zen painting comes from the other side, the mystic’s side. Picasso, Dali, and others come from the side of science. Now, there is no similarity between a Picasso painting and the painting of a Zen master, no similarity. They are two totally different worlds, and the reason is that the painters are different.Yes, Ananda Prabhu, you may be feeling the same joy in painting, writing a poem, and solving a scientific problem. It is all mind. Solving a scientific problem is mind; your poem will also be more or less mathematical, logical. It will have only the form of poetry but its spirit will be prose.That’s why in the West poetry is dying, painting has become ugly, sculpture is no longer representative of nature. Something immense is missing – the spirit, the very spirit of art is missing. Looking at a Zen painting you will be overwhelmed; something from the beyond will start showering on you.Have you watched a Zen painting closely? There are a few things you will be surprised to see. Human figures are very small, so small that if you don’t look minutely you will miss them. Trees are big, mountains are big, the sun and moon, rivers and waterfalls are big, but human beings are very small.In the Western painting the human being is very big; he covers the whole canvas. Now this is not right, this is not proportionate, this is not true. The human being covering the whole canvas is very egoistic – but the painter is egoistic. The Zen master is right: man is only a tiny part in this great universe. The mountains are big and the waterfalls are big and the trees are big and the stars and the moon and the sun – and where is man?Just the other day I was looking at a Zen painting. The men were so small, two small figures crossing a bridge, that I would have missed them because tall mountains and trees were covering the whole painting. But there was a note underneath the painting saying, “Please don’t miss, there are two human figures on the bridge.” Then I had to look very closely – yes, they were there, two human figures, very small, walking hand in hand, passing over the bridge. This is the right proportion, this is a non-egoistic painting.In Western paintings you will find the whole canvas covered. In the Zen painting only a small part of the canvas is covered, and the remaining part is empty. It looks like a wastage; if you are going to make such a small painting, why not use a small canvas? Why use such a big canvas which covers the whole wall, and just in the corner make a small painting? But the Zen people say that’s how things are: “Emptiness is so much all around. The whole sky is empty – how can we leave out the sky? If we leave out the sky the painting will be untrue.”Now no Western painting has that vision, that we are surrounded by emptiness. The earth is very small, humanity a very small part of the earth, and infinite emptiness all around. To be true, to be existentially true, the emptiness cannot be left outside; it has to be there. This is a different vision, from a different side.Zen painting is not done in the Western way. In the Western painting you will find that the painter goes on improving; on one coat of paint there will be another coat of paint and still another coat of paint, and he goes on improving and touching up and doing things. Zen painters cannot do that, that is impossible. They use a certain kind of paper, rice-paper, on which you can make only one stroke. You cannot correct it, you have to leave it as it is. The paper is so thin that if you try to correct it the whole thing will be lost. Why is rice-paper being used? So that the mind has nothing to do – the mind is constantly trying to improve, to make things better. It has to be from the heart, a single stroke. If your heart is full of it, it will come right. But you cannot correct it, correction comes from the mind.Zen painting is never corrected; if you correct it your correction will always show that you are not a master. It has to come out of your meditativeness, your silence. Your feeling of the moment is spread on the rice-paper.Art is just in the middle, equidistant from science and religion. It can be both. It can be scientific art, as it is in the West – that’s what you mean, Ananda Prabhu. It can be religious art – you don’t know anything about that yet, because before you can know anything about it you will have to know what meditation is.Meditation is not a state of concentration, it is not a state of mind at all. It is a state of total mindlessness – and not a state of sleep either. No mind, no sleep; no mind, but total awareness. Out of that awareness you bring a different quality to music, to painting, to poetry – and out of that meditativeness you can bring a totally different quality to science too. But before that can happen we will need large numbers of meditative people around the earth.That’s what my work is. That’s what I am trying to do here: to create meditators, that is the first requirement. If we want to bring a new world vision where science and religion can meet, we will have to create the foundation first; only then can the temple be raised on it. Meditation has to be the foundation.So don’t try to reconcile things, just become more meditative. In your meditation is reconciliation, because in your meditation you become able to see that the contradictions are only apparent, that the contraries are only enemies on the surface, but deep down they are friends. It is like two friends playing chess; on the surface they are enemies, but deep down they are friends. That’s why they are playing chess – they are friends; but because they are playing chess they are pretending to be enemies.This is the leela of existence, the play of existence. God has divided himself into two, because that is the only way to play hide-and-seek. It is a very beautiful play if you understand it as play. Don’t take it too seriously because then you will not be able to see the playfulness of it.You ask me: “Why is it so difficult to be meditative and a scientist?” It is not. To be meditative is difficult for everybody; it is not only a question for the scientist. You are a scientist. But it is the same difficulty as a businessman will feel, it is the same difficulty as the carpenter will feel. It is not only new to the scientist. Maybe quantitatively it is a little more difficult, because his whole mind knows only one way of functioning, that of concentration. He knows only one way, how to use the mind by focusing it on a certain object. And meditation means remaining unfocussed, just remaining open, open for everything.While listening to me you can listen in two ways. The scientific way is to concentrate – what I am saying, concentrate on it. That means close your mind to everything else: the airplane passes by, and the train makes a noise, and the traffic on the road and the birds singing in the trees – close your mind to everything. Just let there be only a small keyhole available to me; listen only to me. That’s how the scientist listens; he looks through a keyhole into existence.The mystic comes out of the room, stands under the sky, utterly open to everything. That is the other way of listening, the way a meditator listens. Then you go on listening to me, and the chirping of the birds goes on as a background to it. And the chirping of the birds cannot disturb what I am saying – no, not at all. It enhances its beauty, it gives it color, it gives it music. And not only the chirping of the birds but the airplane passing by and sudden noise create more silence in contrast.When the airplane has passed by, you are suddenly listening to me on a deeper level. And while the airplane is passing and the noise is there, you listen to both. You don’t become disturbed. You don’t say inside, “This stupid airplane is disturbing me.” The airplane cannot disturb you. But if you say inside, “This stupid plane is disturbing me,” your saying it will be a disturbance; when you are saying it you will lose track of me. The airplane cannot disturb, but your reaction to it is bound to.Listening meditatively means all that is, is accepted, welcomed. In all its multiplicity the universe is received. You are simply open from all sides to all that is happening. And you will be surprised. It brings such a great silence, such exquisite silence, such profound silence.Concentration tires you, meditation never tires you. But it is difficult for everybody, not only for the scientist – because we have become accustomed to a certain pattern of looking at things. You will have to melt your pattern; you will have to become a little more liquid, fluid, and meditation will come to you. Don’t be worried that it is difficult for the scientist; that idea can create difficulty. Once you have accepted the idea that it is difficult then it will be difficult. Don’t bring that idea; that will become auto-hypnotic, it will become a suggestion. It is not difficult, meditation is the simplest and the easiest thing in the world. We have just become accustomed to concentration. We have been told since childhood to concentrate; from the primary school to the university we have been trained for concentration. This is a kind of habituation; it takes a little time to drop the old habit and to learn something which is not a habit but your very nature.You say: “Why has there never been a society in which the inner and the outer sciences, the science of gentleness and love and the science of aggression and death, live in harmony?” Now the time has come. Everything can happen only at a particular time. Religion has come to its ultimate peak in the buddhas; now science is also coming to an ultimate peak. And only when two things have grown is a meeting possible.A seed cannot meet a tree; the seed will have to become a tree. Only then, high in the winds, in the clouds, can they whisper to each other, can they fall in love with each other, can they embrace each other, hug each other – they can have a dialogue. But a seed cannot have a dialogue with a grown-up tree, it is impossible. The seed will not know the language, the tree will not understand the language of the seed.Religion has been in a mature state for almost five thousand years. Science is still coming, growing. Hence I say this time is one of the most precious times. You are fortunate to be alive today, because something immensely great is going to happen – and that is the meeting of science and religion, the meeting of West and East, the meeting of the extrovert mind and the introvert mind. It will create the new man who will be able to move easily to the outside or into the inside, who will be able to move easily into the extrovert world of science and into the introvert world of religion – just as you move outside your house into the garden and back into the house. It is not a problem, you don’t need any reconciliation. Each time you come out of your house onto the lawn you need not make great effort – you simply come out. It is feeling cold inside, and the sun is beautiful and warm outside, you come onto the lawn, you sit on the lawn. Later on when it becomes too hot you simply move in because there is coolness inside.Just as easily as you come out of your house and go in, a total man will be able to move into science and religion; the inner and outer will both be his.Carl Gustav Jung has divided human beings into two: the extroverts and the introverts. His categorization is relevant for the past but will be utterly useless for the future, because the future man will be both together. In the past, we have always been categorizing in this way, but the future man will not be a man and will not be a woman. I am not saying biologically – biologically the woman will be a woman, and the man will be a man. But spiritually, the future man will have as many feminine qualities as the woman, and the woman will have as many masculine qualities as the man. Spiritually, they will never be labeled as man or woman any more. And that will be the real liberation – not only the liberation of women, but the liberation of men too – liberation from straitjackets, liberation from imprisoning categories, liberation from all labels.Man is not going to be Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian; man is not going to be Indian, German, English; man is not going to be white or black. Not that colors will disappear – the white man will be white and the black will be black – but these will become irrelevant, trivial, meaningless, they will not be decisive. The new man will have a universal consciousness, and the foundation will be laid by the meeting of science and religion.The second question:Osho,Can Buddha or Christ be created or developed out of every common human being? Or is Buddha or Christ only born as such? Every man is Buddha, every man is Christ – I feel it is not true.Buddha or Christ cannot be created because the buddha is your intrinsic nature. It need not be created. It has not to be developed either; it is already there, it is already the case. It has only to be unfolded, it has to be discovered.The treasure is there; you have to find the key to unlock the door. The treasure is not to be created, the treasure is not to be developed, you only have to find the right key. You have forgotten about the key – the key is also with you. Existence provides you with everything that is needed on the journey, you come absolutely prepared. But society disturbs every child, distorts every child, because a buddha or a christ is useless to the society; they don’t serve any utilitarian purpose.What can you do with a buddha? What purpose is he going to serve? He will be a beautiful flower, but flowers don’t serve any purpose. Flowers have to be enjoyed, appreciated, loved. You can dance around them, you can drink their beauty, but they are not commodities in the marketplace. What can you do with the full moon? You cannot sell it, you cannot purchase it, you cannot be profited by it. You cannot have a bigger bank balance because of the full moon.Hence the society is not interested in a buddha or a christ. A buddha is a full moon, a buddha is a lotus flower, a buddha is a bird on the wing. The buddha is poetry, the buddha is a song, the buddha is a celebration. Because they are utterly beyond utility, the society is not interested in them. Really, it is afraid of these people. It wants you to be slaves, to be cogs in the wheel of the society. It wants you to be servants to the vested interests. It does not want you to be rebels – and a buddha is bound to be a rebel.A buddha cannot follow stupid commandments given by the politicians or the moralists or the puritans or the priests. And these are the people who are exploiting humanity, oppressing humanity. They start destroying every possibility of every human child of ever becoming a buddha. They start crippling, they start poisoning. And down the centuries they have learnt many ways to poison. It is a miracle that once in a while a child has escaped – must have somehow been a mistake on the part of the priests and the politicians that a child escaped from the trap and became a buddha.Every man is born to be a buddha, every man has the seed of buddhahood in him. But I can understand your question.You say: “I feel it is not true.” Yes, if you look at the masses it doesn’t seem to be true. If it were true there would be many buddhas, but one rarely hears about a buddha. We only know that somewhere, twenty-five centuries ago, a certain Siddhartha Gautam became Buddha. Who knows whether it is true or not? It may be just a myth, a beautiful story, a consolation, an opium for the masses, to keep them hoping that one day they will also become buddhas. Who knows that Buddha is a historic reality?And so many stories have been woven around the Buddha that he looks more like a mythological figure than a reality. When he becomes enlightened, gods come from heaven, play beautiful music, dance around him. Now how can this be history? And flowers shower on him from the sky – flowers of gold and silver, flowers of diamonds and emeralds. Who can believe that this is history?This is not history, true, I agree. This is poetry. But it symbolizes something historical, because something so unique has happened in Buddha that there is no other way to describe it than to bring poetry in. Real flowers have not showered on Buddha, but whenever somebody becomes enlightened the whole existence rejoices – because we are not separate from it.When you have a headache your whole body suffers, and when the headache goes your whole body feels good, a well-being. We are not separate from existence. And until you are a buddha you are a headache – a headache to yourself, a headache to others, a headache to the whole existence. You are a thorn in the flesh of existence. When the headache disappears, when the thorn becomes a flower, when one man becomes a buddha, a great pain that he was creating for himself and others disappears.Certainly – I vouch for it, I am a witness to it – certainly the whole existence rejoices, dances, sings. How to say it? It is nothing visible, photographs cannot be taken of it. Hence the poetry, hence these metaphors, symbols, similes.It is said that when Buddha was born his mother immediately died. It may not be a historical fact, it may be. But my feeling is that it is not a historical fact – because it is said that whenever a buddha is born, the mother immediately dies. That is not true. There have been many buddhas – Jesus’ mother did not die, Mahavira’s mother did not die, Krishna’s mother did not die. Maybe Siddhartha Gautam’s mother died, but it cannot be said that whenever a buddha is born the mother dies, not historically.But I know it has some significance of its own which is not historical. By “the mother” is not really meant the mother; by “the mother” is meant your whole past. You are reborn when you become a buddha, your whole past functions as a womb, the mother. And the moment a buddha is born, the moment you become enlightened, your whole past dies. That death is necessary.Now, this is absolutely true. It happened with Mahavira, with Krishna, with Jesus; it has happened always. To say it, it is said that whenever a buddha is born the mother dies. You will have to be very, very sympathetic to understand these things.I can understand that it is difficult, looking at the greater humanity, to see that there is any possibility of every human being becoming a christ or a buddha. Looking at a seed can you believe that one day it can become a lotus? Just looking at the seed, dissecting the seed, will you be able to infer, conclude, that each seed is going to become a lotus? There seems to be no relationship at all. The seed looks nothing, and when you dissect it you find nothing in it, only emptiness. Still, each seed carries a lotus within it – and each human being carries the buddha within him.You ask me: “Can Buddha or Christ be created or developed…?” No, they cannot be created and they cannot be developed – they have to be discovered, they have to be uncovered. They are already there. You just have to reach your innermost core and you will find the buddha enshrined, you will find the christ. Christ and Buddha mean the same: the ultimate state of consciousness.And you say: “…out of every common human being?” I have never come across a single common human being. I have come across thousands of people, I have looked into the depths of thousands of different people, but I have never come across a common, ordinary man. Every human being is unique, extraordinary, uncommon, exceptional. Existence never creates common human beings, it only creates unique consciousnesses.Drop this idea of a common human being. This is an insult to humanity.And you say: “…is Buddha or Christ only born as such?” No. Nobody is born as such. We are all born alike. That too is again a trick of the mind to avoid growing. If it is settled that a buddha is born as a buddha, and Christ is the only begotten son of God, and Krishna is a reincarnation of God, this is a beautiful strategy to avoid. Then what can we do? If we are not buddhas it is not our fault – we are not born like that. And if Buddha is a buddha, so what? He is born a buddha. No credit to him, he has not done anything special. If we were born like Buddha we would be buddhas too. But we are born as common human beings.This is a strategy. Very cunning is the mind, and subtle is its cunningness – beware of it. Nobody is born as a buddha and yet everybody brings the potential of being a buddha. And don’t say, “I feel it is not true” – because how can you feel unless you have become a buddha? You can only infer, you can only think, you cannot feel.Listen to me! I feel that everybody can become a buddha. And I feel it because I was also a common human being – and then suddenly this explosion, then suddenly this light, then suddenly this meditativeness blossomed. You can also become a buddha, it is your birthright. Don’t be tricked by your mind – remain alert, aware.The third question:Osho,I find myself mostly attracted to women and very rarely deeply to a man. I am a little bothered about it. Could you please say something about it?Sex has been called the original sin – it is neither original nor sin. Even before Adam and Eve ever ate the fruit from the tree of knowledge they were having sex, and all the other animals in the Garden of Eden were having sex. The only thing that happened after the eating of the fruit of knowledge was awareness – they became aware of it. And by becoming aware of it they became ashamed.Why did they become ashamed? From where did this shame come? They became ashamed because they saw that they were behaving just like other animals. But what is wrong in behaving just like other animals? Man is an animal too. But the ego came in; the fruit of knowledge created the ego. It created superiority, the idea of superiority: “We are superior human beings. These foolish animals, if they do certain things they can be forgiven. But we cannot be forgiven – this is below our dignity.”Sex is such a fundamental activity in nature that the ego of man started trying to get rid of it.The first thing I would like you to remember: sex is natural. There is no need to make any effort to get rid of it – although I know a moment comes when you transcend it – but that is something totally different. It is not by your effort that you can get rid of it; if you try to get rid of it you will fall a victim of perversions. Because for centuries man has been trying to get rid of sex he has created many kind of perversions. Homosexuality has arisen because we have deprived people of heterosexuality. Homosexuality was born as a religious phenomenon in the monasteries because we forced monks to live together in one place and nuns to live in one place, and we separated them with great walls.Still now there are Catholic monasteries in Europe where for twelve hundred years not a single woman has entered – not even a six-month-old baby, female baby, has been allowed to enter. What kinds of people are living there who are afraid of a six-month-old girl? What kinds of people? Must have become very much perverted, must be very much afraid they might do something. They cannot trust themselves.Homosexuality is bound to happen. It happens only in monasteries and in the army – because these are the two places where we don’t allow men and women to mix. Or it happens in boys’ and girls’ hostels; there also we don’t allow them to mix. The whole phenomenon of homosexuality is a by-product of this whole stupid upbringing. Homosexuality will disappear from the world the day we allow men and women to meet naturally.From their very childhood we start separating them. If a boy is playing with girls we condemn him. We say, “What are you doing? Are you a sissy? You are a boy, you are a man. Be a man, don’t play with girls!” If a boy is playing with dolls we immediately condemn him: “This is for girls.”If a girl is trying to climb a tree we stop her immediately: “This is not right; this is against feminine grace.” And if a girl tries and persists and is rebellious she is called a tomboy, she is not respected. We start creating these ugly divisions. Girls would enjoy climbing trees; it is such a beautiful experience. And what is wrong in playing with dolls? A boy can carry dolls, because in life he will have to meet dolls and then he will be at a loss – what to do?This whole phenomenon has nothing to do with you personally. It is a social disease spread all over the world.Two English gentlemen of the old school were discussing old acquaintances one evening in their London club. “What,” asked one, “ever became of old Cholmondeley?”“Why, didn’t you hear? Cholmondeley went to Africa on a game hunt, and, by Jove, the chap took up with an ape!”“An ape? Is the old boy queer?”“Heavens, no! It was a female.”If it is a female, even though an ape, it is perfectly okay.We create these conditionings so deeply that out of so much conditioning sometimes people start revolting against them. Sex should be taken very naturally – we have been taking it very seriously. Either we condemn it as ugly, animalistic, or we raise it to something divine, but we never accept it as human and we never accept it as fun. Basically it is fun, it is a good sport. And humanity is going to remain burdened with ugly nonsense if we don’t accept its beauty as a sport. It is good physical activity too, and the best of exercises.You can ask the heart specialists. Now they say sexual activity prevents heart attacks. One thing is certain, that no man has ever had a heart attack while making love. In every other kind of activity heart attacks have happened, but never making love. Have you ever heard that anybody had a heart attack making love and died? No, never. It is a natural physical activity, and fun, a good sport.If you take it non-seriously, then there is no need to be worried even if you are attracted to women. Don’t be worried – because your worry is not going to help. It’s perfectly okay. In a really free world which is unconditioned by the primitive, ignorant past, in a really enlightened world, we will accept all these things. Yes, once in a while you may love a woman or a man. Nothing is wrong in it, because inside you both are there. Each man is both a man and a woman, and each woman is both a woman and a man, because you are born out of the meeting of one man and one woman. So half of you comes from your father and half of you comes from your mother; part of you is man and part of you is woman.So there is nothing much to be worried about. It may be that your man part is attracted toward other women, but because biologically you are a woman you feel afraid. No need to be afraid – take things easily, that is my basic approach. Take it easy. And by taking things easy one can go beyond them more comfortably, conveniently, quickly, than by taking things seriously. If you take them seriously you become entangled with them, you become burdened with them.And this is not such a big problem. There are bigger problems.The famous Greek shipowner, Ori Aristotle, was having a house built on a large piece of land in Greece. He said to the architect, “Don’t disturb that tree over there, because directly under that tree is where I had my first love.”“How sentimental, Mr. Aristotle,” said the architect “Right under that tree?”“Yes,” continued Ori Aristotle. “And don’t touch that tree over there either, because that is where her mother stood watching while I was having my first love affair.”“Her mother just stood there while you were screwing her daughter?” asked the architect.“Yes,” said the Greek shipowner.“But, Mr. Aristotle, what did her mother say?”“Baaa!”There are greater problems. Your problem is nothing – at least you are attracted to other women, at least to other human beings. Perfectly okay. A little outlandish, but not too serious. Things like that have been happening always. Now people have become more courageous, to ask questions – particularly in the West people have become more honest. Now no Indian will ask such a question – not that things like that are not happening in India. They are happening, but no Indian will have courage enough to ask such a question.I am happy you asked the question. This is sincerity, this is authenticity. One should be able to expose oneself as one is. The West is becoming freer; the East is very much repressed. And because the East is very much repressed it will take a longer time for the East to get rid of its perversions. The West is going to transcend sooner.When the Queen had her baby, she was being offered congratulations by hundreds of people when a certain gentleman walked by.“What do you do for a living?”“I’m a photographer,” he replied.“Isn’t that remarkable?” said the Queen. “My brother-in-law is a photographer!”“Isn’t that remarkable,” he said. “My brother-in-law is a queen.”Things like that are always happening everywhere. It is part of the human scene. So don’t make much fuss about it, and don’t get disturbed.You say: “I find myself mostly attracted to women and very rarely deeply to a man.” Good – at least you find yourself attracted to somebody. There is a possibility of love. There are people so dull, so dead, so insensitive, that they only feel attracted toward money, or political power, or fame. You are in a far better situation; at least you are not in love with money. Even Ori Aristotle was in a far better situation than the people who are in love with money. But these people are not thought to be perverted. They are the real perverts. Money is their whole life, their devotion; money is their god.You are attracted to women – perfectly good. Go deeply into relationship with women. If you make an anxiety out of it you will not be able to go deep in relationship with a woman. If you go deeply into relationship with women, my understanding is that sooner or later you will find that this relationship cannot be very fulfilling, because two women are alike. And a relationship needs a certain tension to be fulfilling, a certain polarity to be fulfilling. Two women in love, or two men in love, will have a good relationship, but it will not be very spicy. It will be a little dull, monotonous, a little boring.But if you go deeply, only then will you become aware of these things. Your anxiety will not allow you to go deep, and then your whole life you will remain interested and attracted toward women.My approach to all problems is that if anything is there, go deeply into it. So either you find the treasure – if it has any treasure – or you find that it is empty. In both cases you are enriched. If you find the treasure, of course you are enriched. If you find it is empty, you are finished with it.Two women in relationship can’t have a very great love affair. It will remain on plain ground, it will not have heights and it will not have depths. So people who are afraid of heights and depths will find it very comfortable, convenient. Hence the homosexuals are called gay people. They look gay; they look far more gay than heterosexuals. Heterosexuals are always going into turmoil – more conflict, more fight, less understanding. It is bound to be so, because two women can understand each other far better than one man and one woman can understand each other. Two men can understand each other far better because they are of the same type, but the spark will be missing. Yes, a certain gayness will be there, but not great poetry, not great romance – mild. The relationship will be homeopathic. It will not have adventure, surprises – safe, secure, more understanding, less conflict, less nagging.With a man and a woman there are problems – problems of misunderstanding. They live in totally different worlds; they are two different poles of consciousness. The woman thinks intuitively, the man thinks intellectually, hence there is no meeting. The woman simply jumps to conclusions without going into any thought process. And the man goes step by step, comes to a conclusion. The man tries hard to come to a conclusion and the woman simply jumps to the conclusion. She has an intuitive feeling.Hence you cannot deceive a woman, particularly not your wife. That is impossible, nobody has ever been able to do it. She will immediately see through you – through and through – because her way of seeing is not your way of seeing. She comes from the back door, and you don’t know that you have a back door too. You arrange everything at the front door and she comes from the back door and knows all the ins and outs.The husband comes home prepared. What he is going to say, how he is going to answer – he rehearses everything. And the moment he looks at the woman all rehearsing goes to the winds and he is almost like a small child, stuttering. Even a very great person like Napoleon was very much afraid of women. He was very much afraid of his own wife because she would see through him.Man’s mind goes zigzag, woman goes direct like an arrow. She does not listen to what you say, she looks into your eyes. She listens to how you say it. She sees your trembling hand, she sees your eyes are trying to avoid her. She does not listen to what you are saying; that is irrelevant – she knows that that is a story; you have managed to put it together on the way from the pub to the house. But she is more attuned to your body language. And your body language is more authentic, because you cannot yet manage to deceive with it, manage to control it. Even great actors are not able to manage their body language.For example, if somebody talks about women, you may be a celibate and you may be against all relationship and all sex – that is all in your head – but somebody can go on watching your eyes. Try this on some friend who is a brahmachari, a celibate, against all relationship and sex, and all those ugly things – just try this on him. Just start describing Sophia Loren naked: all the curves and the beautiful body. And don’t listen to what he says, look at his eyes. His pupils will become big – that he cannot control, that is beyond his control. The moment you say, “Sophia Loren!” his eyes are no longer the same. Watch how he is moving his body; he will sit erect. If he was leaning back he will come forward, closer, to listen. Although he is saying, “Nonsense! What are you talking about? This is all dirty,” he is all alert. Just now he was yawning, now he no longer yawns.This I have tried. Whenever I see that somebody is yawning somewhere, I know now a joke is needed – and immediately the yawning disappears. Even Sheela comes back from her sleep. Once she is certain that now I am going to talk metaphysics she falls asleep, she goes to sleep, she takes a rest. But the moment I start a joke, even in her sleep she remains that much alert – immediately she is back.The body has its own language just as the mind has its own language. The spirit also has its own language. A man and woman are bound to be in conflict, but that conflict takes them far away and again and again creates situations for mini honeymoons.A homosexual relationship is a little saccharine – too sweet, a little bit nauseating. But a man/woman relationship is always on the rocks. You cannot fall asleep, the other will not allow it. They go on goading each other. And they are in such different worlds – that is the attraction.Go as deeply as possible in your relationships with women – don’t be worried. Soon you will see that there is a different kind of relationship that can exist only between polar opposites. Then go into a deep relationship with a man, because only by going deep in relationship with a man will you be able to know that all relationships fall short. Even the man/woman relationship falls short; it never brings you the contentment it promises.And only by your own experience – not by what buddhas say, not by what I say – only by your own experience will you one day be able to go beyond all relationships. Then you can be happy alone. And the person who can be happy alone is really an individual. If your happiness depends on the other, you are a slave; you are not yet free, you are in bondage.When you are happy alone, when you can live with yourself, there is no intrinsic necessity to be in relationship. That does not mean that you will not relate. But to relate is one thing, and to be in relationship is quite another. Relationship is a kind of bondage, relating is sharing. You will relate with many people, you will share your joy with many people, but you will not depend on anyone in particular and you will not allow anybody else to depend on you. You will not be dependent, and you will not allow anybody to be dependent on you. Then you live out of freedom, out of joy, out of love.You say: “I am a little bothered about it.” Don’t be bothered about it at all, not even a little. Enjoy it. It is not your fault. You have been brought up by Christians, Jainas, Hindus, Buddhists – it is not your fault. What can you do? You come into a world which is already conditioned, and you come so innocent, so clean, unaware of what is going to happen to you. And your parents start writing on you, and the whole society starts writing things on you. It is not your fault, it is simply symptomatic of an ill society.We have to transform the society. But the only way to transform it is to transform individuals; there is no other way, there is no shortcut. Enjoy it, it is good – not enough but still good. It will lead you into heterosexual relationship; that is a little better. Even that is not going to satisfy. Then that will lead you into meditativeness, into solitude, into that beauty, that benediction, which happens only when you are alone.That’s what sannyas is all about: learning how to be alone and yet joyous.Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Does witnessing always bring joy? The moments that I call witnessing sometimes feel distant – almost cold in their neutrality. Other times it is like sprouting wings and soaring in joy over the open sea.The state of witnessing is neither cold nor hot. It is neither happiness nor unhappiness. It is neither dark nor light. It is neither life nor death. The Upanishads say neti neti – neither this nor that.If you feel joy you have already become identified, witnessing is gone. If you feel sad you are no longer a witness, you have forgotten witnessing, you have become involved. You are colored by your psychology of the moment. Joy, sadness – all these dualities are part of your psychology. And witnessing is a transcendence, it is not psychological.The whole art of meditation consists of witnessing. Then what does it bring? At the most we can say it brings total peace, it simply brings eternal silence. You cannot define it as joy. The moment you define it as joy you have fallen into the world of duality again. Then you have become part of what is passing, you have started clinging to it.The state of witnessing remains indefinable. That’s why Buddha has not used the word bliss at all, because it can give you a wrong idea – because in your mind bliss will mean happiness. That’s how you are going to translate it, to interpret it. Buddha has not used the word bliss, he has not used the word God.The word that he has used is absolute void – shunyam. There will be nothing left, just absolute silence, absolute emptiness – but not emptiness in the English meaning of the word. Shunyam has a totally different connotation; it has been translated and can only be translated as emptiness. But emptiness is negative, emptiness means something is missing, emptiness means loneliness. Emptiness is not a life quality but a death quality.Shunyam is not negative; it is not even positive, how can it be negative? It simply means you are alone – not lonely, but alone. You are not missing anything. You are spacious, there is great space in you, but it is not empty of something. On the contrary, it is utter plenitude. It is full of emptiness – if you allow me the expression, it is full of emptiness, but one is fulfilled.Shunyam is a blossoming in you. There is great peace but not joy, because joy becomes positive; but not sadness, because sadness becomes negative. Peace is exactly in the middle, neither cold nor hot. It is not neutrality, it is not indifference. It is not a state where you turn your back toward something, where you are no longer interested. No, there is no question of disinterest, indifference or neutrality. You are utterly there, absolutely there, totally there, but like a mirror, just reflecting whatsoever is the case.Joy passes by and the mirror reflects it, but the mirror does not become joy itself; it never becomes identified. And sadness comes like a cloud, a dark cloud, and passes by, and the mirror reflects it. The mirror has no prejudice against it. The mirror is not favorable to joy and unfavorable to sadness. The mirror has no liking, no disliking; it simply reflects whatsoever is the case. It is not neutral, otherwise it will not reflect; it does not turn its back toward things. It is not indifferent, because indifference means you are already prejudiced again, you have a certain conclusion. It is not disinterested and you cannot say it is interested either. It is a transcendence.Don’t get identified with the joy that comes – watch it. Remain a watcher on the hills, a mirror. Reflect it but don’t cling to it.A bird on the wing – and the lake reflects it. Zen people say this is the state of buddhahood. The bird has no mind to be reflected in the lake and the lake has no mind to reflect the bird, but the bird is on the wing – and the lake reflects it. You see the point: the bird has no mind to be reflected and the lake has no mind to reflect the bird, but the bird is reflected. It simply happens that the lake is there and the bird is on the wing – the reflection is bound to happen – it is natural. The bird is gone; the lake does not miss the bird, it does not hanker for it, it does not long for it, it does not hope that it will come again. It does not go into the past, into the memories, or into future projections. The bird has flown; it never thinks of the lake again, it never desires to be there again. One day it may be there again, and again it will be reflected, but no relationship is created. The happening is there but no relationship is there.This is what I call relating, not relationship. It is a fluid phenomenon. This is witnessing.The second question:Osho,Is it absolutely inevitable that a buddha will always be misunderstood?Yes, it is absolutely inevitable. It can’t be otherwise. A buddha is bound to be misunderstood. If a buddha is not misunderstood then he is not a buddha at all. Why is it so? – because the buddha lives in a state which is beyond mind, and we live in minds. To translate something from the beyond to the mind is the most impossible thing in the world. It can’t be done, although every buddha has tried to do it. That too is inevitable; no buddha can avoid it.The buddha has to say the unsayable, he has to express the inexpressible, he has to define the indefinable. He has to do this absurd act, because the moment he reaches beyond the mind great compassion arises. He can see people stumbling in the dark, he can see people suffering unnecessarily – creating their own nightmares, creating their own hell and drowning in their own created hells. How can he avoid feeling compassion?And the moment compassion arises he wants to communicate to them that this is your own doing, that you can get out of it; that there is a way out of it, that there is a state beyond it; that life is not what you think it is. Your thinking about life is just like the thinking of a blind man about light. The blind man can go on thinking about light, but he will never be able to come to a true conclusion. His conclusions may be very logical, but still they will miss the experience. Light is an experience; you don t need logic for it – what you need is eyes.Buddha has eyes. And eyes are attained only when you have gone beyond the mind, when you have become a witness to the mind, when you have attained to a higher state than psychology. Then you know that you are not your thoughts, not your body, you know that you are only knowing – the energy that reflects, the energy that is capable of seeing – that you are pure seeing.Once Buddha was asked, “Who are you?” He was such a beautiful man and buddhahood had conferred such grace on him, that many times he was asked, “Who are you?” He looked like an emperor or a god who had come from heaven, and he lived like a beggar. Again and again he was asked, “Who are you?” And the man who was asking was a great scholar. He said, “Are you from the world of gods? Are you a god?”Buddha said, “No.”“Then are you a gandharva?”Gandharvas are the musicians of the gods. Buddha had such music around him – the music of silence, the sound of no sound, of one hand clapping – that it was natural to ask him, “Are you a gandharva, a celestial musician?”Buddha said, “No.”And the man went on asking. There are many categories in Hindu mythology from gods to man. Then finally he asked, “Are you a great king, a chakravartin, one who rules over the world?”And Buddha said, “No.”Annoyed, the scholar asked, “Are you a man, or not even that?”Buddha said. “Don’t be annoyed, but what can I do? I have to state the truth as it is. I am not a man either.”Now the scholar was too angry, enraged. He said, “Then are you an animal?”Buddha said, “No, not an animal, not a tree, not a rock.”“Then who are you?” the man asked.Buddha said, “I am awareness, just pure awareness, just a mirror reflecting all that is.”When this moment arrives, great compassion happens. Buddha has said that those who know are bound to feel compassion for those who don’t know. They start trying to help. And the first thing that has to be done is to communicate to people who are blind that eyes are possible, that you are not really blind but only keeping your eyes closed. You can open your eyes. You are not born blind, you have only been taught to remain blind.Your society teaches you to be blind because the society needs blind people. They are good slaves because they are always dependent on the leaders, politicians, pundits, priests. They are very convenient people, they never create any trouble. They are never rebels. They are obedient, always ready to submit to any kind of nonsense, to any stupid politician, to any stupid priest.And in fact, who else wants to be a politician except stupid people, and who wants to be a priest except stupid people? These are the dimensions for the mediocre, for the inferior. Those who are suffering from an inferiority complex, they become politicians – just to prove that they are not inferior, to the world and to themselves.The society, the establishment, wants you to be blind. From the very beginning it teaches every child: “You are blind”; it conditions every child: “You are blind.” Your whole educational system is nothing but a conspiracy against every child – to keep you blind. It does not teach you meditation, because meditation is the art of opening your eyes.When somebody arrives at awareness he naturally feels great compassion. All around he sees that people – who have eyes, who have inbuilt capacities to see the truth, who are from their very birth capable of becoming buddhas, enlightened ones, awakened ones – are suffering. And this whole suffering is ridiculous, it need not be so. Compassion happens and compassion starts communicating, but communication is difficult, impossible.Buddha speaks from the hilltop and you live in the dark valleys where light never reaches. He talks in words of light; by the time they reach you their meaning changes. By the time your mind catches hold of them it colors them in its own color.It is not only so about buddhas – even ordinary communication seems to be impossible. The husband cannot communicate with his wife, the parents cannot communicate with their children, the teachers cannot communicate with their students. What to say about buddhas? People who exist on the same level, even they cannot communicate, because words are tricky things. You say one thing, but the moment it reaches the other person then it is in his power how to interpret it.The Queen was traveling in England’s back country when she saw a man, his wife, and a flock of children. Impressed, the Queen asked, “Are all of these your children?”“Yes, Your Highness,” answered the man.“How many children do you have?” asked the English sovereign.“Sixteen,” was the reply.“Sixteen children,” repeated Her Highness. “We should give you a knighthood.”“He has one,” piped up the lady, “but he won’t wear it.Or, if you have missed, another story for you:Thor, the Germanic god of thunder, was feeling restless so he decided to have a weekend fling. Taking a handful of jewels from the Valhalla petty cash department he slipped down to earth, got himself an elegant disco suit and a few gold chains, and began hitting the Saturday night dance bars.After a big night on the town he finally took home the most beautiful woman he had seen and spent the rest of the night and morning satisfying his heroic libido. When he got out of bed and began dressing he realized that the exhausted girl on the bed lacked his godly sexual stamina. By way of explanation, he leaned down over her and whispered, “Honey, I think you should know – I am Thor.”Wide-eyed, the girl exclaimed, “Thor! You big thon-of-a-bitch, I can’t even thtand up!”Ordinary communication, very mundane communication, even in the marketplace, is difficult. And a buddha wants to communicate to you something which he has found in a state of no-mind, which he has found when all thoughts disappear, which he has found when even he himself is no more – when the ego has evaporated, when there is utter silence, absolute peace, and the sky is without clouds.Now how to bring this infinite experience into words? No word is adequate enough – hence the misunderstanding.Yes, it is absolutely inevitable that a buddha will always be misunderstood. Only those few people who are disciples and devotees can understand a buddha.By disciple is meant one who has put aside all his prejudices, one who has put aside all his thoughts, and is ready to listen – not to his own mind and his mind’s interpretations, but to the words of a buddha; who is not in a state of argument with the buddha, who is not inside thinking about what the buddha is saying, who listens to a buddha as you listen to classical music, who listens to a buddha as you listen to the sound of running water, who listens to a buddha as you listen to the wind passing through the pine trees or the cuckoo calling from the distance. That is the state of a disciple.Or if you rise a little higher and become a devotee…. A devotee is one who has not only dropped his mind but has brought his heart in, who listens from the heart, not from logic but from love. The disciple is on the way to being a devotee. The disciple is the beginning of being a devotee, and the devotee is the fulfillment of being a disciple.Only these few people understand a buddha. And in understanding a buddha they are transformed, transported into another world – the world of liberation, nirvana, light, love, benediction.The third question:Osho,Jesus said that his sacrifice on the cross was for the salvation of the world from the sins of man.Please would you comment on this.The first thing to be understood about a man like Jesus is that whatsoever the church, that is bound to grow around such a man, says about him, it is bound to be wrong. What the Christian church says about Christ cannot be true. In fact the Christian priest does not represent Christ at all. He is the same old rabbi in new garments, the same old rabbi who was responsible for Jesus’ murder. The Pope is not a different kind of person.It makes no difference whether it is a Jewish establishment or a Christian establishment or a Hindu establishment; all establishments function in the same way.Jesus is a rebel, just as Buddha is or Lao Tzu is. When the church starts establishing itself it starts destroying the rebelliousness of Jesus, or Buddha, because rebellion cannot go with the establishment. It starts imposing its own ideas – once Jesus is gone it is very easy to impose your own ideas. It starts selecting what to keep in the Bible and what not to keep. Many things have been dropped, many things have not been included in it.For example, the Gospel of Thomas has not been included in the New Testament. It was discovered just a few years ago – and it is the most important gospel. The four gospels that have been included are nothing compared to it, but it is very rebellious. It seems Thomas has simply reported Jesus without polluting or contaminating his message. That must have been the reason why the gospel has not been included in the authorized version of the New Testament. And those gospels which have been included, they have also been edited. For centuries conferences went on editing them, destroying them, distorting them.I know Jesus because I know meditation. My knowing of Jesus is not through the Bible, it is not through Christian theology. I know Jesus directly. I know Jesus because I know myself; that is my way of knowing all the buddhas.The moment you know your own buddhahood you have come to know all the buddhas, the experience is the same. All differences are in the mind, the moment you transcend mind there are no differences left. How can there be differences in an absolute void? Two voids can only be exactly the same. Minds are bound to be different because they consist of thoughts. When there are clouds in the sky then each cloud is different, but when there are no clouds at all then the sky is one and the same.I don’t know Jesus through Christian theology, I know him directly. And my knowing is that he cannot talk in terms of sacrifice – the first thing, the very first. A man like Jesus does not talk in terms of sacrifice – it is celebration, not sacrifice. He is going to meet his God dancing, singing. It is not sacrifice, he is not a martyr. The Christian church tries to make him the greatest martyr, the greatest man who has sacrificed himself for the salvation of the world from the sins of man. In the first place it is not sacrifice – sacrifice looks business-like – it is celebration! Jesus is celebrating his life and his death.Secondly, nobody can solve the problems of others, nobody can be the salvation of the world. And you can see it; the world is still the same. Twenty centuries have passed and Christian priests go on talking nonsense, that he sacrificed himself for the salvation of the world. But where is the salvation of the world? Either he failed, he could not manage – that they cannot accept, that he failed. Then what happened? The world seems to be exactly the same – nothing has changed. Humanity remains in the same misery. But Jesus cannot have said, “I have come for the salvation of the world.”But it happens always when a church starts establishing itself, it has to create such ideas, otherwise who is going to listen to the priests? Jesus is salvation – not only that but the only salvation.Just the other night I was looking at a book: Jesus, The Only Way. Why the only way? Is Buddha not a way? Is Lao Tzu not a way? Is Zarathustra not a way? Is Moses not a way? Is Mohammed not a way? There are infinite ways to reach God. Why make God so poor? – only one way?But the Christian priest is not interested in God, he is interested in creating a business. He has to claim that Jesus is the only way, that all other ways are wrong. He is in search of customers.That’s why every religion creates fascists and fanatics. Every religion claims, “My way is the only right way – only through me can you arrive at God. If you go on some other way you are destined for hell, you are doomed.” This is a fascist way of thinking and this creates fanatics. And all religious people are fanatics, and the world has suffered very much from this fanatical approach. It is time, the ripe time now, to drop all kinds of fascist and fanatical attitudes.Jesus is a way, but the way has to be walked. The way can go on lying there, it is not going to help you. Just by being there, just by being crucified, Jesus cannot be the salvation of the world – otherwise it would have happened. Then what are we doing now? Then what are the priests doing now? What is the Pope doing now?Just the other day somebody asked: “Osho, have you heard? The new Pope has done a miracle?”Yes, I have heard; he has made a blind man lame. What else can these popes do? What are these popes doing now? The world’s salvation has happened. Now no religion is needed and no church is needed. Even Christ is not needed any more. The work is finished.I have heard:One young man came from medical college with a gold medal; he had topped the university. His father was also a physician. The father said, “Now that you have come I would like to go to the mountains for a rest. For years I have not taken even a single holiday. Now you look after my practice and for one month I would like to go to the mountains.”So the old man went to the mountains. After one month when he came back the young doctor received the father at the airport and said, “Dad, do you know? – The old woman whom you have been treating for thirty years and could not manage to cure – I have cured her within one month.”The father simply hit his head with his hand and said, “You have destroyed the whole business. It is because of her that you could go to medical college. And I was hoping that your younger brother would also become a doctor. You fool! What have you done? That woman was our business. You have finished my whole life’s career.”If Jesus has really done the work of salvation, then there is no point in Mohammed – Mohammed came after Jesus. Then there is no point in Nanak, the founder of Sikhism, no point in Kabir coming. He has closed the shop. But it has not happened.Buddha says: “Buddhas can only point the way.”But the fanatic disciples always want to claim… What to say about Jesus? Even Jainas claim that Mahavira came to the world for the salvation of humanity. Now it may be a little bit relevant with Jesus because he speaks in such a way that he can be very easily misinterpreted, but Mahavira is very clear. He says in absolutely definite terms that nobody can save another: “I have not come to save anybody. If I can save myself, that is enough.” Even a man like Mahavira has stated this absolutely, but his disciples – the Jaina munis and the Jaina monks and the Jaina pundits – go on claiming that he came for the salvation of humanity.Why are people after humanity? And how can you manage it? You have not created the misery for the world so how can you destroy it? If Jesus is the cause of the misery of the world, then certainly he can withdraw it. If he is the person who has imprisoned you, he can open the gates, unlock the doors and tell you to leave, and you are free. But he is not the person to do it. You have done it, your hell is created by you. What can Jesus do about it?But this stupid logic has gone very deep in the mind of humanity – for a certain reason. We always want somebody else to be responsible – for our misery, for our happiness, we always want somebody else to be responsible. We don’t want to be responsible. To avoid responsibility we become trapped in these kinds of ideas.Now, Christians say Adam and Eve committed the original sin and the whole of humanity is suffering. It is so patently foolish. Scientists say that humanity has existed for millions of years. Millions of years ago, a couple, Adam and Eve, committed a sin and we are suffering for it. Can you think of a more ridiculous thing? – that you are imprisoned because millions of years ago somebody committed a crime. You did not commit it, how can you suffer for it? And what original sin are they talking about? It is neither original nor sin. What Adam did is a simple phenomenon; he disobeyed the father.Every child has to disobey the father. Unless a child disobeys the father he never becomes mature. It is nothing original, it is very simple and natural. It is very psychological. There comes an age when every child has to say no to the parents. If he does not say no to the parents he will not have a spine, he will be spineless. If he cannot say no to the parents, he will be a slave his whole life. He will never attain to individuality.Adam and Eve did not commit any sin, they simply became mature. They said no, they disobeyed. When your child goes behind the house and starts smoking don’t be worried too much; he is simply disobeying you. That is part of growth. If he never disobeys you, be worried. Take him to the psychoanalyst – something is wrong with him. If he always obeys you then he has no soul; he is abnormal, he is not normal.Be happy when your child disobeys you. Thank existence that now he has started moving toward becoming an individual. It is only by disobeying, rebelling, that a child attains authentic individuality. If parents are wise they will be happy.And I think God cannot be so foolish as Christian priests. God must have been happy the day Adam and Eve disobeyed; he must have rejoiced. He must have sung a song, “Now my children are becoming mature.” I can’t see him being annoyed. I can’t conceive of a God who cannot understand such a simple psychological phenomenon.You have to give your God a little more intelligence than Sigmund Freud. It is such a simple fact of life that each child has to disobey. It is not sin – disobedience is not sin. And what is original about it? It is nothing unique and it did not only happen millions of years ago; it happens each time a child starts growing. You will see it happening in your child; somewhere near the age of three or four the child starts asserting his freedom.That’s why if you want to remember your life you can only remember back to the age of four or at the most three; beyond that all is dark. Why? You had no individuality, hence no memory. You attained your first individuality when you were three or four. Girls attain at about three, boys attain at about four; they are always lagging behind, and this is going to be their whole life pattern. The husband may appear to be walking ahead, but deep down he is always behind the wife.I have heard a story:The great King Akbar once asked his ministers, “My wife was saying to me that all my ministers are hen-pecked. Is it true? I want to know the truth and please don’t try to deceive me. If I find that you have deceived me, then the penalty will be death. So all those who are hen-pecked husbands stand in a row on the right, and those who are not on the left.”All except one moved to the line of hen-pecked husbands – embarrassed, hesitating, but they did not want to be false to the King. They knew perfectly well, “He will go into deep research, and sooner or later, if he calls our wives, we will be caught. So it is better to say it once and finish it.”But one man, whom the King had never thought very heroic, who was the most cowardly, was standing alone. The King said, “I am happy. At least there is one person who is not hen-pecked.”The man said, “Wait! Don’t misunderstand me. When I was coming from my home my wife said, ‘Avoid crowds.’ That’s why I am standing here – just to avoid the crowd. If she comes to know that I was standing in the crowd there will be difficulty, sir, and I don’t want any difficulties.”At about the age of three or four – that’s why I say this parable of Adam and Eve has so many aspects; I am never tired of talking about it from different angles. It was Eve who was the first to disobey – that means one year ahead. Adam came to his senses a little later; in fact he was persuaded by Eve.If the world is really left free then women will seduce men, not men women; that will be the natural course. And in fact that’s exactly what happens right now, but in a very subtle way. The woman seduces the man, but seduces in such a subtle way that the gross male mind cannot understand it. The gross male mind thinks, “I am taking all the initiative,” and the woman goes on laughing deep down; she knows who is pulling the strings. She never takes a single step on her own visibly; you cannot see it. She always allows the man to approach her; she can wait. She trusts her own capacity to pull the man. She does not want to wag her tail; she always manages, persuades the man to wag his tail.That’s what happened: Eve ate the fruit first, disobeyed God, and then Adam followed. This is not something that happened once, it happens always. It happens to every child and it is good that it happens. It is at about four that the child starts feeling a kind of individuality of his own, he starts defining himself.Lanahan, an Irish political prisoner, escaped from jail by digging a tunnel that opened into a school playground. As he emerged in the open air Lanahan could not help shouting at a small girl, “I am free, I am free!”“That’s nothing,” said the girl, “I am four.”There is a time when the child wants to declare to the world that “I am here!” that, “I am!” He wants to define himself, and the only way to define himself is by disobedience. So there is nothing original about it and nothing like sin; it is a simple process of growth. And because Christianity has been denying it as a simple process of growth, it has not helped humanity to become mature.All the religions have been trying to keep humanity immature, juvenile, childish. They are all afraid that once humanity becomes mature then they will not be of any value, they will lose all luster. They will not be able to exploit a mature humanity; they can exploit only children.So what sin has humanity committed so that Jesus was needed to come for the salvation of the world?I would like to make it absolutely clear to you that there is no need for any salvation. Secondly, if you feel there is any need, it can’t be done by anybody else except you, yourself. Thirdly, you are not living in sin, you are living in nature – but if nature is condemned you start feeling guilty. And that is the trade secret of the priests – to make you feel guilty.I don’t think Jesus said that his sacrifice on the cross was for the salvation of the world from the sins of man. Priests must have imposed their ideas on Jesus. The New Testament was written centuries afterward, and then for centuries it was edited, changed, and the words that Jesus spoke were in a language which is no more alive – Aramaic. It was not even Hebrew – a dialect of Hebrew, but different in many ways.When Jesus’ words were translated – first into Latin – a great change happened; they lost their original quality, their flavor. They lost something very essential – their soul. And when from Latin they were translated into English, something was again lost. For example, you can meditate over a few words: Repentance is one of the key words because Jesus uses it again and again, says to his disciples: “Repent! Repent ye, because the Day of Judgment is very close.” He repeats it so many times that it must have been of tremendous value to him. But what does it mean – repent? Ask the Christian priest; he will say, “This is a simple word, everybody knows what it means: repent for your sins, repent for your guilt, repent for all that you have done.” And the priest can be helpful; he can help you in the ways of repentance. But the word has nothing to do with repentance.Jesus’ word for repent simply means return; it does not mean repentance at all. It means, “Turn in, return to the source”, it means, “return to your own being”. That’s what meditation is all about – returning to the source, returning to the center of the cyclone, returning to your very being.Now you can see the difference. When you use the English word repent it has something very ugly about it – sin, guilt, the priest, confession – this is the climate of the English word repent. But the Aramaic word simply means return to the source, return. Return, don’t waste time. And that’s how it is with almost all key words.It is almost impossible to understand Jesus through the priests. The only pure way, the only possible way, is to go in, return inside. There you will meet Christ-consciousness. The only way to understand Christ is to become a christ. Never be a Christian – be a christ. Never be a Buddhist – be a buddha. Never be a Hindu – be a krishna. And if you want to be a krishna, a christ or a buddha, then you need not go into the scriptures and you need not ask the scholars. You will have to ask the mystics how to go in.That’s exactly what I am doing here – helping you to become aware of yourself. And the moment you know yourself you will be surprised – you have never committed a sin. Sin is the invention of the priest to create guilt in you.You don’t need any salvation. All that you need is a little shaking up so you can wake up. You don t need priests. You certainly need awakened people, because only the awakened ones can shake those who are fast asleep and dreaming. And humanity needs to be free of guilt, free of the idea of sin, free of the idea of repentance. Humanity needs innocence, and the priests don’t allow you to be innocent; they corrupt your minds.Beware of the priests. They are the people who crucified Jesus – how can they interpret Jesus? They are the people who have always been against the buddhas – and the irony is that finally they become the interpreters.The fourth question:Osho,Why can't I tolerate people who belong to other religions?It is because of your upbringing. You have been brought up as fascists, as fanatics – as Christians, Hindus, Jainas, Mohammedans; you have not been brought up as human beings. You are hypnotized from your very childhood, you are living in a kind of hypnosis. To live as a Christian or as a Mohammedan is to live in hypnosis, is not to live really.That’s why you cannot tolerate people who belong to other religions, because deep down you know they are wrong, they are stupid, they are committing a great crime. They have to be put right, they have to be brought under your flag, into your flock – because only Jesus saves or only Buddha saves. You cannot tolerate them because they look like pretenders.To a Christian, a Buddhist is a pretender, because God has only one son. It is very strange – why should God have only one son? Is he in favor of birth control? But Jesus is the only begotten son of God, and the Buddhists claim that Buddha has arrived, that he has attained. It becomes intolerable, the very idea. It creates suspicion in you, it creates doubt. Maybe the Buddhists are right, and you don’t want to see this doubt inside yourself, because doubt is heavy and doubt disturbs your peace and doubt disturbs your sleep.Hence you would not like to read the Buddhist scriptures, you would not like to read the Koran, you would not like to read Mahavira, because their words can be dangerous. Or even if you read them you will read them as ordinary books, because there is only one holy book, the Bible, or only one holy book, the Koran. Your book is the only holy book and all other books are unholy.There are many things involved in this attitude. And this is not only your attitude, this is the attitude of the greater masses. It is good that you have become aware of it.You ask me: “Why can’t I tolerate people who belong to other religions?” First: they create doubt in you, they create suspicion, skepticism about your own beliefs. And you are so settled with your beliefs, they are so consoling; they are like tranquilizers. And the person who lives in a different way, behaves in a different way, worships a different God, meditates in a different way, prays in a different way, he certainly creates doubt. Maybe he is right – who knows? You certainly don’t know. Whatsoever you have been told has been told by others; it is not your own knowing so you don’t have any trust in it.You have repressed your doubts deep down inside yourself. Those doubts are alive, very much alive. They are ready to explode any moment – any opportunity and they will surface. The people of other religions become an opportunity for the doubts to surface.In Jaina scriptures it is written that if you are on a road being followed by a mad elephant and you come across a Hindu temple, you can enter the temple and save your life, but it is better not to enter the temple and be crushed underneath the elephant, to be killed by the elephant. Don’t enter the Hindu temple, even to save your life! It is better to be killed, but to remain a Jaina, then heaven is absolutely guaranteed.And the same, exactly the same, is written in Hindu scriptures too, about the Jainas: don’t enter a Jaina temple. It is better to die, be killed by a mad elephant, than to be saved by going inside a Jaina temple. Why? – Because the Jaina priest may be saying something there; you may hear something that may disturb you, may create doubt inside you. And doubt is dangerous, the door to hell; belief is the door to heaven.The first thing: people who are not like you – not only religiously, but people who dress differently from you – even they are not liked.That’s why my disciples are disliked by the so-called Indian society. The reason is not that you are doing anything wrong, the reason is simply that you are different. And that is the problem; nobody likes the different person. People like you to be like them, exactly like them. Dress like them, behave like them, use the same language, go to the same temple – and then you are accepted, because you don’t create doubt.Now my disciples are bound to create doubt, my sannyasins are bound to create doubt. They are behaving in a totally different way, they are behaving with freedom, and the slaves are bound to get disturbed. Slaves of tradition, slaves of orthodoxies, they are bound to get disturbed.Just seeing a young man and a young woman walking together holding hands and it is enough to disturb the Hindu mind. It has repressed so much that all that repression starts coming up. They would also like to walk hand in hand with their beloveds but they cannot. If they cannot, then they cannot allow anybody else to do the same.In the West if you are walking hand in hand with a woman no problem arises, because the society is also the same. But walk hand in hand with a man, two men walking hand in hand, and people start looking at you. Something is wrong – you look homosexual, you look gay. It is dangerous.Now homosexuals have been one of the tortured minorities in the world, very much tortured. In some countries they are killed. In some countries, for example in Iran, if it is found that two persons are living as homosexuals or lesbians, then the only punishment is death. What nonsense. They have not committed any crime against anybody, they have not harmed anybody. Two men living together, or two women living together, this should be nobody else’s business. But there is a great fear of homosexuality, and the reason is that homosexuality has been repressed down the ages.In fact, in every person homosexuality is repressed, because there are four stages. First the child is autoerotic, then the child becomes homosexual, then the child becomes heterosexual, and the fourth and the ultimate state is that of brahmacharya – the person goes beyond sex.Each child passes the stage of homosexuality. If he passes it naturally there will be no repression, but because he is not allowed to pass it naturally, repression happens; then a hangover remains. Now these people who kill homosexuals are really homosexuals themselves – repressed homosexuals – they cannot tolerate it.It is so about everything – you cannot see the things that you are doing.For example in India – just the other day somebody asked: “I was saying good-bye to my girlfriend; we hugged and kissed and we were caught by the police. It took two hours for us to manage somehow to get out of the trouble. They were going to put us in jail and they were trying to take us to the court, to make a case….” Now, kissing in a public place. The questioner has asked, “and I see Indians pissing in public places and nobody objects. Kissing is objectionable, pissing is not?”You don’t know: this country belongs to Morarji Desai. Pissing is a holy act. If you are pissing in a public place you are doing something great – you are making the earth holy. It is not urine, it is water of life.In India you can piss in a public place, you can go and defecate anywhere. The whole country is a latrine. But that is allowed. Nobody takes any note of it. Only Westerners, when they come to India, they note it. They immediately note it – what is happening? Just coming from Santa Cruz airport to Mumbai, the whole way on both sides people are defecating – but no Indian takes any note of it.We only see things which are not accepted by us. We only see things which are strange. The Indian has lived in the same way for centuries; he is not taking any note. It is just the natural way; no question arises in his mind.You see beggars on the street. All the Westerners go on writing letters to me: “We feel very much disturbed. And no Indian seems to be disturbed at all – what is the matter? ” The Indians accept the beggars, that is accepted. They are suffering from their past karmas; nobody else is responsible for it. They have created a beautiful strategy, a defense, with this theory that everybody has to suffer according to his past lives. These people must have done something wrong, something really ugly; now they are suffering. Everybody has to pay for their past, so there is no question of compassion.In fact you will be surprised to know that there is a Jaina sect in India, Terapanth, whose head is Acharya Tulsi. This sect believes you should not help the beggar because by helping the beggar you will be disturbing his life pattern. If you help him then he will have to suffer some other time. He has to suffer. If a man has fallen into a well, don’t take him out, because if you take him out he will fall into another well some day – so what is the point? Let him suffer and let him be finished with the karma so he is free from it – one thing. And secondly, if you save this man from the well, if you take him out and he goes and kills somebody then you are also responsible for the murder. If you had not taken him out of the well he would not have committed the murder – so fifty-fifty. Then beware – in some other life you will have to suffer also. You will have to fall in some well – maybe not so deep…So on two grounds Acharya Tulsi and his sect teach: don’t help anybody. And if you look, the logic is there. If the theory of karma is right then Acharya Tulsi’s conclusion is very logical, the logical conclusion cannot be doubted. But the theory itself is an invention; you don’t suffer for your karmas in your next lives.Life is immediate: if you put your hand in the fire you will be burnt right now, not in your next life. Each karma is immediately finished. You immediately suffer or you immediately enjoy the bliss, but there is no waiting. The whole theory is nonsense. To try to postpone for other lives is a strategy – political, social.Indians can accept the beggars but they cannot accept a couple kissing good-bye. But why should you be so worried? If kissing is something bad, they may be suffering from their past karmas – let them suffer. Why should you interfere? But interference is there because you are sexually suppressed. Indian society is very much sexually suppressed, it cannot accept people who are sexually free.So, it is not only a question of religion – it is a question of everything. The different person creates doubt, the different person creates suspicion about whether what you are doing is right or wrong. You want to destroy the different person so that you can suppress your doubt again – one thing.Secondly, a person belonging to a different religion hurts your ego; you would like your religion to be the suprememost, the only religion. It hurts your ego that there are other religions also claiming the same supremacy.You have a double-bind mind: for yourself you think in one way, for others in a totally different way. If you claim your Bible to be the holy book, you don’t allow Mohammedans to claim their book to be the holy book. And the Mohammedans don’t allow the Hindus to call their Vedas the holy book. And the people who believe in the Vedas – the Hindus – they laugh at the nonsense of calling the Koran or the Bible holy books. The Vedas is the only holy book – because the Vedas are written by God himself; all other books are written by human beings. Maybe they contain something good, but written by human beings they are bound to be fallible – the Vedas are infallible.This is the way of the ego.Mrs. Keen and Mrs. Monahan were sitting on their stoop watching the apartment across the street, which was rented by a young Italian girl. As a steady stream of men entered and left at half-hour intervals they kept saying, “She is a slut. She is no good. She is a disgrace to the neighborhood.”Then after ten visitors, Father Gilhooley, the neighborhood priest, went in. “Oh my!” said Mrs. Keen. “The poor girl must be sick.”Now you see the change. Immediately a different standard is applied.Walsh stumbled out of a saloon and into a church he thought was a cathedral, and fell asleep. The sexton soon woke him and told him they were closing. “They don’t close cathedrals,” said Walsh.“This is not a cathedral,” said the sexton. “It is a Presbyterian church.”Walsh looked around and saw stained-glass windows of St. Luke, St. Mark and St. Thomas.“And since when,” asked the Irishman, “did the saints become Presbyterians?”All the saints belong to your religion.Mahavira and Neminath are not even mentioned by Hindu books – not even mentioned. A man like Mahavira remains unmentioned in Hindu books. Jesus is not mentioned in any Jewish book. A man like Jesus remains unmentioned?You apply double standards. For your own religion you have one valuation, for the others, different valuations. You don’t weigh on the same weighing machine. This is the way of the ego; it is always doing it, in every dimension of life.And let me repeat again: each religion creates fascism in you. Each religion creates Adolph Hitlers because of this idea, that “My way is the only right way.” And when you are a fascist and when you are a fanatic you are murderous. You may not murder, but deep down you are murderous. You may not murder anybody, but one thing is certain: you will murder your qualities of love and compassion and brotherhood.A group of young men – all Irish Catholics – go into a pub. They don’t greet Abbie, one of the men already standing at the bar. Paddy, one of the young Irish fellows, asks his friends why they don’t greet Abbie. “Oh, he is a Jew,” they say, “and Jews are awful people. They killed our Lord Jesus Christ.”Paddy is very upset to hear this and goes over to Abbie and starts beating him up.“Stop, stop!” shouts Abbie. “What are you doing this for?”“I’m doing it because Jews tortured Jesus and killed him.”“Yes, I know,” says Abbie, “but it is nothing to do with me. That happened two thousand years ago.”Paddy gives him another blow and says, “I don’t care. I only heard it ten minutes ago!”I don’t want you to be tolerant of other religions. Mahatma Gandhi used to teach people: “Be tolerant of other religions.” But if you become tolerant of other religions that simply means intolerance persists underground.I don’t teach tolerance, tolerance is ugly. It is better to be knowingly intolerant; at least the disease is on the surface and sooner or later you will become aware of it – as you have become aware of it. If you become tolerant, as Gandhians have become tolerant, then the disease goes deep into the unconscious. On the surface you are very polite, sweet, and you say good things, that the Bible and the Gita, they say the same thing: “Allah ishwar tere nam sabko sanmati de Bhagwan – all are names of the same God, and let God give understanding to all.” You go on saying these things, but deep down it is not so.Mahatma Gandhi prayed his whole life, morning and evening, saying that Allah and Ram are the names of the same God. But when he was shot in Delhi – by a Puneite, remember… Beware of the Puneites! The man who murdered Gandhi, Nathuram Godse, was a Puneite. Pune is one of the strongholds of Hindu orthodoxy. I have knowingly chosen a place to create trouble for you. When Gandhi was shot dead he didn’t say Allah. The last words were “Ram – Hey Ram! Oh Ram!” He forgot all about Allah.His whole life…but still deep down he knows that he is a Hindu. He says the Gita is his mother. And who is his father – the Koran? He never says anything about that. The Gita is his mother but the Koran is not his father. And he chooses words from the Koran which are really nothing but echoes of the Gita, and he also chooses words from the Bible which are echoes from the Gita. He is really clinging to the Gita; the Gita is the criterion. Whatsoever is in the Gita is right; if it is in the Koran, then too it is right because it is in the Gita. He leaves out everything that goes against the Gita. This is tolerance…I don’t teach tolerance. I teach freedom from all the nonsense of being Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. Be free from all prejudices, be just a human being. And in that freedom you will find great joy, and in that freedom for the first time you will feel love for other human beings, compassion, brotherhood. You will start feeling the whole universe as your family, your commune. And not only with human beings – when the fascist in you has disappeared and the fanatic is gone, you will even have a communion with the trees and the birds and the animals. You will be constantly in a beautiful dialogue with existence.Drop all this nonsense. To be a Hindu, to be a Mohammedan, to be a Christian, to be a Jaina, to be a Buddhist, these are stupid hangovers from the past. Be finished with them – and in a single blow – not slowly, not gradually. See the point and be finished with them right now, this very moment! Because who knows? – tomorrow may come, may not come. Who knows? – the next moment may come, may not come. This is the only moment available. Rebel against all nonsense. Be free!Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,All questions seem to be pointless. Only the answerless question of life remains.It is so. All questions not only seem to be pointless, they are. In your mind there is still a lurking doubt. Hence you say: “All questions seem to be pointless.”It is not a question that they seem, that they appear – they are. The moment you understand that they are pointless, even the answerless question of life will not remain. Then there is mystery – no questions, no answers. Then there is tremendous mystery. One is not trying to solve it because it is not a problem. One is not seeking for any answer because it is not a question. One starts living it. And the day you start living life as a mystery you have entered into godliness.Life understood as a question creates science; life understood as a mystery creates religion.And you say: “Only the answerless question of life remains.” If it is answerless, how can it be a question? A question is always a question in reference to an answer; an answer is only an answer in reference to a question. They are together, halves of one whole. If one really disappears, the other disappears automatically.That’s why I say there is a lurking doubt in you: “Maybe there is some question which is not pointless. Maybe I have still to find it. Maybe my questions are pointless, maybe the questions that I know are pointless, but who knows? – there may be a valid question, a real question.” There is none.When this becomes a trust in you and no lurking doubt remains – because it is doubt that creates the question, it is doubt that becomes a question. When there is no doubt left, when you know that nothing can be known, that knowledge is impossible; when you come to the same understanding as happened to Socrates: “I know only one thing, that I know nothing” – if that innocence happens to you, then nothing is left, not even an answerless question. The very word question becomes irrelevant.A silence is left, a deep silence and a great joy, a benediction is left. Life flows through you, passes through you, not creating any question. You simply live it.This is simplicity – not the cultivated simplicity of a sadhu or a monk. This is the simplicity of innocence, uncultivated. One has great wonder about everything, one lives in awe. One can worship a tree, one can worship a rock, because the moment questions are gone and your heart is full of the mysterious and the miraculous, your whole life becomes a prayer, a worship.It is so tremendously unbelievable that we are alive – for no reason at all – that we are breathing, that we can see, that we can taste, that we can hear, that we can love, that our hearts are beating, that life is passing through us, that life has chosen us as its vehicles. Just to know it is enough to be grateful, just to feel it is enough to be prayerful.No God is needed to pray to. If you pray to a God your prayer is false. When there is simply prayer, not addressed to anyone in particular, a kind of prayerfulness, a state of praying – not a prayer to any Hindu, Christian, or Mohammedan God, because they are all manufactured by the mind of man, they are not true. All gods are false. They are bound to be false because they are answers to certain questions – and questions are false, questioning is false, and the gods are answers to certain questions.Somebody asks, “Who created the world?” Now that question becomes a thorn in the flesh; the mind cannot rest at ease unless an answer is found. You have to invent an answer just to console yourself. Either you do it or some cunning priest will do it for you on your behalf: “God created the world.” The question was false – how can a false question lead to a right answer? The very premise was false, hence the conclusion is false.And people are so stupid that they accept such an answer: “God created the world.” And they don’t ask, “Who created God?” Yes, sometimes small children ask that: “Who created God?” Then we immediately hush them up. We say, “Wait! You are too young for such deep mysteries. When you become grown-up you will know.” As if you have known by becoming grown-up. But you cannot accept your ignorance.You are untrue even to children. You are untrue, deceiving, dishonest, insincere, even to innocent children. You go on pretending as if you know and you go on telling them that they will also know when they are grown-up, more experienced. And they will repeat the same stupidity to their own children. That’s how stupidities are perpetuated for centuries.Ask a question and somebody is bound to supply an answer. If nobody supplies, you are going to invent one yourself. This is not true religion; a religion that is based on a false answer is not true religion. And all the gods have been created in the same way, and all the scriptures too – just to console you, just to keep you in a false state of knowledge, because you are so afraid of being innocent, you are so afraid of being ignorant.Remember: ignorance is not stupidity, knowledge is. Ignorance is innocence. No question, no answer, one simply lives moment-to-moment. And one is grateful because one is. One is grateful because the universe is. One is grateful because the sun rises and the birds sing and the flowers bloom and the clouds float, and in the night the sky becomes full of stars. One is simply grateful because there are mountains and rivers and oceans and deserts. One is simply grateful because there are animals and human beings. Such an incredible existence, so far out. Such a celebration, so psychedelic, so colorful. Such a dance of energy.When feeling it you simply bow down, you simply bow down on the earth. Not in a temple, not in a mosque, not in a gurdwara, not in a church – they are all man-made. When you simply bow down before the sky, before the sunset, with no motive – what can you ask from a sunset? You cannot ask for money, you cannot ask for power, you cannot ask for prestige. It will look so stupid. What can you ask from a tree? But when you go into a temple, into a church, you start asking for these things. Your prayer is rooted in some motive, and a prayer rooted in any motive is ugly, a prayer addressed to somebody is ugly.But just a prayerfulness, a thankfulness, a pure gratitude – the sheer joy that we are part of such a mysterious existence!You are very close to understanding that all questions are pointless, but you have not yet touched the target; you are going round and round.You say: “All questions seem to be pointless.” Why do you use the word seem? There is still some possibility: “Maybe, perhaps there is a question that is not known to me yet which is not pointless.” Hence your second statement: “Only the answerless question of life remains.”Although you say it is answerless, you still call it a question. Be very watchful about words. Be very careful what you say, how you say it – because it shows your state of consciousness. You are very close, missing the target only by inches. But whether you miss the target by inches or by miles it makes no difference – you miss it all the same.Become a little more alert. Let all questions go, and all answers. Remain in that silence that is left behind. Become that silence, be that silence.C. E. Bignall says:Where shall wisdom be found.Be still and know.Seek the strength of no desire.The second question:Osho,What is true wisdom?Wisdom cannot be true or untrue. Wisdom is simply wisdom. It is truth. There is no possibility of there ever being an untrue wisdom. All knowledge is untrue, all wisdom is true. Knowledge is borrowed, hence it is untrue. It is not yours, that’s why it is untrue. It may have been true to the person who imparted it to you.The Buddha talking to his disciples is talking wisdom, but the moment it reaches the disciples it becomes knowledge. Wisdom falls from its heights to the level of the listeners and becomes knowledge.Hence buddhas have always been very much aware that they impart something of their presence, something of their silence, something of their joy, rather than imparting their wisdom. Even if they have to talk, they talk only in order to persuade you to be silent. Even if they use words, those words are used to create a wordless state of consciousness in you.So the first thing: wisdom as such is truth, it cannot be untrue. Just as light is light and cannot be dark, just as life is life and cannot be death, just as love is love and cannot be hate. If it is hate, it is not love.Wisdom is intrinsically true because it is an existential experience. It is not something known from others, it is not something gathered from the scriptures; it is something that grows in your heart. It is a growth, not an accumulation. It is experience, not information.Knowledge makes you learned, wisdom makes you innocent. Knowledge is very ego-fulfilling, very ego-strengthening. The ego feeds on knowledge; it is the best tonic for the ego. But wisdom happens only when ego has disappeared; wisdom appears only on the death of the ego. The death of the ego is the birth of wisdom.Mind is interested in knowledge not in wisdom, because for wisdom you will have to create a space called no-mind. And, naturally, mind is afraid of your ever becoming interested in wisdom, because mind does not want to commit suicide.Sannyas is a suicide of the mind, so is meditation, so is wisdom. These are different names for the same phenomenon, different aspects of the same diamond.Knowledge depends on words. You can easily become knowledgeable by sitting in a library, but you cannot become wise that way. To become wise you will have to be in communion with a wise man. For knowledge all that is required of you is that you should be a student, that you should be full of questions, inquiries; you should be able to learn from scriptures, books, teachers, universities, libraries. Your memory becomes more and more rich, your biocomputer becomes full of information, but wisdom is not arrived at that way.Wisdom is more or less a love affair with a master. One has to be a disciple, not only a student. The student keeps a distance from the master. For him the master is only a teacher; he is interested in the master because of his teaching. Really he is interested in the teaching, not in the being of the master. The disciple is not interested in teaching because he has come to understand one thing: that knowledge can be taught but wisdom can only be caught.Wisdom is contagious. You have to be available to a master, to his being. He has become a fire, the candle of your heart is still unlit. If you become available to the fire of the master you can also become a lit candle, you can also become a flame.To be aflame with silence, with joy, is wisdom. It is not through logic but through love. It is not through words but through a wordless state called meditation, or a state of no-mind, satori, samadhi.Beware of learning, otherwise you may never become wise. To be knowledgeable is very easy; it is not risky, it is safe. To move into the dimension of wisdom is risky; it is going into the unknown, into the uncharted. Great courage is needed, guts are needed.And when you have tasted something of wisdom, knowledge looks so stupid, so utterly stupid. But if you have not tasted anything of wisdom, knowledge seems to be of tremendous value.Zalewski got a job as a delivery boy in a pet shop. One day he was told to deliver a pet rabbit to Mrs. Caldwell, Route 2 – Box 4.“You better write that down in case I forget it,” said the boy.Slipping the address into his pocket, Zalewski started off on his errand. Every few minutes he glanced at the address and said, “I know where I am going: Mrs. Caldwell, Route 2 – Box 4.”Everything went smoothly until he hit a huge hole in the road. The truck landed in a ditch and the rabbit began to run for its life across an open field.Zalewski stood there laughing uproariously. A passerby stopped and asked, “What’s so funny?”“Did you see that crazy rabbit running across that field?” said the Polack. “He does not know where he is going because I have got the address in my pocket.”That is the state of the knowledgeable man: he has got the address in his pocket. He knows where God is, he knows where heaven is, he knows where hell is. He knows everything – all is in his pocket. He carries scriptures, and he believes in the letter and he misses the spirit. He goes on believing in words, he believes too much in the words. And words are useful if you can understand the spirit that is hidden behind them, that is not so apparent, not so visible.In the hands of a meditative person words can become of infinite value, because they can be indicators. But in the hands of non-meditators words are dangerous, very dangerous, because the spirit is completely missed and one starts believing in the hollow, empty word, and one starts following the word.That is what is happening to the Christians, to the Hindus, to the Mohammedans, to the Jainas, to the Buddhists – all are believers in words. Somebody believes in the Koran and somebody in the Gita and somebody in the Bible, and they all are missing the spirit. Because to know the spirit of the Bible, you will have to come to certain inner spaces where you become acquainted with Moses, with Jesus…. Unless you have a direct, inner contact with Moses and Jesus you will not understand the Bible.But following the word you may look very important – to people who are just like you, not different in any way. They also believe in words, you also believe in words; both live in the same kind of ignorance. This is not wisdom.Wisdom is an interior phenomenon. It is the discovery of the spirit of all the buddhas. And there is no need to go into the history of the buddhas. You have only to go within yourself, because you contain the whole past of existence, the infinite past, and you also contain the infinite future.A mailman was delivering his mail during the Christmas season. At one house the door was opened by a beautiful woman wearing a sheer negligee.“Would you like to come in?” cooed the woman.“Sure,” replied the startled mailman.She led him up to her bedroom and made love to him. When they were finished she got up and handed the man a dollar. “Why the dollar?” asked the puzzled mailman. “Well,” replied the woman, “when I asked my husband what to give the mailman for Christmas he said “Just give him a buck and fuck him!”The third question:Osho,Gurdjieff talks about three aspects of being: essence, false personality and true personality – false personality being a false, conditioned vehicle for our real essence, and true personality being that which can be developed and conveys and protects our real self.Primitive peoples live in the essence state like animals. They are beautiful but not enlightened. If enlightenment is natural and our birthright, why are not the primitive peoples enlightened, or are they?I hear you tell us to accept the animal that we are, return to essence. I have read Gurdjieff saying you must become your true self – the master. He said beware of being swallowed by the animal. Give it some cigarettes or ice cream and it will be calmed.What is true personality and what is its relationship to essence?There is no true personality. Personality as such is false. The word personality has to be understood. It comes from persona. Persona means a mask. In ancient Greek drama the actors used to wear masks; those masks were called persona – persona because the sound was coming from behind the mask. Sona means sound. The masks were apparent to the audience and from behind the mask the sound was coming. From that word persona has come the word personality.All personality is false. Good personality, bad personality, the personality of a sinner and the personality of a saint – all are false. You can wear a beautiful mask or an ugly mask, it doesn’t make any difference.The real thing is your essence. But the question is relevant. If essence is the real thing, as I say, then: “Primitive peoples live in the essence state just like animals. They are beautiful but not enlightened.”It is true – they cannot be enlightened. For them to become enlightened, first they will have to create a personality. Enlightenment is dropping of the personality; they don’t have any personality to drop. You will feel a little puzzled: Why can’t one become enlightened when one has no personality?Personality is also a necessary part of growth. It is like if you catch hold of a fish in the sea and you throw it on the shore; the fish jumps back into the sea. Now for the first time it will know that it has always lived in the sea; for the first time it will know that, “The sea is my life.” Up to now, before it was caught and thrown on the shore, it may not have ever thought of the sea at all; it may have been utterly oblivious of the sea. To know something, first you have to lose it.To be aware of paradise, first you have to lose it. Unless it is lost and regained you will not understand the beauty of it.Adam and Eve had to lose the Garden of Eden; that is part of natural growth. Only by leaving the beautiful garden of God can Adam become a christ one day – he can come back. Adam leaving Eden is just like the fish being caught and thrown on the shore and Jesus is the fish jumping back into the sea.The primitive peoples cannot become enlightened. They are beautiful, spontaneous, natural, but utterly unaware of what they are; they don’t have any awareness. They live joyously but their joy is unconscious. First they have to lose it. They have to become civilized, educated, knowledgeable; they have to become a culture, a civilization, a religion. They have to lose all their spontaneity, they have to forget all about their essence, and then suddenly one day they start missing it. It is bound to happen.That is happening all over the world, and it is happening in such great measure because this is the first time that humanity has really become civilized.The more civilized a country is, the more is the feeling of meaninglessness. The backward countries still don’t have that feeling, they can’t have. To have that feeling of inner emptiness, meaninglessness, absurdity, one has to become very civilized.Hence I am all in favor of science, because it helps the fish to be thrown on the shore. And once on the hot shore, in the hot sand, the fish starts feeling thirsty. It had never felt thirsty before. For the first time it misses the ocean around, the coolness, the life-giving waters. It is dying.That is the situation of the civilized man, the educated man: he is dying. Great inquiry is being born. One wants to know what should be done, how one can enter into the ocean of life again.In the backward countries, for example in India, there is no such feeling of meaninglessness. Even though a few Indian intellectuals write about it, their writing has no depth because it does not correspond to the situation of the Indian mind. A few Indian intellectuals write about meaninglessness, absurdity, almost in the same way as Søren Kierkegaard, Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Heidegger…. They have read about these people or they may have visited the West, and they start talking about meaninglessness, nausea, absurdity, but it sounds phony.I have talked to Indian intellectuals – they sound very phony because it is not their own feeling; it is borrowed. It is Søren Kierkegaard speaking through them, it is Friedrich Nietzsche speaking through them; it is not their own voice. They are not really aware of what Søren Kierkegaard is saying; they have not suffered the same anguish. The feeling is alien, foreign; they have learnt it like parrots. They talk about it, but their whole life says and shows something else. What they say and what their life shows are diametrically opposite.It is very, very rare that any Indian intellectual ever commits suicide – I have not heard of it – but many Western intellectuals have committed suicide. It is very rare to come across an Indian intellectual who goes mad; it is a very common phenomenon in the West, many intellectuals have gone mad. The real intellectuals have almost inevitably gone mad; it is their life experience.Civilization all around, and the over-developed personality have become an imprisonment. They are being killed by it. The very weight of civilization is too much and unbearable. They are feeling suffocated, they can’t breathe. Even suicide seems to be a liberation, or if they cannot commit suicide then madness seems to be an escape. At least by becoming mad one forgets all about civilization, one forgets all about the nonsense that goes on in the name of civilization. Madness is an escape from civilization.Do you know that primitive people don’t go mad? It is only the civilized man’s privilege. Primitive people don’t commit suicide; again it is the civilized man’s privilege.But to feel that life is utterly meaningless is to be on a crossroads: either you choose suicide or you choose sannyas; either you choose madness or you choose meditation. It is a great turning-point.All personality is false. There is an essence inside which is not false, which you bring with your birth, which has always been there.Somebody asks Jesus: “Do you know anything about Abraham?” And Jesus says, “Before Abraham ever was, I am.”Now what an absurd statement, but also of tremendous significance. Abraham and Jesus – there is a big gap between them; Abraham preceded Jesus by almost three thousand years. And Jesus says, “Before Abraham ever was, I am.” He is talking about the essence. He is not talking about Jesus, he is talking about the Christ. He is talking about the eternal. He is not talking about the personal, he is talking about the universal.The Zen people say that unless you come to know your original face that you had before your father was ever born, you will not become enlightened. What is this original face? Even before your father was born you had it, and you will have it again when you have died and your body has been burnt and nothing is left except ashes – then you will have it again.What is this original face? The essence – call it the soul, the spirit, the self. These are words signifying the same thing. You are born as an essence, but if you are left as an essence without the society creating a personality for you, you will remain animal-like. It has happened to some people.Just six months ago, again one child was found somewhere in North India near the Himalayas, a child of eleven years who had been brought up by wolves, a wolf-child – a human child brought up by wolves. Of course wolves can only give the personality of a wolf; so the child was human, the essence was there, but he had the personality of a wolf.Many times it has happened. Wolves seem to be capable of bringing up human children; they seem to have a certain love, compassion, for human children. But these children are not enlightened. They don’t have any of the corruption that human society is bound to give; their beings are not polluted, they are pure essence. They are like the fish in the ocean – they don’t know who they are. And it is very difficult once they have been brought up by animals to give them a human personality; it is too hard a job.Almost all the children have died in that effort. They cannot learn human ways, it is too late now. Their mold is cast; they have already become fixed personalities. They have learnt how to be wolves. They run like wolves on all fours and they are strong like wolves. You cannot fight with a wolf-child; he will kill you, he will eat you raw. They are cannibals; they don’t know any morality, they don’t know any religion. They are not Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan. They don’t bother about God – they have never heard of him. All that they know is the life of a wolf.If human personality is a barrier, it is a barrier only if you cling to it. It has to be passed through – it is a ladder, it is a bridge. One should not make one’s house on the bridge, true, but one has to pass over the bridge.Human personality is partial. In a better society we will give children personalities but also the capacity to get rid of them. That is what is missing right now: we give them personalities, too tight personalities, so that they become encapsulated, imprisoned, and we never give them a way to get rid of them. It is like giving a child steel clothes and not giving him any idea of how to unlock, how to throw the clothes, one day when he is becoming bigger.What we are doing with human beings is exactly what was done in ancient China with the feet of women. From the very childhood girls were given iron shoes so that their feet never grew, they remained very small. Small feet were loved very much, they were appreciated very much. Only aristocratic families could afford them, because it was almost impossible for the woman to do anything. The woman could not even walk rightly; the feet were too small and the body was big. The feet were crippled; she had to walk with a support. Now a poor woman could not afford it, so small feet were the symbol of the aristocracy.We can laugh at it, but we go on doing the same thing. Now in the West women are walking on such absurd shoes, such high heels. It is okay if you do such a thing in a circus, but such high heels are not for walking. But they are appreciated, because when a woman walks on very high heels she becomes more sexually attractive – her buttocks stand out more prominently. Because walking is difficult, her buttocks move more than they would do ordinarily. But this is accepted, then it is okay. Other societies will laugh at it.All over the world women are using bras and they think that it is very conventional and traditional. My sannyasins are not using bras, and that is one of the greatest criticisms against them from the Hindus. In fact the bra makes the woman look more sexual; it is just to give her body a shape that she has not got. It is to help her so that the breasts can stand out and can look very young, not sagging. And these Hindu women think they are being very religious and orthodox. They are simply befooling themselves and nobody else – the bra is a sexual symbol.Just like the bra, there are societies in Africa, a few primitive societies, which use strange things. Lips are made bigger and thicker. From the very childhood weights are hung on the lips so that they become very thick, big. That is a symbol of a very sexual woman – thicker and bigger lips can of course give a better kiss.In some primitive societies the man even used to wear a certain sheath on his genital organs to make them look bigger, just as women are using bras. Now we laugh at such foolish people, but it is the same story. Even the younger people all over the world are using very tight pants – that is just to show their genitals. But once a thing is accepted, nobody takes any note of it.Civilization should not become a tight enclosure. It is absolutely necessary that you should have a personality, but you should have a personality which can be put on and off easily, just like loose garments, not made of steel. Just cotton will do, so that you can put them on and off; you need not wear them continuously.That’s what I call a man of understanding: one who lives in his essence, but as far as the society is concerned he moves with a personality. He uses the personality, he is the master of his own being.The society needs a certain personality. If you bring your essence into the society you will be creating trouble for yourself and for others. People will not understand your essence; your truth may be too bitter for them, your truth may be too disturbing for them. There is no need. You need not go naked in the society; you can wear clothes.But I have heard about a nun who used to take her bath with clothes on. When other nuns came to hear about it they asked, “What nonsense! Why can’t you undress in your bathroom? There is nobody looking.”She said, “No, but the Bible says God is watching everywhere.” So the nun cannot even undress in the bathroom because God is watching – as if God is a peeping Tom. And if God can watch even behind locked doors, can’t he watch inside your clothes? He can watch there too. If walls cannot prevent him, just your garments, how can they prevent him?One should be able to be naked in one’s own house, playing with one’s children; sipping tea on a summer morning in the garden, on the lawn, one should be able to be naked. There is no need to go to your office naked – there is no need. Clothes are perfectly good; there is no necessity to expose yourself to each and everybody. That will be exhibitionism, that will be another extreme. One extreme is that people cannot even go to bed without clothes on; another extreme is that there are Jaina digambaras, monks moving naked in the marketplace, or naked Hindu sadhus. And it is a strange thing that these Jainas and these Hindus object to my people because they are not wearing proper clothes.Now, in a hot country like India people coming from the West find it really difficult to wear too many clothes. It looks so absurd to the Western seeker who comes here to see Indians with ties and coats. It looks so absurd. It is okay in the West – it is too cold and the tie is protective – but in India it is an effort to commit suicide. In the West it is okay to have your shoes and socks on, but in India? What imitative people! They are moving the whole day with shoes and socks on in a hot country like India. The Western dress in India is not relevant – tight pants and coat and tie and hat – it simply makes you look ridiculous. India needs loose garments. But there is no need to go to the other extreme, that you start running naked, cycling naked into the marketplace. It will create unnecessary trouble for you and for others.But the strange thing is that the people who have always worshipped naked sadhus and have never raised any problem, for them I am creating a trouble. For them I look as if I am a dangerous person because my sannyasins are not wearing proper clothes.One should be natural, and by being natural I mean one should be capable of putting on the personality when needed, in society. It functions like a lubricant, it helps, because there are thousands of people. Lubricants are needed, otherwise people will be constantly in conflict, clashing against each other. Lubricants help; they keep your life smooth.Personality is good when you are communicating with others, but personality is a barrier when you start communing with yourself. Personality is good when you are relating with human beings; personality is a barrier when you start relating with existence itself, with God.To me there are only two things: the essence and the personality. The personality is good as a means, the essence is the end. And personalities are not real and unreal.You ask: “Why are the primitive people not enlightened?” They are not enlightened because they don’t have any personalities yet. Unless you have a personality you cannot drop it. Unless you have a properly developed mind you cannot enter into the state of no-mind. Unless you have an ego, well-formed, mature, you cannot surrender.These things look like puzzles but they are not. If you just contemplate over these things, they are very simple to understand. What do you have to surrender if you don’t have any ego? Hence, first the ego has to be developed. But the ego should be developed and side by side another thing has to be developed: the capacity to drop the ego. Man has to learn this paradox so when the need arises you can drop the ego. Then you are always the master, and the mastery is always of the essence. But if you don’t have any personality you will not be the master, because you don’t have any slave to be a master of. The essence and personality are both needed, then the essence can be the master.It is not so ordinarily: the personality becomes the master and essence is either completely reduced to a slave or completely forgotten and thrown into the basement of your unconsciousness. The education is faulty.My vision of a right education is to teach people how to grow the ego and how to be able to drop it; how to become great minds and yet be ready any moment to put the mind aside. You should be able to just put your personality, your ego, your mind, on and off, because these are good things if you can use them. But you should know the mechanism, how to put them off. Right now you know only how to put them on.I am reminded:Sigmund Freud remembers somewhere that a friend came to visit him from a very, very faraway village. They had studied together in primary school; since then they had not met. Electricity had just then come; just a few months before, electricity had come to Vienna where Sigmund Freud lived. He forgot to tell the friend how to put off the light in the night and the friend was almost going mad in the night because he could not sleep – the light was too much. And he tried every possible way that he could conceive to blow it out.He even stood on a table and studied the lamp, how to blow it out. But you can’t blow it out! He tried every possible way. He could not sleep the whole night and because of his ego he could not wake Sigmund Freud and ask him what to do with this light. All that he knew about was kerosene lamps. But an electric bulb functions in a different way; it is not a kerosene lamp.In the morning Freud asked, “You look tired, your eyes are red. What happened? Couldn’t you sleep?”And the man confessed. He said, “No, I could not sleep, and now I have to tell you. I wanted not to tell you because I wanted not to appear so stupid that I don’t know how to put off the light, but I tried my best. The whole night I tried to figure it out, how to put it off, but I could not.”Freud took him in the room. He said, “It is very simple: this is the button” – the button was behind the door so he could not see it; even if he had seen it he would not have thought that the button had any connection with the light: “You just put it on and off with the button.”Our situation is like that: our society puts on the ego, the personality, and nobody ever teaches us how to put it off. So day in, day out, we are burdened by it, tortured by it, goaded by it. We become slaves of something false.I don’t want you to drop your personality forever; I simply want you to be capable of putting it off when it is not needed. This is the whole art of real religion: to teach you how to put the mind off and how to put it on.Talking to you, I have to put my mind on, otherwise how can I talk? The heart cannot talk, the being cannot talk, the essence knows no language. I have to use the personality. But the moment I have said, “Enough for today,” you may not know but that is how I put it off. I tell you the secret. It is not to you that I am saying enough for today; I am saying to my own mind, “Enough for today. Now go to sleep.”You also say: “I hear you tell us to accept the animal that we are, return to essence. I have read Gurdjieff saying you must become your true self – the master. He said beware of being swallowed by the animal.” He is right. – beware of being swallowed by the animal. But why not swallow the animal yourself? Otherwise you will have to be constantly alert and aware and on guard, because the animal will be there. And the animal is the animal - if the animal finds you off guard, it will jump upon you.So I don’t say only beware of the animal and go on persuading the animal, as Gurdjieff says. You say that he says: “Give it some cigarettes or ice cream and it will be calmed.” It is not so easy. It will not be calmed by some ice cream – it will ask for more. It always asks for more. It will not be calmed by some cigarettes, it will go on asking for more. And it is not only a question of cigarettes and ice cream, otherwise the problem would not have been very complex.It asks for money, it asks for power; it wants to be the president of the country, the prime minister of the country. The animal has strange ideas to be fulfilled. It wants all the women of the world; it can’t be satisfied with one. The animal is mad, the animal is insane. The animal is simply animal; it has no understanding – you cannot expect understanding from it. Don’t believe that it will be calmed just by giving it some cigarettes and ice cream – don’t be so simplistic. It will go on demanding new things and more things, and there is no end to its demanding. If you try to persuade it in this way you will never be able to persuade it.Why not swallow the animal yourself? Eat it and be finished with it! That’s my idea. Why not make ice cream out of the animal? Why not make cigars out of it and smoke it and be finished with it?That’s why I say don’t repress – because if you repress, the animal is there. I say go deep into the very spirit of the animal. Enjoy it! That’s what I mean when I say eat it. Be capable of digesting it and you will be more mighty by digesting it. Your sex digested will release so much energy that you can attain to superconsciousness. Hence I say: “From sex to superconsciousness.” Your greed digested will become your love.You will be surprised to know that the English word love comes from a Sanskrit word lobh; lobh means greed. It may have been just a coincidence that the English word love grew out of lobh; lobh means greed. But my feeling is it cannot be just coincidence; there may be something more mysterious behind it, there may be some alchemical reason behind it. In fact greed digested becomes love. It is greed, lobh, digested well, which becomes love.Love is sharing; greed is hoarding. Greed only wants and never gives, and love knows only giving and never asks for anything in return; it is unconditional sharing. There may be some alchemical reason that lobh has become love in the English language. Lobh becomes love as far as inner alchemy is concerned.Swallow the animal. That is the way to transform it. That is the way to transmute lower energies into higher energies.You are given a great opportunity. You have been thrown out of the sea – this is the opportunity – expelled from the Garden of Eden – this is the opportunity. Adam can become Christ if he uses the opportunity well. Use the opportunity: eat the animal, digest the animal. Don’t try to cut it off, otherwise you will become poorer. Don’t try to destroy it as your so-called saints have been doing down the ages, otherwise you will be dull and dead, insipid. Don’t repress it, otherwise it will take revenge – the animal is animal. One day it will jump upon you with such vengeance that you will be destroyed by it.And don’t try to persuade it because it cannot be persuaded. Its demands are infinite, its thirst cannot be quenched by anything. Give it anything and it immediately asks for something more. More is its very way of living.So don’t befool yourself that cigarettes and ice cream and things like that will help the animal to subside and to be calmed. No, you will need great insight into the animal, you will need great acquaintance with the animal. You will need very deep awareness of the working of the animal. And you will have to digest it slowly, slowly gradually, so that one day the animal becomes part of your being.The animal has great energy, that’s why it is called animal. Anima means aliveness, power, vitality; animal means one who is vital. The saints cut their roots from the animal; they became non-vital. That’s why they have not been able to transform the whole world – they were not even able to transform their own selves. They became impotent. Rather than becoming more potent, rather than becoming omnipotent, they became impotent. Hence I am not for suppression.I am for understanding, I am for transformation. And if the animal is transformed and absorbed by the essence, you will feel great power, great fire. Your life will become such a passionate affair with existence, you will have such intensity, that each moment will give you the joy of an eternity.The fourth question:Osho,Before, when I was clever, I was really stupid. Now I am no longer clever, but still feel stupid. In fact, this is a stupid letter…. Does that mean I'm still clever? Or do some people, when they drop their cleverness, find that they are simply stupid?PS: I always wanted to write an impressive question, but seem to have waited too long. A joke to illustrate my problem: A man telephones his doctor: “Doctor, you know those pills you prescribed for my muscular weakness…. Well, I can't get the top off the bottle.”Devageet, you are in a beautiful mess. Remain this way.No need to figure it out, whether you are clever or stupid; whatsoever you are, it is perfectly okay. Trying to figure it out is an unnecessary effort. If one is stupid, one is stupid – so what? How does it matter? If one is clever, one is clever – so what? How does it matter?But we have always been thinking in terms of comparison. Man is very much conditioned to create hierarchies: who is clever, who is stupid, who is beautiful, who is ugly….We can’t accept people as they are.And if you start figuring it out you will be in trouble – because nothing can be figured out. Life is mysterious. If you are clever you are stupid; if you know you are stupid you are clever…. Now you will be moving in a circle; there will be no end to it. It will be like a dog chasing its own tail: the more the dog chases the tail, the more the tail will jump – with the dog, of course, because it is the dog’s tail. And the dog can go crazy. Sometimes you can watch dogs going crazy, just chasing their tails. Philosophers are like dogs chasing their tails.Devageet, don’t be a philosopher. Such problems have arisen in philosophy many times.They say that before Socrates there was a great school of sophists in Greece; they used to train people in sophistry. Before philosophy, sophistry was the dominant thing in people’s minds; the sophist was thought to be the real intellectual. And the fundamental of sophistry was that nothing is true and nothing is false.You can try anything, and you can prove anything right and you can prove anything wrong. Something can be proved right and the same thing can be proved wrong, it all depends on what you want to prove.Logic is a whore! – logic can go with anybody. So whenever someone wins in an argument it does not prove that he has the truth. It only proves that he is cleverer in logical gymnastics, that’s all; he may not have the truth at all. When someone is defeated in logic, argumentation, it does not prove that he does not have the truth; it may be simply that he is not logically skillful. So there is no truth, no untruth; it is only a game.Sophistry was a game, and the sophists used to teach people, whosoever wanted to learn the game – the aristocracy, the rich people, particularly, loved it very much. It was like a chess game.It happened to a great sophist:A young man came and he said, “I have heard much about you – you are the greatest sophist master in the country. If you trust so much in your own intelligence, this is my proposal: that I will pay half of your fees right now and the other half I will pay only when I win in an argument.”The master was so trustful of his own skill, he said, “Perfectly okay. You can give half my fees now and half I will take when you win your first argument. It is bound to happen – you are going to win. Never have my students been defeated anywhere.”But the young man was also really clever. He learnt the whole art, but he never argued with anybody. The master was puzzled about what to do: “Unless he argues and wins, half of the fee is gone, and if he never argues…” and he used to avoid. The master told many other disciples, “Create some argument with him.” But he would always say, “Yes, you are right.” Whatsoever you said he would say, “Yes, you are right.” He would never argue. The master was at a loss: “It seems as if the disciple is winning and I am being defeated.”So the master put a case in the court: “This disciple has not paid half my fee which is due to me, and the court should force this young man to give me my fee which he has promised.” Now the master thought, “If I win in the court, the court will order the young man to give my fee and I will get the fee. If I am defeated in the court, then too nothing is lost – outside the court I will say to the young man, “You have won your first argument, now give me the other half of my fee.But the disciple belonged to this same master. He said, “Okay. If I win in the court I will say this will be an insult to the court if I pay you now. If I am defeated in the court, how can I pay you? – because my first argument, and I am defeated!”And this is how it happened. The court decided that the young man is right, because unless he wins how can he pay?The master said, “Okay. So he has won his first case – I want my fee.”The young man said, “How can I give it? I have won the case and it will be an insult to the court now. I cannot go against the court, against the law of the country.”How to decide it? It is impossible, it can’t be decided.Another story is told:A young man from Sicily came to Athens and told Socrates, “All men in Sicily lie.”Socrates looked at the young man and said, “You come from Sicily?”He said, “Yes.”“Are you lying?”Now the problem arises: if he is lying then what he is saying is not true; if he is not lying, then too what he is saying is not true – because one man from Sicily is not lying, is saying a truth. In either case it will be impossible to figure it out, where we stand. You ask, Devageet: “When I was clever, I was really stupid. Now I am no longer clever, but still feel stupid. In fact, this is a stupid letter…. Does that mean I am still clever?” Forget about it! You are in a beautiful mess – remain in it. There is no need to decide because we are not labeling people here, who is clever and who is stupid.The whole effort here is: who lives in the mind and who lives out of the mind? The stupid and the clever both live in the mind, because both cleverness and stupidity are qualities of the mind. It does not matter whether you are clever or you are stupid. You are in the mind, that is the real thing. Slip out of the mind. Slip out of cleverness and stupidity both. And the best way to slip out is not to be bothered by these things because if you are bothered by these things you will remain entangled.Slip out of the mind. Be a no-mind, neither clever nor stupid. Then you will know what truth is, then you will know what bliss is.And the last question:Osho,Are you really the first buddha who jokes?I am not only the first buddha who jokes, but the last too…because I am going to tell all the jokes! I am not going to leave a single joke untold!Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,I have worn the mala for less than a month, but I understand how feeling you is important. But these feelings are mixed up. I respect and love you, but I don't look at you as His Holiness. Strange, but I look at you as a buddha. Only that, without anything added or taken away from your being. And what a buddha is I don't know. How come I love you? I respect you because you are my master – but love? Also I see that I can play with you with joy and you are so far away –or so close? Respect, love, joy – are they the same?It is good that you cannot think of me as “His Holiness,” because I am neither His Holiness nor His Unholiness. It is good and beautiful that you think of me as a buddha, because that’s exactly what I am – simply a buddha.A buddha means one who is awake. It has nothing to do with holiness, nothing to do with unholiness. Holiness, unholiness, both are dreams; for dreams you have to be asleep. A buddha is awake; all dreams have disappeared. A buddha is not a saint, is not a sinner either. A buddha is not God and is not the Devil either. All dualities are irrelevant as far as Buddha is concerned. Buddha is simply a witness of all the mystery that surrounds you within and without.It is absolutely right, you are moving in the right direction. If you start looking at me as a buddha, that is a fundamental step to understanding me. If you think of me as a saint you have misunderstood me.That’s one of the fundamental problems with Indians who come here – they start thinking about me as a saint. Then a thousand and one problems arise because they have certain ideas about how a saint should be They have a thousand and one expectations: how I should live, what I should eat, how I should talk, what I should say and what I should not say.I am not a saint, hence I cannot fulfill any of their expectations. Then they feel very frustrated and out of frustration they become enraged. It has nothing to do with me; it is their own minds, their own expectations. I am not here to fulfill anybody’s expectations; I am here to be myself, simply to be myself. I am not here to be somebody else’s carbon copy.A Jaina comes and thinks in terms of Mahavira and compares me with Mahavira – certainly I am not a Mahavira. The Christian comes with the idea of Christ and starts comparing me with Christ – certainly I am not a Christ either. I am simply myself. You can understand me only if you drop all comparisons, if you forget all the ideas that have been imposed on your mind. If you simply look at me without any prejudice things will be very clear.It is good that a great clarity is coming to you. But still somewhere deep down in the unconscious there are hangovers, hence you are puzzled. You are puzzled because you cannot understand: “How come I love you?” Because saints are to be respected, not loved. They are so high, there in the heavens, and you are so low, how can you love them? Love means equality. Love means we are standing on the same plane. Saints are so holy and you are so unholy! Yes, respect is okay, but love? – seems to be impossible. These are hangovers.But I would like to say to you: respect is an ugly word; it has more letters than four, but actually it is a four-letter word. Respect is bound to be ugly in two ways: if you respect somebody you degrade yourself into inferiority; unless you start feeling inferior to somebody you cannot respect them. Hence all your saints go on condemning you; unless you are condemned they cannot be respected. The respect from your side is dependent on the condemnation from their side. They call you sinners, only then can you call them saints. They condemn everything that you do: your eating, your drinking, your living…. Your whole life, in every minute detail, has to be condemned. All that is natural has to be condemned; then their unnatural lives become very respectable.All the saints – the so-called saints I mean – have been condemning humanity down the ages. And, slowly, slowly hearing for centuries that you are sinners, you have become sinners. They have conditioned you into such inferiority that it has almost become a reality. You have started fulfilling what they have been saying about you.If you want a man to be a criminal, go on telling him that he is a criminal. Go on repeating it and he will slowly be hypnotized. And if everybody repeats that he is a criminal, he will start believing that it must be so: “How can so many people be wrong? And how can so many saints be wrong? I must be a criminal.” And once a person accepts that he is a criminal he becomes one. He starts behaving to prove that he is a criminal. How can he prove the saints wrong? The saints have to be proved right, and the only way to prove them right is to behave the way they say you are. Their saintliness depends on your being sinners. The greater you are in your sin, the higher is their saintliness. I am not a saint!And because they have to condemn your natural instincts they become unnatural, pathological. They start standing on their heads just to show that they are totally different from you. If you enjoy eating, they hate eating. If you love beauty, they condemn beauty. If you are enchanted with the world, they call the world illusion, maya – they say it does not exist at all. If you love your body, they destroy their bodies. Whatsoever you do they have to do just the opposite, because that is the only way to prove their superiority.Your so-called saints have created a very insane humanity. They have turned you insane and they have turned themselves insane. And because they have to be unnatural they are sitting on volcanoes. They have repressed all that is natural – and nature wants to assert itself. They are in a constant civil war; they are fighting with themselves. And whatsoever they are fighting with is becoming stronger every day, because the more you fight with something the more you have to pay attention to it. Their minds become focused. If they repress sex, twenty-four hours of their day there is an undercurrent of sexuality. If they fast, they think only of food and nothing else.These insane people, pathological people, have been very dominant in the past. It is because of these people that the earth has become a hell; they have transformed the whole of humanity into an ugly mess.I am not a saint. I am simply a man just like you, with only one small difference – and that difference does not make me superior to you, remember it. It does not make you inferior to me, remember it. Never for a single moment forget that you may be asleep and I may be awake, but one day I was asleep just like you and one day you can be awake just like me. Sleep and waking are as much your potential as they are my potential. Sleep and waking are two sides of the same coin, and how can one side be superior to the other side? Both sides are of the same coin. You are asleep, I am awake, but this does not make me superior in any way.In fact, Buddha has said that the day he became a buddha, the day he became enlightened, the whole universe became enlightened with him. What does he mean? He means the day he became enlightened he became aware that everybody can become enlightened. This is nothing special; it is an ordinary quality of every being. You may not use it – that is your choice; you may not actualize your potential – that is your decision and you are free to decide that way. You may choose to remain asleep, but you are not committing any sin. You are not doomed just because you are asleep. Any moment you can decide to wake up.It is your freedom to be a buddha or not to be a buddha – and if you like sleep and the dreams it’s perfectly okay with me. I respect your freedom.You can love me. You cannot love your saints; they are too far away. I am standing just by your side. I am not sitting on a golden throne somewhere high in the heavens; I am walking on the earth with you, I am as earthly as you are. Just a little difference – I say difference, not superiority – and the difference is that I am no longer asleep, no longer dreaming.And you can come out of your dreams this very moment, because dreams cannot hold you; they cannot keep you imprisoned in themselves. You can burst forth from them. You are an imprisoned splendor, but you are imprisoned through your own choice. You have gone into the prison through your own choice – this is your decision.There is a beautiful story of a Zen monk who used to steal small things. He was a great enlightened master and he used to steal small things – somebody’s cigarette case or somebody’s shoes – and then he would be caught and he would be sent to prison. His disciples were very puzzled; he had many disciples, and they asked him again and again, “Why do you do such things? And we are here, ready – how many cigarette boxes do you want, how many shoes do you want? We can bring as many as you want. Why do you steal?”He would laugh and never say anything, but he continued in his own way. In the end when he was dying his disciples asked, “Now tell us: what was the secret? There must be something!”He said, “There is nothing much in it; it is a simple phenomenon. I wanted to go to jail again and again to help the people who were inside to come out, and that was the only way – stealing small things, then getting caught. I had to manage both: first stealing things and then getting caught. And then the magistrate would send me for six months to jail and for those six months I would try to help the people who were inside to come out. And I am happy, tremendously happy, that I have helped many to come out of jail.”Now this man is going knowingly, consciously; it is his choice. Even in the jail he is a free man. He is not imprisoned by anybody else; he has imprisoned himself, for a certain purpose.So is the case with you, you have imprisoned yourself. This simply proves your freedom. Any day, if you want to get out of it, you can get out of it. I go on hammering only one thing on your head again and again: that there is another choice also, please don’t forget. You have chosen to be in sleep, you can choose to be awake. You have lived in sleep for many, many lives, you have seen all that sleep makes possible, now please see what awakening can give to you.I have seen both and I tell you that sleep cannot give you anything; it only promises but never delivers any goods. Sleep can give you only dreams, hallucinations; sleep cannot fulfill you. I have known both, you have known only one. Those who have known both, listen to what they are saying. And if you come close to them you are bound to fall in love with them.It is not a question of respect; respect is a formality. You respect the Christian priest, you respect the Hindu mahatma, you respect the Jaina muni, you respect the Catholic monk, you respect the Pope. You don’t respect Christ or Buddha or Krishna – you love them.Respect is very ordinary; it brings no revolution in your life. It is a trick of the mind. The mind says, “Look how much I respect the holy people,” and there it is finished. Now what more can you do? You can respect them, sometimes you can go and touch their feet – it becomes a formality.In India it is such a formality that it has lost its beauty, its tremendous power to transform people. People go on touching each and everybody’s feet. Children are taught from the very beginning to touch everybody’s feet.In my childhood it was so. Any Tom, Harry, Dick who would come to my house, if he was aged my father would say, “Touch his feet.” I was always puzzled: “Why? I don’t see anything in the man, I have no feeling for him.” But it is a formality, it is a social obligation. You have to do it.So finally I made it a point – why wait for my father to say it? Anybody who came, I would touch his feet before he ever said to. Then he started telling me, “You need not touch everybody’s feet.” I said, “Why make any distinction? And why give you the trouble of telling me again and again? Now I will touch everybody’s feet, whosoever comes. It doesn’t matter – it is just a physical exercise. It is good for the body – just bowing down and standing up again and again. And the whole day people are coming, all kinds of stupid people. And they feel happy, so it is good – they enjoy it.”In India it is just a formality, it means nothing. Respect means nothing. And it is dangerous too, because when you respect somebody, deep down you start imitating because you would also like to be respected, the ego wants to be respected. So whomsoever you respect, sooner or later, unconsciously, you will start imitating him, because that is the only way to get respect from people. Respect creates in you a desire to imitate; you become carbon copies.It is good that you love me. Forget the word respect; love is absolutely right. And don’t be puzzled.You say: “How come I love you? I respect you because you are my master.”Yes, respect always has a “because”; love has no “because.” Love is simply there for no reason at all. Respect is logical; you can say why you respect a person: he eats only once a day; he has renounced the world, his wife, children, family, everything; he sleeps for only three hours or maybe he remains awake the whole night; he is continuously chanting the name of God, things like this. Or he serves the poor, or he goes to the ill people and serves them.What will happen if poverty disappears? It will be a great loss to your saints. In fact, you will not believe it – one of the very respected Hindu saints, Karpatri, has written a book against socialism, and the reasons that he has given against socialism are all so stupid. The most stupid reason of all of them is that socialism will destroy poverty; it will create equal distribution of property and possessions. And if there are no more poor people, whom will you serve? And without service, how can you be a saint? Without service there will be no virtue.This is a great argument. This means poverty is needed, very essentially needed – needed for the existence of the saints. Ill people are needed, lepers and blind and lame and deaf people are needed, otherwise whom will the missionaries serve? And without serving you cannot reach heaven; service is the ladder. So let people be poor.And when these people serve poor people, you respect them. In fact they are the causes of poverty in the world. The poverty can be removed any day; now science has made all the technology available that can remove poverty from the earth absolutely. But then how will Christian missionaries be able to convert poor people to Christianity?In India, not even a single rich person has been converted to Christianity, only poor people, very poor people. And they are converted to Christianity not because they love Christ but because they love bread and butter. The Christian missionaries can supply them with a little food, clothes, shelter, a school, a hospital. Now Christian missionaries will not like it at all if poverty disappears from the world, neither will the Hindu saints like it.Karpatri also argues the old Hindu argument that the poor people are poor because they are suffering from their past karmas. If you make them rich, if you distribute the property and the land to the poor, you will be interfering with their past karmas. And this is not good, this is a sin, to interfere with somebody’s karma. Let them suffer – they deserve suffering. Helping the poor to become rich is almost like breaking the walls of the prison and letting the prisoners escape – you will be doing something very illegal. The poor people are suffering, and the rich people are rich because they were virtuous in their past lives. Any effort to take their money from them is going against the law of life, the law of karma. You are going against God.Socialism is against religion according to Karpatri and the other so-called saints. This is a very strange world. But all these things go on because we are asleep.If you become a little bit alert and start looking around you will be surprised – your saints need psychoanalysis, your saints need psychological treatment. They are utterly ill. And because they are repressing all their desires, sooner or later they start living a double life. They start living two lives together: one on the surface, the saintly, and the real underground, from the back door. And you go on respecting the masks.It is good. I don’t expect your respect for me, no, not at all. Love is enough, love is right, because love gives you equality with me. And as far as I am concerned I see you as equals – not only you, but the trees and the birds and the animals and the rocks. The whole existence is a brotherhood. Nobody is higher and nobody is lower, there is no hierarchy. It is only one existence expressing itself in millions of forms. How can there be any hierarchy? There is no Brahmin and no Sudra.You say: “…I respect you because you are my master.”Forget the respect. Love me because I am your master – and not for any formal reason, because to be a disciple can never be formal; it can only be of the heart.You say: “Also I feel that I can play with you with joy and you are so far away. Or so close?” Both are true; simultaneously I am far away and very close – very close because the awakening is just the other side of the coin, and very far because awakening takes you into a totally different world from sleep. Sleep takes you into dreams, awakening into reality. To be awake is the door to godliness. Yes, I am far away and yet very close by.You also ask: “Respect, joy, love – are they the same?”No, they are not the same – certainly respect and love are not the same. Respect is a poor substitute for love, a plastic substitute for the real rose. It may appear like the rose, but it is not. It has no roots in the earth, no juices flow through it. It has no contact with the sun and the wind and the rain. It is disconnected from existence. It is simply a plastic flower, looks like a rose – it is an imitation. Respect is a plastic flower, love is a real rose.And joy never arises out of respect. In fact, out of respect a little sadness arises. If you have observed closely, whenever you respect somebody you feel humiliated. You may not look at your humiliation because it hurts, but whenever you respect somebody there is humiliation – because if somebody is superior you are inferior, and the inferiority hurts. You can avoid it, you may not see it, you may keep it at the back, you may forget all about it, but it is there. If you search for it you will always find it lurking in the darkness of your unconscious.Respect cannot give you joy, but love certainly gives you joy. Joy is a by-product of love, the aura of love. Wherever love is there is joy, there is silence, there is benediction.Anybody can see it here. You are sitting in such silence. You may be the only commune on the whole of the earth sitting in such silence, in such love – engulfed, encompassed by something of the beyond.Others who don’t know about love, may misunderstand your love as respect because they know only respect. Those who have never seen any real rose may think that the plastic flower is the real rose.I have heard about an old woman who went to see an exhibition of Picasso paintings. She was very much puzzled looking at a painting; the cost was millions of dollars. She said to her husband, “This is madness. This painting millions of dollars? And in fact it is a copy of a calendar that has been hanging in my bathroom for years!”The calendar is a copy, but the woman has known the calendar for years. Now the real painting looks like a copy of the calendar – “And millions of dollars? This man must be mad who is asking millions of dollars! I can give the calendar free to anybody. I am fed up with it, because for years I have been looking at it.”Those who don’t know real roses and have always known the plastic, if you bring them to a rosebush they will think that these are plastic flowers attached to the bush.People who come from the outside, seeing you sitting with me in deep communion, in deep love, your hearts beating with my heartbeat, will think that you are in deep respect. It is not respect at all. It is the real thing, not the synthetic flower. It is happening – it is a rare opportunity.When there is somebody awake, many people who are groping in their sleep to be awake, longing in their sleep to be awake, start moving toward the source wherever awakening has happened. That’s how you have arrived here from faraway countries. You may not even be aware of how you have reached here, you may think it is just accidental. It is not. Many, many lives of longing to find a buddha, to find a christ, have brought you here. You are ancient pilgrims. Now you have found the opportunity.You are fortunate to love, fortunate to feel the joy of love, fortunate because this love is going to become a door to the divine.The second question:Osho,What is prayer?Prayer is one of the indefinables, because prayer is the fragrance of love. Even love is indefinable. Love is a flower, tangible, you can see it, you can touch it, you can smell it, you can feel it. You can close your eyes and you can touch the texture of the flower, the softness of it, you can see the beauty of it; it is visible. But prayer is the fragrance released to the winds, offered to the sky. It becomes even more indefinable because you cannot see it, you cannot touch it.You can only have a very subtle relationship with it, not one of words, not one of philosophy, not one of theology – only the silence of your heart, the utter silence of your heart, can have a little glimpse of it, of what it is.What goes on in the name of prayer is not prayer; it is desire disguised. You go to the temple or to the church and you pray to God; your God is part of your imagination. Your God is not true God; it is a Christian God, it is a Hindu God, it is a Mohammedan God. And how can God be Christian, Hindu or Mohammedan? It is a God that you have created, or your priests on behalf of you. It is a toy, it is not true.Bowing down before a statue made by man, manufactured by man – and you think you are in prayer? You are simply being stupid, you are simply showing utter ignorance. This statue has been purchased in the marketplace, and God is not a commodity and God cannot be made. It is God who has made us – how can we make God? But we are worshipping, praying to man-made Gods.And what are your prayers? They are also your desires. You want this, you want that; you are trying to use God as a means. You have been told certain prayers from your very childhood and you have crammed it all; you have been forced to cram it. It has become a habit, a mechanical routine; you go on repeating it but your heart is not in it. Your prayer is a corpse, it breathes no more.Yes, when Jesus called God “Abba” he meant it. When you call God “Father” you don’t mean anything. And between “Abba” and “Father” there is a great difference. “Father” is an institution, legal, social; “Abba” is a heart-to-heart relationship. Jesus looked at existence as the source of our life.A disciple asks Jesus, “What is prayer?” Jesus falls on his knees and starts praying. The disciple says, “I am asking what prayer is, I am not asking you to pray!”And Jesus says, “There is no other way. I can pray, you can participate. I invite you to be a part of my prayer. I cannot say what prayer is, but I can go into prayer – because prayer is a state of being, not something that you do.”Leo Tolstoy has written a beautiful story:Three men became very famous saints in Russia.The highest priest of the country was very much disturbed – obviously, because people were not coming to him, people were going to those three saints, and he had not even heard their names. And how could they be saints? – because in Christianity a saint is a saint only when the church recognizes him as a saint. The English word saint comes from sanction; when the church sanctions somebody as a saint, then he is a saint. What nonsense! That a saint has to be certified by the church, by the organized religion, by the priests – as if it has nothing to do with inner growth but some outer recognition; as if it is a title given by a government, or a degree, an honorary degree, conferred by a university.The high priest was certainly very angry. He took a boat because those three saints used to live on the far side of a lake. He went in the boat. Those three saints were sitting under a tree. They were very simple people, peasants, uneducated. They touched the feet of the highest priest, and the priest was very happy. He thought, “Now I will put them right – these are not very dangerous people. I was thinking they would be rebels or something.” He asked them, “How did you become saints?”They said, “We don’t know. We don’t know that we are saints either. People have started calling us saints and we go on trying to convince them that we are not, we are very simple people, but they don’t listen. The more we argue that we are not, the more they worship us. And we are not very good at arguing either.”The priest was very happy. He said, “What is your prayer? Do you know how to pray?”They looked at each other. The first said to the second, “You say.” The second said to the third, “You say, please.”The priest said, “Say what your prayer is. Are you saying Our Lord’s Prayer or not?”They said, “To be frank with you, we don’t know any prayer. We have invented a prayer of our own and we are very embarrassed – how to say it? But if you ask we have to say it. We have heard that God is a trinity: the Father, the Son and the Holy Ghost. We are three and he is also three, so we have made a small prayer of our own: ‘You are three, we are three: Have mercy on us.’”The priest said, “What nonsense. Is this prayer? You fools, I will teach you the right prayer.” And he recited The Lord’s Prayer.And those three poor people said, “Please repeat it once more, because we are uneducated, we may forget.”He repeated it and they asked, “Once more – we are three, repeat it at least three times.” So he repeated it again, and then very happy, satisfied, he went back in his boat.Just in the middle of the lake he was surprised, his boatman was surprised. Those three poor people were coming running on the water. And they said, “Wait! Please one more time – we have forgotten the prayer.”Now it was the turn of the priest to touch their feet, and he said, “Forget what I have said to you. Your prayer has been heard, my prayer has not been heard yet. You continue as you are continuing. I was utterly wrong to say anything to you. Forgive me.”Prayer is a state of simplicity. It is not of words but of silence.Martin Buber, the great Jewish philosopher, has said that prayer is an “I thou” relationship. It is not. He does not know anything about prayer. An “I thou” relationship? In prayer there is no “I” and in prayer there is no “thou.” A prayer is not a dialogue between “I” and “thou”; a prayer is a merger. The “I” disappears into the “thou,” the “thou” disappears into the “I”. There is nobody to say anything and there is nobody to say anything to.The river disappearing into the ocean is prayer. The dewdrop slipping from the lotus leaf into the lake is prayer. Seeing the early morning sun and you are silent, and something starts rising in you too – that is prayer. A bird on the wing, and you are on the wing; you forget that you are separate – that is prayer. Wherever separation disappears, prayer appears. When you become one with the whole of existence, that is prayer.Ego is a state of no-prayer, egolessness is a state of prayer. It is not a dialogue, it is not even a monologue. It has nothing to do with words; it is wordless silence. It is an open, silent sky with no clouds, no thoughts. In prayer you are not Hindu or Christian or Mohammedan. In prayer you are not, in prayer godliness is.The third question:Osho,What is diplomacy?Diplomacy is a beautiful name for all kinds of cunningness. It is a beautiful label for all that is ugly. It is an effort to cover human violence, human stupidity, and human cunningness, behind a beautiful word. Diplomacy is simply an effort to dominate. It may be between persons, it may be between religions, it may be between countries – it does not matter. Even husbands and wives are in a diplomatic relationship, parents and children are in a diplomatic relationship. It is not only in politics, it is in our whole life.When you see somebody and you feel, “Now my whole day is wasted; seeing this bastard early in the morning is a perfect indication that something wrong is going to happen, some calamity is going to happen to me,” but you say to the man, “Hello. How are you? Glad to see you.” That is diplomacy.Diplomacy has entered into our blood. When you don’t love your wife and pretend that you love her, it is diplomacy. When without any love you hug your children, just because it has to be done, because Dale Carnegie says so: How to Win Friends and Influence People…Dale Carnegie is the prophet of the modern age. Dale Carnegie’s book, How to Win Friends and Influence People, has sold next only to the Bible. It seems to be even more important than the Bible, because the Bible is being distributed free by the Christian missionaries and Dale Carnegie’s book you have to purchase. And what he teaches is simply diplomacy.He says that even if you don’t mean it, at least a few times in the day remind your wife how much you love her. That’s enough, because people don’t bother about love; people live in words. If you say, “I love you,” that’s enough. If you go on repeating, “I love you,” that becomes a proof that you really love. This is a very ugly state of affairs. Humanity has fallen so low that Dale Carnegie becomes the prophet.Diplomacy is not only political, not anymore – it has entered into every arena of life. And wherever it enters it brings “pseudo-ness,” falsity; it destroys authenticity, sincerity, honesty. It makes you say things which you don’t mean, it makes you do things which you don’t mean. It makes you many instead of one; you become a crowd. You go on carrying many masks with you because you never know which mask will be needed in a certain situation.And not only has man become diplomatic – even animals who live with man become diplomatic, dogs become diplomatic. Watch a dog… A stranger comes to your house, knocks on the door. The dog starts two things: he starts barking and at the same time he wags his tail. This is diplomacy. Because he is not certain whether the man who has knocked on the door is really a friend of the master or not, it is better to keep your feet in both boats. Then whatsoever turns out to be right, you can withdraw from the wrong one. Then you come out of the house and the dog sees that the stranger is a friend; the barking stops and the tail continues to wag.Man contaminates everything; even innocent people like dogs are corrupted by human contact. You start teaching small children to be diplomatic. On the one hand you go on telling them, “Be true, be sincere be honest,” and then one day a man comes to the door and you tell your son, “Go and say that daddy is out.” Now the boy is puzzled. What to do?My own way in my childhood was to go out and say to the man, “Daddy says he is out.” What else to do? One has to be true and one has to be obedient too. Now either I can be true or I can be obedient.Small children, we start corrupting their minds. We corrupt animals, and it is possible one day we will discover that we even corrupt trees, because they are also very sensitive. Living with man they must be learning all kinds of things from humanity.Alfie and Dan, two Cockney pub-crawlers, were in their cups one afternoon when Alfie pointed to a woman sitting at the end of the bar. “Hey!” he said, “That woman looks like Queen Elizabeth!”“Nah,” replied Dan. “What would the Queen be doing in a pub in hogtown?”“I am telling you it is her,” insisted Alfie. “Can’t you see the resemblance?”“Look, that ain’t the Queen,” said Dan. “And I am willing to bet five on it.”“You are on!” came the reply. “I will go ask her.” He walked over to the woman sitting at the bar and said, “I beg your pardon, are you the Queen?”“Get lost, you little runt,” growled the woman, “before I kick your ass across the room!”He returned to his seat. “Well?” his friend asked.“Well, she didn’t say she was and she didn’t say she wasn’t.”This is diplomacy.A religious person has to drop all diplomacy. He has to be authentic, sincere; he has to be as he is – no pretensions, no false personalities, no facades, just being utterly nude as you are, utterly naked in your reality.The moment you can gather that much courage you will be so filled with joy…you cannot believe right now, you cannot even conceive right now, because it is our falsities which are like parasites on our being; they go on sucking our blood. The more falsities you create around yourself, the more miserable you become, the more you are in a hell.To live in falsities is to live in hell; to live authentically is to be in heaven.The fourth question:Osho,To me it seems that the Christian concept of the soul is the same as what you mean by the real I, the one who is the watcher. Why didn't Jesus speak about the possibility of reincarnation of the soul? This seems to be a difference between Eastern and Western religions. Can you say something about it?Jesus knew perfectly well about reincarnation.There are indirect hints spread all over the gospels. Just the other day I was saying, quoting Jesus: “I am before Abraham ever was.” And Jesus says, “I will be coming back.” And there are a thousand and one indirect references to reincarnation. He knew about it perfectly well, but there is some other reason why he did not talk about it, why he did not preach it.Jesus had been to India and he had seen what had happened because of the theory of reincarnation. In India the theory was taught for almost five thousand years before Jesus. And it is a truth, it is not only a theory; the theory is based in truth. Man has millions of lives. It was taught by Mahavira, by Buddha, by Krishna, by Rama; all the Indian religions agree upon it. You will be surprised to know that they don’t agree on anything else except this theory.Hindus believe in God and the soul. Jainas don’t believe in God at all but only in the soul. And Buddhists don’t believe in the soul or God either. But about reincarnation all three agree – even Buddhists agree, who don’t believe in the soul. A very strange thing – then who reincarnates? Even they could not deny the phenomenon of reincarnation, although they could deny the existence of the soul; they say the soul does not exist but reincarnation exists. And it was very difficult for them to prove reincarnation without the soul; it seems almost impossible. But they found a way – of course it is very subtle and very difficult to comprehend, but they seem to be closer, the closest to the truth.It is easy to understand that there is a soul and when you die the body is left on the earth and the soul enters into another body, into another womb; it is a simple, logical, mathematical thing. But Buddha says there is no soul but only a continuum. It is like when you kindle a candle in the evening and in the morning when you are blowing it out a question can be asked of you: Are you blowing out the same light that you started in the evening? No, it is not the same light, and yet a continuity is there. In the night when you lit the candle…that flame is no longer there, that flame is continuously disappearing; it is being replaced by another flame. The replacement is so quick that you can’t see the gaps, but with sophisticated scientific instruments it is possible to see the gaps: one flame going out, another coming up, that going out, another coming up. There are bound to be small intervals, but you can’t see them with the naked eye.Buddha says that just as the candle flame is not the same – it is changing constantly, although in another sense it is the same because it is the same continuum – exactly like that, there is no soul entity in you like a thing but one like a flame. It is continuously changing, it is a river.Buddha does not believe in nouns, he only believes in verbs, and I perfectly agree with him. He has come closest to the truth; at least in his expression he is the most profound.But why did Jesus, Moses, Mohammed – the sources of all the three religions that have been born outside India – not talk about reincarnation directly? For a certain reason, and the reason is that Moses was aware – because Egypt and India have been in constant contact. It is suspected that once Africa was part of Asia and that the continent has slowly shifted away. India and Egypt were joined together, hence there are so many similarities. And it is not strange that South India is black; it has partly Negro blood in its veins, it is Negroid – not totally, but if Africa was joined with Asia then certainly the mingling of the Aryans with the Negroes must have happened, and then South India became black.Moses must have been perfectly aware of India. You will be surprised that Kashmir claims that both Moses and Jesus are buried there. The tombs are there, one tomb for Moses and one tomb for Jesus. They saw what happened to India through the theory of reincarnation.Because of the theory of reincarnation India became very lethargic; there is no hurry. India has no time sense, not even now. Even though everybody is wearing a wristwatch there is no time sense. If somebody says, “I will be coming at five o’clock in the evening to see you,” it can mean anything. He may turn up at four, he may turn up at six, he may not turn up at all – and it is not taken seriously. It is not that he is not fulfilling his promise – there is no time sense. How can you have time sense when eternity is available? When there are so many, many lives, why be in such a hurry? One can go on slowly; one is bound to reach some day or other.The theory of reincarnation made India very lethargic, dull. It made India utterly time-unconscious. It helped people to postpone. And if you can postpone for tomorrow, then today you will remain the same as you have been and the tomorrow never comes. And India knows how to postpone not only until tomorrow but even till the next life.Moses and Jesus both visited India, both were aware. Mohammed never visited India but was perfectly aware, because he was very close to India and there was constant traffic between India and Arabia. They decided that it was better to tell people, “There is only one life, this is the last chance – the first and the last – if you miss it, you miss forever.” This is a device to create intense longing, to create such intensity in people that they can be transformed easily.Then the question arises: Were Mahavira, Buddha and Krishna not aware? Were they not aware that this theory of reincarnation would create lethargy? They were trying a totally different device. And each device has its time; once it is used, it cannot be used forever. People become accustomed to it. When Buddha, Mahavira and Krishna tried the device of reincarnation they were trying it from a totally different angle.India was a very rich country in those days. It was thought to be the golden country of the world, the richest. And in a rich country the real problem, the greatest problem, is boredom. That is happening now in the West. Now America is in the same situation, and boredom has become the greatest problem. People are utterly bored, so bored that they would like to die.Krishna, Mahavira and Buddha used this situation. They told people, “This is nothing, one life’s boredom is nothing. You have lived for many lives, and remember, if you don’t listen you are going to live many more lives; you will be bored again and again and again. It is the same wheel of life and death moving.”They painted boredom in such dark colors that people who were already bored with even one life became really very deeply involved with religion. One has to get rid of life and death; one has to get out of this wheel, this vicious circle of birth and death. Hence it was relevant in those days.Then India became poor. Once the country became poor boredom disappeared. A poor man is never bored, remember; only a rich man can afford boredom, it is a rich man’s privilege. It is impossible for a poor man to feel boredom; he has no time. The whole day he is working; when he comes home he is so tired he falls asleep. He need not have many, many entertainments – television and movies and music and art and museums – he need not have all these things, he cannot have them. His only entertainment is sex: a natural thing, inbuilt. That’s why poor countries go on reproducing more children than rich countries – the only entertainment.If you want to reduce the population of poor countries, give them more entertainment. Give them television sets, give them radios, movies – something that can keep them distracted from sex.I have heard about American couples that they become so much obsessed with the television that even while making love they go on watching the television. Love becomes secondary, television becomes primary. They don’t want to miss the program that is going on.A poor country knows only one entertainment because it cannot afford any other; it can afford only the natural, inbuilt one. So a poor country goes on producing people; it becomes more and more crowded. And they are not fed up with life. What life do they have? First you have to have life to be fed up with it. You have to have money to be fed up with it. You have to have many women to be fed up with them. You have to have many experiences of the world to be finished with it.The moment India became poor the theory of reincarnation became an escape, a hope – rather than a boredom it became a hope, a possibility to postpone. “I am poor in this life. Nothing to be worried about; there are many lives. Next life I am going to strive a little harder and I will be richer. This life I have got an ugly woman. Nothing to be worried about; it is only a question of one life. Next time I am not going to make the same mistake again. This time I am suffering from my past karmas. This life I will not commit any wrong things so that I can enjoy the coming life.” It became postponement.Jesus saw it, that the device was no longer working in the way it was meant to work. The situation had changed. Now Jesus had to create another device: there is only one life – so if you want to be religious, if you want to meditate, if you want to become a sannyasin, be one right now – because the tomorrow is not reliable. There may be no tomorrow.Hence the West has become too conscious of time; everybody is in a hurry. This hurry is because of Christianity. The device has again failed. No device can work forever.My own experience is that a particular device works only while the master is alive, because he is the soul of it; he manages it in such a way that it works. Once the master is gone, the device falls out of use or people start finding new interpretations for it.Now in the West the device has failed utterly, now it has become a problem. People are in a constant hurry, in tension, anxiety, because there is only one life. Jesus wanted them to remember: because there is one life, remember God. And what are they doing? Seeing that there is only one life they want to drink, eat and be merry, because there is no other life. So indulge as much as you can. Squeeze the whole juice of life right now. And who cares about what will happen on Judgment Day? Who knows whether Judgment Day is there or not?The professor at a girls’ college was a really dirty old man. He could not give a lecture without making some kind of obscene remark. Eventually the girls decided that the next time he did it they would all get up from their desks and leave the classroom.The next morning the professor entered the room and started in right away: “Hey, girls, I heard that just yesterday a ship came into the harbor with thirty Negro sailors on deck. Just imagine, girls, thirty huge Negro pricks.”At this point the whole class got up and started to go out of the room.“Hey, girls,” shouted the professor after them, “no need to hurry. They are gonna stay here for another two weeks.”A great hurry has arisen in the West about everything, because there is no other life.Mary and John are both living in a big apartment house in New York City. One day they meet and instantly fall in love with each other, but they don’t make any contact. This goes on for six months until John just can’t bear the tension anymore and asks her to come to his apartment for a drink. Hesitatingly she says yes and as soon as they reach his flat they close the door behind them and rush into the bedroom and throw themselves on the bed.After a few minutes John explains with a hoarse voice, “Listen, I am very sorry, but if I had known that you were a virgin I would have taken more time.”Mary replies, “Well, if I had known that you had more time, I would have taken my pants off.”Such a hurry! Speed is the mania, faster and faster. Nobody is bothered where you are going, but you have to go fast; invent speedier vehicles.And this whole thing has happened because of the device. It worked in Jesus’ time. He was continuously telling his people, “Beware. The Day of Judgment is very close by. You are going to see the end of the world in your very own life and there is no other life. And if you miss you will be thrown into hell for eternity.” He was simply creating a psychological atmosphere. It worked when he was alive and it worked for a few more days when he was gone. It continued to work for a few days because of the closest disciples who had something of the climate of Jesus with them, some aura, but then it created just the opposite effect.It has created the most worldly civilization the world has ever known. And the desire was that the idea of one life would make people so alert and aware that they would seek and search for God and they would drop all other desires and all other occupations. Their whole life would become single-pointed, a search, an inquiry for God. That was the idea behind the device. But the ultimate result is that people have become absolutely worldly, because there is no other life, only one life – enjoy it as much as you can. Enjoy it, don’t postpone it for tomorrow.The Indian device failed because people became lethargic. It worked with Buddha. He really created one of the greatest movements in the world. Thousands of people renounced their lives, became sannyasins. That means they devoted their whole energy to the search for truth, because he created such an atmosphere of boredom that you would be bored if you missed.But what happened later on was just the opposite. It is always going to be so. The masters are bound to be misunderstood. And people are so cunning, so diplomatic, they can always find ways to destroy the whole device.Jesus knows perfectly that life is eternal, reincarnation is a fact. He mentions it in indirect ways, maybe to his very close disciples he mentions it, but not to the masses – for a simple reason: he has seen that it failed in India, something else has to be tried.I am creating many devices because others have failed. I know perfectly well that my devices will function only while I am here; they are bound to fail as every other device has failed. I am not living in any fool’s paradise thinking that my devices will remain as I create them forever. When I am not there, people are going to distort them. But that is natural, it has to be accepted; there is nothing to worry about.Hence those who are here, please be alert and use these devices as deeply as possible. While I am here these devices will function perfectly well. In my hands they can be great situations for inner transformation, but once my hands are no longer visible these same devices will be in the hands of the pundits and the scholars, and then the same story will be repeated as it has been in the past.Beware, be watchful. Don’t waste time.Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,You talked yesterday of children asserting their egos and rebelling against their parents, of being able to say no. And thus creating a spine, an individuality, a freedom. Osho, do we now come to you and say yes so that we can drop that ego? By doing so, what will happen to our individuality, freedom and spine?Nitin, The ego is like a ladder: you have to use it but you cannot build your house on it. Or, the ego is like a boat: you can use it to go to the other shore but then you need not carry it on your head for your whole life. It has something essential to do, but it should not become a burden forever; when its purpose is fulfilled it has to be dropped.Just as a child needs to say no, the mature person one day needs to say yes. If the child cannot say no to the parents, to the authorities, to the teachers, if the child is unable to disobey, he will not attain to any individuality; he will not have any form, shape. He will be just part of the mob mind, the crowd. He will be impotent, he will not be able to stand on his own. He will not have any self-respect. He will remain hotchpotch, an ugly mess. He will not really be born; he will remain in a psychological womb his whole life, ungrown up. He has to learn how to disobey. And the wise parents will help him to disobey in such a way that disobeying does not distort him. They will give him opportunities to disobey, they will give him opportunities to say no.That’s exactly the meaning of the biblical parable. God said to Adam, “Don’t eat the fruit of this tree, the Tree of Knowledge. If you eat the fruit of this tree you will be expelled from paradise.” It is a great temptation. It is giving Adam an opportunity to disobey.And God also said to Adam, “If you eat the fruit of this tree you will become a mortal; right now you are immortal. Secondly, if you eat the fruit of this tree you will become like gods, all-knowing.” You see the temptation, the multi-dimensional temptation? First: “You will be able to become like gods, all-knowing.” Who would not like to become like gods, all-knowing? And the second, the danger, the risk: “If you eat from this tree you will become mortal; death will start happening to you.” Now it is a challenge. Danger always attracts, and death is the greatest danger.God did not leave any possibility for Adam to remain obedient. There must have been millions of trees in the Garden of Eden and only one Tree of Knowledge; if Adam had been left alone, on his own he might not have discovered it yet. But God didn’t leave it up to him; he pointed out the tree and created the temptation. You think the serpent did it? If the serpent did it, then he must have been in the service of God.A small child was telling his mother…the mother had asked, “What have you been taught today in Sunday school?”He said, “We have been told the biblical story of Adam and Eve and their expulsion. Adam and Eve were told not to eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, then the servant of God came and tempted them.”The mother said, “Servant? You must have misunderstood – it is not servant, it is serpent.”But my feeling is that the child is right: the serpent must have been in the service of God, must have been in the secret police department of God, the FBI or something like that. And in all civilizations the serpent has always represented wisdom. Jesus says: “Be wise like serpents and innocent like doves.” Wise like serpents? God must have used the most wise animal to convey the message, the temptation, to Adam and Eve.The message was given to Eve, not to Adam; since then it has been always so. The salesman comes to the wife not to the husband. The moment the husband leaves for the office the salesman comes and knocks on the door, because the woman can be tempted more easily. The husband will argue, will be stubborn, will not listen, but the wife is easily tempted.One advertising company was told by a big manufacturer of television sets, “Find out some new way to tempt people to purchase our product.” The advertising company suggested, “Send letters to all the addresses given in the telephone directory. The letters should be in the husbands’ names but on top of the letters there should be a note in red letters: ‘Personal. Private. Not to be read by anybody else.’ Then the wives are bound to read them; then you cannot miss.” And once they read them, once they are impressed… All husbands are henpecked – universally so, categorically so. To be a husband and to be henpecked are synonymous, and I cannot do anything about it. It has been so since Adam; that is the way things are. Once Eve was convinced, tempted, Adam followed suit.If parents are really wise they will create opportunities for the children to say no – and beautiful opportunities. Right now, unknowingly, they give ugly opportunities. For example, you say to the child, “Don’t smoke cigarettes.” This is an ugly opportunity because the child will smoke – you have tempted the child to smoke cigarettes. You should have told him something better – “Don’t go out in the sun. Don’t climb the tree.” But you say to the children, “Don’t eat ice-cream.” You should say to them, “Don’t eat fruit” – that will be a wise temptation. “Eat as much ice-cream as you want, but don’t eat fruit.” Give them such a temptation as leads them to say no to you but does not harm their lives; otherwise they will remain deformed their whole lives.Two old men – one was seventy, the other was eighty – were talking. They were talking about the most embarrassing moments in their lives. The seventy-year-old man said, “I have never told anybody, but you are my bosom friend and I know you will keep it a secret. The most embarrassing moment of my life was when I was caught looking through the keyhole of a bathroom when a young woman was taking a bath.”The other said, “Forget all about it – each child does that. There is nothing to be so much embarrassed about.”And the old man said, “I know – but it was yesterday.”Once wrong habits are formed they continue; they remain like hangovers and they become more and more ingrained, more and more deep they go into your unconscious.I am perfectly in favor of creating an ego in the child, because without an ego the child will remain a part of the parents; he will never be an individual on his own. But the no and the no-saying creates only a superficial individuality; because no is negative it cannot create real individuality.The superficial individuality is called personality; the ego gives you a personality. But it is better than having nothing at all, at least it gives you a sense of your being, it defines you. But don’t remain in it forever; it is a passing phase, a stepping-stone. From the personality you have to reach individuality. From the superficial individuality you have to attain to a core individuality. That is possible only by saying yes. But yes is significant only when you have become able to say no. If you say yes from the very beginning, your yes carries no meaning at all; it is meaningless. If you are capable of saying no then your yes has meaning, as much meaning as your no has strength.Hence the society teaches you a false, superficial personality. But when you come to a Buddha, to a Jesus, to a Krishna, to a Mahavira – to a master, to a real master – he will teach you how to say yes. He will take away your no, he will take away your personality.The personality is like the shell of an egg – the ego is the shell of the egg. It protects the life within for the time being only; beyond that it will be destructive. The egg has to be broken one day so the bird can come out. No only creates a shell around you. It is good, it is needed, it is protective, but one day you have to come out of it. That’s the function of religion.Hence religion is possible only in a civilized, cultured, sophisticated society. The more educated the society is, cultured, civilized, the higher the religion that is possible. The primitive people also have religion, but their religion is not yet religion; it is magic, it is ritual. Hence they have not produced buddhas. They are good people, simple, beautiful, innocent.You can go around India; there are many tribes still, aboriginals, very beautiful people. I have been to them, I have lived with them, I have enjoyed their beauty and their innocence. But they have never created a buddha in their whole history; at the most they create magicians. Their religion consists only of rituals, formalities; it never attains to the heights of prayerfulness and meditation; it never reaches to the heights of a Patanjali or a Lao Tzu or a Mohammed. They have not produced any Koran, Upanishads, Bible; they cannot. They are people who have not yet said no, they are people who have not yet disobeyed. They have not eaten the fruit of knowledge, they are simply ignorant.Eat the fruit of knowledge. Become knowledgeable, and one day renounce your knowledge. Then wisdom is born. Wisdom is not ignorance; wisdom is renunciation of knowledge – but first the knowledge is required.Before you can become a christ you will have to become a disobedient Adam and Eve, otherwise Christ is not possible. Christ is the higher stage of Adam. Adam says no, creates a personality; Christ says yes, drops the old personality and attains to a new individuality which is eternal. By saying no Adam becomes a mortal; by saying yes Christ becomes an immortal. By saying no Adam becomes only apparently a god; by saying yes Christ really becomes a god.The process is paradoxical, hence the question. I can understand your question: “What will happen to our individuality, freedom and spine?”The spine, the individuality, the freedom that is created by no is only a transitory process. You have to go beyond it; it is a boat that has to be left behind. When you have reached the roof you leave the ladder; it is a bridge to be crossed.Now learn how to say yes. No you know perfectly well. In fact, Nitin has come from Africa to be here with me forever – against his parents. This was your ultimate no. Those who come to me, they have to come against their parents, because parents are Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians, Buddhists, Jainas…. I am nobody! Coming to me, a Christian will become a non-Christian and a Hindu will become a non-Hindu and a Mohammedan will become a non-Mohammedan.I am not creating a new religion here, but a new man, a new consciousness. I am not creating a new philosophy or theology, but a new vision, a new humanity. You have to come out of your old, rotten ideologies. Hence parents are bound to be against you; they will not like you to be here. I can understand them – they are worried about you, they care for you. Their worry is utterly wrong, but still it shows their care and their love. They would like you to remain in the fold in which they and their forefathers have always lived. They are worried you may go astray – they have not attained to anything by being in the fold, but still they would like you to be in the fold. It is safer, familiar, more secure.Nitin has come with his wife against the desires of his parents; that was the ultimate no. Now I will teach you how to say the ultimate yes. The function of the no is complete; if you go on saying no here too, then you are misunderstanding me completely. I am not your father, I am not your mother. I have to take this no away from you and create yes. The work of the no is complete; now you need a higher flight, now you need a higher altitude of being. That is possible only through yes, because yes is positive.No gives you a negative kind of individuality, yes gives you a positive individuality. A negative individuality is not real individuality, it is only personality, a mask – good in its own time. But remember always that every means has to be transcended some day or other. If you want to reach the goal, one day you will have to leave the way.Buddha used to say, “Once I saw five fools carrying a boat on their heads in the marketplace. I asked them, ‘What is the matter with you? Why are you carrying this boat?’“They said, ‘This boat helped us to come from the other shore to this shore; this boat has helped our lives. If this boat had not been available…on the other shore there were wild animals, and if we had had to remain there even only for one night we would be dead by now. We can never forget the great blessing that the boat has bestowed upon us. Out of sheer thankfulness we will carry the boat forever on our heads.’”Buddha said, “This is the way of the stupid people. They carry scriptures, they carry ideologies, they carry philosophies on their heads. Rather than becoming a help, the boat has become a hindrance. It would have been better if they had died on the other shore; at least they would have been saved from carrying this weight their whole lives. Now this weight will kill them.”No is good, but nobody can live in the no, nobody can make a home out of the no. No is suicidal – use it, but go beyond it. Be alert and conscious that you don’t become encaged in the no-saying. Attain to yes; use no as a stepping-stone.By being part of this commune you have to learn how to say yes with totality. That is trust, that is surrender, that is faith. That’s what will become a bridge, the final bridge between you and existence. It will not destroy your freedom; it will simply make your freedom positive.There are three kinds of freedom. One is “freedom from”; that is a negative freedom: freedom from the father, freedom from the mother, freedom from the church, freedom from the society. That is a negative kind of freedom – freedom from – good in the beginning, but that can’t be the goal. Once you are free from your parents, what are you going to do? Once you are free from your society then you will be at a loss. You will lose all meaning and significance because your whole life had meaning in saying no. Now whom to say no to?A young man came to me; he wanted to marry a girl. He was a Brahmin, a very high-caste Brahmin, very respected in the city, and he wanted to marry a Parsi girl. The parents were obviously against it, absolutely against it. They had told him that if he married that girl they would disown him – and he was the only son. The more stubborn the parents became, the more the young man became determined to marry the girl. He had come to ask my advice.I said, “Just meditate for three days on one thing: are you really interested in the girl or are you simply interested in saying no to your parents?”He said, “Why do you say this to me? I love the girl, I am absolutely in love.”I said, “If you say so, then get married. But I don’t see any love in your eyes, I don’t see any love in your heart. I don’t see any fragrance of love. I only see some negative aura around you, a black aura around your face. It says you are determined to go against your parents – the girl is only an excuse.”But he wouldn’t listen. If he was not going to listen to his parents, how was he going to listen to me? He got married. After six months he came to see me, crying and weeping. He fell at my feet and said, “You were right – I don’t love that woman, that love was false. You were right, your diagnosis was right. Now that I have got married to her and I have denied my parents’ order, all love has disappeared.”This is “freedom from.” This is not much of a freedom, but better than nothing.The second kind of freedom is “freedom for”; that is positive freedom. Your interest is not in denying something, rather you want to create something. For example, you want to be a poet, and just because you want to be a poet you have to say no to your parents. But your basic orientation is that you want to be a poet and your parents would like you to be a plumber. “Better be a plumber. That is far more paying, far more economical, far more respectable too. Poet? People will think you are crazy. And how are you going to live? And how are you going to support your wife and your children? Poetry can’t pay.”But if you are for poetry, ready to risk all, this is a higher freedom, better than the first. It is positive freedom – “freedom for.” Even if you have to live a life of poverty you will be happy, you will be cheerful. Even if you have to chop wood to remain a poet you will be utterly blissful, fulfilled, because you are doing what you wanted to do, you are doing your own thing. This is positive freedom.And then there is a third freedom, the highest; in the East we have called it moksha – the ultimate freedom, which goes beyond both the negative and the positive. First learn saying no, then learn saying yes, and then just forget both, just be. The third freedom is not freedom against something, not for something, but just freedom. One is simply free – no question of going against, no question of going for.“Freedom from” is political, hence all political revolutions fail – when they succeed. If they don’t succeed they can go on hoping, but the moment they succeed they fail, because then they don’t know what to do. That happened in the French Revolution, that happened in the Russian Revolution – that happens to every revolution. A political revolution is “freedom from.” Once the Czar is gone, then you are at a loss: What to do now? Your whole life was devoted to fighting the Czar; you know only one thing, how to fight the Czar. Once the Czar is gone you are at a loss; your whole skill is useless. You will find yourself very empty. “Freedom for” is artistic, creative, scientific. And “just freedom” is religious.Nitin, before I can teach you moksha – just freedom, neither for nor against, neti-neti, neither this nor that but pure freedom, just the fragrance of freedom – before I can teach it to you, you will have to know the positive one: “freedom for.”Hence the commune. It is a creative commune; we are going to be creative in a thousand and one ways. In every possible way we are going to be creative, so that you can learn how to say yes to life.When the yes has destroyed your no, both can be thrown away. That is the ultimate in joy, in freedom, in realization.The second question:Osho,Is life not sometimes far more surprising than fictions themselves?Not only sometimes but always. Fictions are only reflections of life – how can they be more surprising? No fiction is as fictitious as life itself; life is made of the stuff called dreams. Hence the mystic says life is illusion, maya, a mirage. It is a mystery, unfathomable, infinite, beginningless, endless.So I will not say that only sometimes it is surprising; each moment of it is a surprise, but you don’t feel it. You feel it only once in a while when something really extraordinary happens and you are shocked into wakefulness. Only then do you understand that life is far more surprising – because you are fast asleep. Unless something out of the way, very outlandish, far out, happens, and you are shaken and shocked into a little bit of awareness, only then do you see what a miracle life is, how much surprise it contains.But to the buddhas each moment of it is a surprise, because it is each moment new, renewing itself. Everything is extraordinary if you are alert, if you are sensitive enough, if you are open enough. Then the whole of life, from the mundane to the sacred, from the lowest to the highest, the whole of life is such a mystery that you are always in for a surprise. It depends on your sensitivity, it depends on your awareness, it depends how conscious you are.A Zen master was asked, “What did you use to do before you became enlightened?”He said, “I used to chop wood and carry water from the well for my master’s house.”The inquirer asked, “And now that you have become enlightened, what do you do?”He said, “I chop wood and carry water.”The inquirer was obviously puzzled. “Then what is the difference? You used to chop wood and carry water, you still chop wood and still carry water – then what is the difference?”The master laughed. He said, “The difference is infinite. Before I simply used to chop wood not knowing the beauties that surrounded me. Now chopping wood is not the same because I am not the same. My eyes are not the same, my heart beats in a different rhythm – my heart beats with the heart of the whole. There is a synchronicity, there is harmony.“Carrying water from the well is the same from the outside, but my interior has become totally different. I am a new man, I am born again. Now I can see in depth, I can see into the very core of things, and each pebble has become a diamond, and each song of a bird is nothing but a call from existence, and whenever a flower blooms, existence blooms for me. Looking into people’s eyes I am looking into the eyes of existence. Yes, on the surface I am carrying on the same activity, but because I am not the same the world is not the same.”Start becoming a little more alert and watch things, and you will be surprised. Life is mysterious, unexplainable – life is absurd. You cannot prove anything for or against.Tertullian says: I believe in God because God is absurd – credo quia absurdum. Why do I believe in God? – because God is absurd. No logic can prove him, no logic can disprove him. It is a love affair. And life is very hilarious because it is very ridiculous too.If you become a little alert you will find love, light, laughter, everywhere.It is said that when Hotei became enlightened he started laughing. He lived at least thirty years afterward; he continued laughing for thirty years. Even in sleep his disciples would hear him giggling. His whole message to the world was laughter; he would go from one town to another just laughing. He would stand in one marketplace, then in another, just laughing, and people would gather. His laughter had something of the beyond – a buddha’s laughter. He is known in Japan as “the laughing Buddha.”His laughter was so contagious that whosoever heard it would start laughing. Soon the whole marketplace would be laughing; crowds would gather and laugh and they would ask him, “Just give us a few instructions.”He would say, “Nothing more, this is enough. If you can laugh, if you can laugh totally, it is meditation.”Laughter was his device. It is said many people became enlightened through Hotei’s laughter. That was his only meditation: to laugh and help people laugh.Just watch life, and you will be surprised.A Scot, an Italian and a Jewish man were dining together in an expensive restaurant. When the bill arrived, the Scotsman promptly declared that he would take it.Now this is impossible: The Scotsman promptly declared that he would take it. Can you believe it? Is it possible? It has never happened, it is not going to happen – but that day it happened.The next day the newspapers carried the headline: “Jewish Ventriloquist Shot in Restaurant.”McLeod and his wife visited one of the circus airfields where they charge fifty dollars for a plane ride just around the town. Naturally he would not spend the money until the pilot approached him.“I will take you and your wife up for nothing,” he said. “It will be a rough ride – but if you and your wife let out one single word, one sound, while we are up there, then it is double.”McLeod accepted the challenge and up they went. It really was a rough ride – dives, loops, turnovers. Finally they landed.“You win,” said the pilot. “Not a word out of you.”“No,” said the Scotsman. “But I almost did speak when my wife fell out.”Just look at people. And each person is a fiction, and each person carries so many stories in his heart. Love people, search in their souls, and you will not need to go to the movies and you will not need to read novels. Each person contains many novels and many movies, but we don’t listen to people. We don’t see people face to face, we don’t hold their hands, we don’t allow them to open their hearts.For the first time humanity has become very closed. Each person is living a windowless life, completely encapsulated. Open up, throw your doors and windows open. Let wind and rain and sun come in. Let people enter into you and you enter into people’s lives. That is the only way to become aware of the tremendous mystery of life. And to be aware of the mystery of life is to be aware of godliness.One day King Arthur decided to go in search of the Holy Grail, but he hesitated to leave his knight, Sir Lancelot, with his wife, Queen Guinevere, so he went to ask the wise Merlin for advice. Merlin told him to give him a few days to think it over.A few days later King Arthur returned to see Merlin who proudly showed him his new invention – a chastity belt. Puzzled, King Arthur looked at it and said, “But this is no good – it has the hole in the wrong place.”Merlin said, “No, no. You just watch this.” And he picked up a pencil and put it in the hole. The pencil snapped in half.King Arthur was absolutely delighted and departed with the belt. After putting it on his wife he set off in search of the Holy Grail, his mind at peace about Guinevere and Sir Lancelot.Many weeks later he returned – and immediately lined up all his knights in the castle courtyard and told them to pull down their trousers. Lo and behold, all the knights were castrated except the one at the end of the line, Sir Lancelot.King Arthur, distraught at having mistrusted his gallant knight – the only one to have upheld the honor of Queen Guinevere – went up to him and said, “I give you my humble apologies. You are the knight that I mistrusted the most, but in fact you are the most loyal. I will grant you anything that you ask for. Say what it is that you desire.”And Sir Lancelot went, “Mm mm mm…”The third question:Osho,In a lecture you spoke about non-identification, that one should become a witness. But in the West many people are alienated, they cannot get involved. They are simply indifferent to everything. That is also my experience. Please can you make clear the difference between non-identification and alienation?The difference is very clear-cut, but subtle and delicate. To be indifferent means to be dead; it does not mean that you are a witness, it simply means you are disconnected from life and all the sources that nourish you. You are only uprooted; that is alienation.Uproot a tree and it will start dying. Its greenness will be gone, soon the foliage will wither away, flowers will not come anymore. The spring will come and go but the tree will know nothing of it; it has become alienated from existence. It is no longer rooted in the earth, it is no longer related to the sun, it no longer has any bridge. It is surrounded by walls, all bridges are broken.That’s what has happened to the modern man: he is an uprooted tree. He has forgotten how to relate with existence, he has forgotten how to whisper with the clouds and the trees and the mountains. He has completely forgotten the language of silence – because it is the language of silence that becomes a bridge between you and the universe that surrounds you. The universe knows no other language. On the earth there are three thousand languages; existence knows no language except the language of silence.An English general was talking to a German general after the Second World War. The German was very puzzled; he said, “We had the best equipped army in the world, the best war technology, the greatest leader that history has ever known, the best of generals, and such a devoted army. Why? – why couldn’t we win? It seems simply impossible that we have been defeated. It is unbelievable – although it has happened – but we cannot believe it.”The English general laughed and said, “There is one thing you have forgotten: before starting any battle we used to pray to God; that is the secret of our victory.”The German said, “But we also used to pray to God, every morning.”The English general laughed and he said, “We know that you used to pray, but you pray in German and we pray in English – and who told you that God knows German?”Everybody thinks his language is the language of God. Hindus say Sanskrit is the holy language, the divine language, devavani – God understands only Sanskrit. And ask the Mohammedans – then God understands only Arabic; otherwise, why should he have revealed the Koran in Arabic? And ask the Jews – then God understands only Hebrew.God understands no language because “God” means this total existence. God understands only silence – and we have forgotten silence.Because we have forgotten silence, forgotten the art of meditation, we have become alienated. We have become small, dirty, muddy pools and we don’t know how to go and be one with the ocean. We go on becoming dirtier every day, shallower every day, because the water goes on evaporating. We are just muddy, our life has no clarity. Our eyes cannot see and our hearts cannot feel.This state is the state of indifference; it is a negative state. The mystics have called it, “the dark night of the soul.” It is not witnessing, it is just the opposite of witnessing.When I say, “Be a witness” I am not saying become uprooted from life. I am saying live life in all its multi-dimensionality, and yet remain aware. Drink the juices of life, but remember that while you are drinking the juices of life there is a consciousness in you beyond all action, all doing. Drinking, eating, walking, sleeping, are all acts, and there is a consciousness in you which simply reflects, a mirrorlike phenomenon. It is not indifference. The mirror is not indifferent to you, otherwise why should it bother to reflect you at all? It is immensely interested in you, it reflects you, but it does not become attached. The moment you are gone, you are gone; the mirror does not remain remembering you; the mirror now reflects that which is in front of it.A witnessing consciousness lives in life but with tremendous non-attachment, with great non-possessiveness; it possesses nothing. It lives totally, it lives passionately, but still knowing that “I don’t possess anything.”The witnessing consciousness is not an island separate from the ocean, it is one with the ocean. But still a miracle, a paradox – even being one with the ocean there is a part that remains above the ocean like the tip of the iceberg. That part is your witnessing soul. To create it is the greatest treasure in the world; one becomes a buddha by creating it.Falling into indifference you become simply unconscious, you go into a coma. You lose all joy in life; the celebration of life stops for you. Then you don’t exist, you only vegetate. Then you are not a man but only a cabbage – and that too uprooted. You become more and more rotten every day, you stink; no fragrance comes out of you. The same energy that could have become fragrance passing through a witnessing soul becomes a stinking phenomenon by becoming indifferent.But I can understand your question. From the outside sometimes indifference and witnessing may appear alike. This has been one of the greatest calamities – because they appear alike. Hence true sannyas was lost and a phony sannyas became predominant. I call sannyas phony if it lives in indifference.The phony sannyas is escapist. It teaches you not to enjoy life, it teaches you not to love music, it teaches you not to cherish beauty. It teaches you to destroy all the sources that beautify your existence. It teaches you to escape to the caves, ugly caves, to turn your back toward the world that existence has given as a gift to you.The phony sannyas is not only against the world, it is against God too, because to be against the world is to be against the creator of the world. If you hate the painting you are bound to hate the painter. If you dislike the dance, how can you like the dancer? God is the painter, the world is his painting. God is the musician, the world is his music. God is the dancer, nataraj, and the world is his dance. If you renounce the world, indirectly you are renouncing God.The phony sannyas is escapist; it is cheap, it is easy. It is very easy to escape from the world and live in a cave and feel holy – because there is no opportunity for you to be unholy, no challenge. Nobody insults you, nobody criticizes you. There is nobody present, so you can think that now there is no anger in you, you can feel that now there is no ego in you. Come back to the world.I know people who have lived for thirty years in the Himalayas, and when they come back to the world they are surprised to find that they are the same people, nothing has changed. Thirty years of Himalayas – a sheer wastage. But while they were in the Himalayas they were thinking they had become very sacred, very holy, they had become great saints. And there were reasons for them to think so, because no anger, no ego, no greed – there is nothing to possess so you feel non-possessive, nobody to compete with so you feel uncompetitive, nobody hurts your ego so you don’t feel the ego at all.Things are felt only when there is some hurt. For example, you feel your head only when there is a headache. When the headache disappears, the head also disappears from your consciousness; you cannot feel your head without a headache. You become headless when there is no headache.Living in the Himalayan cave you have escaped from all the hurts of the world which make you aware again and again of the ego, of the anger, of the greed, of jealousy… Coming back into the world you will find everything is back again – and back with a vengeance, because it has been accumulating for thirty years. You will bring a bigger ego than you had ever taken with you to the Himalayas. The sannyas that teaches indifference is phony.The sannyas that teaches you how to live in the world and yet float above it like a lotus flower, like a lotus leaf, remaining in the water and yet untouched by the water, remaining in the world and yet not allowing the world to enter into you, being in the world yet not being of the world, that is true renunciation.That true renunciation comes through witnessing; it is not indifference. Indifference will make you alienated; being alienated you will feel meaningless, joyless, accidental. Feeling accidental, the desire to commit suicide will arise, is bound to arise. Why go on living a meaningless life? Why go on repeating the same rut, the same routine, every day? If there is no meaning, why not end it all, why not be finished with it all?Hence many, many more people are committing suicide every day, many, many people are going mad every day. The rate of suicide and madness is increasing. Psychoanalysis seems to be of no help. Psychoanalysts, in fact, commit suicide more, go mad more than any other profession.Nothing seems to help the modern man – because the indifference is too heavy; it has created a dark cloud around him. He cannot see beyond his own nose; he is suffocating in his lonely world. The walls are so thick, thicker than the China Wall, that even when you love you are hidden behind your wall, your beloved is hidden behind her wall. There are two China Walls between you. You shout, but no communication seems to be possible. You say one thing, something else is understood; she says something, you understand something else. Husbands and wives sooner or later come to one understanding: that it is better not to talk. It is better to keep silent, because the moment you utter a word misunderstanding is bound to follow.All communication has disappeared from the world. Everybody is living a lonely life – lonely in the crowd, and the crowd is becoming bigger and bigger every day. The world population is exploding; there have never been so many human beings as there are today – and man has never been so lonely. Strange! Why are we so lonely amidst such a crowd? Communication has failed.Gaffney staggered into a bar crying. “What happened?” asked Brady the bartender.“I did a horrible thing,” sniffed the drunk. “Just a few hours ago I sold my wife to someone for a bottle of Scotch.”“That’s awful,” said Brady. “Now she is gone and you want her back, right?”“Right,” said Gaffney, still crying.“You are sorry you sold her because you realized too late that you love her, right?”“Oh, no,” said the Irishman, “I want her back because I am thirsty again!”It is becoming more and more difficult to understand people, because such thick, dense indifference surrounds everybody that even if you shout you can’t be heard, or they hear something which you have not said at all. They hear that which they want to hear or they hear that which they can hear. They hear not what is said but what their mind interprets.Two black teenage girls wandered into a photographer’s shop in Alabama to have their photos taken.The photographer sat them down and then busied himself under the black cloth behind his camera.“What’s he doin’?” whispered one girl to her friend.“He’s gonna focus,” she whispered back.“What, both of us?”D’Angelo, the immigrant, had to travel by train from New York to Raleigh, North Carolina. When he was met by a cousin, it was obvious that D’Angelo was in a very bad mood.“What happened?” asked his relative.“Ah, that goddamn-a conductor he tell-a me no do this and no do that.” exclaimed the Italian. “I take out-a my sand-a-wich and he say, ‘No – inna dining car.’ I start-a drink-a some vino and he say, ‘No – inna club-a car.’ So I go inna club-a car, meet-a girl, and she take-a me back to her empty compartment and then the goddamn conductor he come along an-a yell, ‘No’foka, Virginia, no’foka, Virginia!’”You understand that which you can understand. Your mind is always there to interpret, and the interpretation is yours. It has nothing to do with what you have been told.People are becoming more and more lonely, and out of desperation they are trying every possible way to communicate. Nothing seems to help. Nothing can help unless they start learning the art of silence. Unless a man and woman know what silence is, unless they can sit together in deep silence, they cannot merge into each other’s being. Their bodies may penetrate each other, but their souls will remain far apart. And when souls meet there is communion, there is understanding.Indifference makes you dull, makes you mediocre, makes you unintelligent. If you are indifferent your sword will lose all sharpness. That’s how it happens to the monks in the monasteries. Look at their faces, in their eyes, and you can see that something is dead. They are like corpses walking, doing things robot-like because those things have to be done. They are not really involved; they have become utterly incapable of getting involved in anything.This is a very sad situation, and if it continues, man has no future. If it continues, then the third world war is bound to happen – so that we can commit a global suicide; so there is no need to commit suicide retail, we can commit it wholesale. In one single moment the whole earth can die.Hence meditation has become something absolutely needed, the only hope for humanity to be saved, for the earth to still remain alive. Meditation simply means the capacity to get involved yet remain unattached. It looks paradoxical – all great truths are paradoxical. You have to experience the paradox; that is the only way to understand it. You can do a thing joyously and yet just be a witness that you are doing it, that you are not the doer.Try with small things, and you will understand. Tomorrow when you go for a morning walk, enjoy the walk – the birds in the trees and the sunrays and the clouds and the wind. Enjoy, and still remember that you are a mirror; you are reflecting the clouds and the trees and the birds and the people.This self-remembering Buddha calls sammasati, right mindfulness. Krishnamurti calls it choiceless awareness, the Upanishads call it witnessing, Gurdjieff calls it self-remembering, but they all mean the same. But it does not mean that you have to become indifferent; if you become indifferent you lose the opportunity to self-remember.Go on a morning walk and still remember that you are not it – you are not the walker but the watcher And slowly, slowly you will have the taste of it – it is a taste, it comes slowly. And it is the most delicate phenomenon in the world; you cannot get it in a hurry. Patience is needed.Eat, taste the food, and still remember that you are the watcher. In the beginning it will create a little trouble in you because you have not done these two things together. In the beginning, I know, if you start watching you will feel like stopping eating, or if you start eating you will forget watching.Our consciousness is one-way – right now, as it is – it goes only toward the target. But it can become two-way – it can eat and yet watch. You can remain settled in your center and you can see the storm around you; you can become the center of the cyclone. And that is the greatest miracle that can happen to a human being, because that brings freedom, liberation, truth, godliness, bliss, benediction.The last question:Osho,Can you also make mistakes?Not a few but many – plenty, because I don’t take anything seriously. So many times my sannyasins write to me, “Osho…” Subhuti wrote just a few days ago; when I said that Napoleon was obsessed with food, he wrote to me, “Is it Napoleon or Nero?” Who cares; Subhuti? Whichever you like. Sometimes I say Nero, sometimes I say Napoleon. I am not a very learned man, and I am absolutely happy in being utterly unlearned.The other day somebody wrote: “You said that the gospels were written a few centuries after Jesus. This is not correct.”But I have not told you that this is correct. If it is incorrect, it makes no difference to me. He has also written – must be a learned man…. You have fallen in wrong company. He has also written: “You said that it was translated into Latin first.”To me Latin and Greek are all the same. I don’t understand Latin, I don’t understand Greek, so all that I meant was that it was translated into something that I don’t understand.Teertha understands it perfectly well. He has written a story. He has written to me:Osho, I was walking down M.G. Road one day when I saw a very strange sight: there was this man, right in the middle of the road, moving his arms as though he was rowing a boat. (Demonstrate, but mind the microphone!)I watched for a while, and eventually had to call out to him to find out what was going on.“What are you doing?” I shouted.“Rowing a boat, of course!” he replied.“But you are not in a boat” I called back.“I am not?” he yelled, looking panic-stricken; and then started swimming as hard as he could. (Demonstrate, but mind the microphone.)Now he knows that I can hit the microphone – and he is much more concerned about the microphone.I can commit mistakes a-plenty, but I am not deterred by them, I go on committing them – because if I start thinking that no mistake has to be committed then I cannot relate to you what I want to relate. Then I will have to be absolutely silent, because the truth that I have known can only be related if I am ready to commit many mistakes. Then too it is not related as it is.A telephone operator in San Francisco says that the city’s Chinatown receives fewer calls than any other area of similar size in the city. And with a straight face she explained the reason: “I guess there are so many people named Wing and Wong that people are afraid they will wing the wong number.”I am not afraid – I go on winging the wong number. And it is not only that I can commit mistakes – the world is proof enough that God also commits mistakes. Otherwise, do you think you would have had any chance of being here in the world?Mulla Nasruddin was speaking to Morarjibhai Desai. Seeing Mulla Nasruddin in orange, Morarjibhai Desai was obviously annoyed. He said to Nasruddin, “Mulla, what turned you on to Osho?”“The day I saw him walking out with his hands folded, I knew then that God exists,” replied Mulla.Morarji, looking at Mulla from the corner of his eye, asked, “Hmmm, and what do you feel when you see me?”Mulla said, “That God can also make mistakes.”Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Can you clear this confusion in me? The other day at discourse you talked about the different ways and paths to God. The Christian feels his is the only way, the Muslim feels his is the only way, and so on. Now all of us here, your entire following – don't we too believe that yours is the most appealing and therefore the only way? Then what is the difference? I cannot seem to figure it out and yet I am sure there is difference.God is not a goal, hence there can be no way to God. All ways are wrong. God is right now, this very moment. God is always in the present, now and here, and always now and here. There can be no way to God.The very idea of “the way” is fallacious. “The way” means you have postponed; “the way” leads to tomorrow, and the tomorrow never comes. “The way” means you have projected into the future: God is somewhere else and you have to travel. Then religion becomes a journey. And religion is not a journey, it is already the case.God has not to happen to you. God has happened, because you are alive. What is life? Who is breathing in you and who is conscious in you? God is not to be known, God is the knower. God is not the object that you have to see, God is the seer in you. This is the most fundamental thing I would like you to remember.What I am teaching here is not a way, it is a totally different phenomenon. Hence I am not creating a religion, I am not creating a sect – I am simply waking you up to the reality of godliness. Even while you are asleep God is within and without; even in your sleep you are in God.It is like, if a man is asleep and it is spring and the flowers are blooming and the birds are singing and the trees are green, celebrating – but the man is asleep. He is unaware of the spring, he is unaware of the flowers, of the birds’ songs; he is unaware of everything that is happening. But that does not mean that it is not happening. He may be unaware, he may be asleep, but the spring has come, it is there. Any moment the man can open his eyes; any situation may help him to be awake. And suddenly he will be surprised that there was no need to go anywhere – all was already here.That’s how it happens when a man really wakes up – not that one has to travel somewhere. All traveling is dreaming, all pilgrimage is dreaming, desiring. And your so-called religions have made God a goal, and your mind is perfectly satisfied with that because mind can exist only if there is a goal. The mind needs tension, the mind needs a way to remain tense. If there is a goal then mind can remain desiring – unfulfilled, frustrated, hoping one day to get it.This is how mind can nourish itself, and it can dream about the joys of finding God and the beauties and the blessings. It can create paradise in imagination – and all these are simply dreams of the mind. The moment you think of the future, you have slipped out of reality and fallen into the ditch of dreaming. My effort here is to bring you out of your sleep and dreaming.I am not teaching a way, so you cannot claim that my way is the best way – it is not a way at all. You cannot say that this is the only way, because I am saying there is no way at all. I am simply trying to make you alert to that which is already there. It is beating in your heart, it is godliness beating in your heart. It is pulsating in your being; every fiber of your body, of your being, is alive. That aliveness is godliness.God is not a person but only the presence. Feel it now! If you can ever feel it you can only feel it now – now or never. Hence I don’t give any opportunity for your mind. You would like me to say something about how to find God, where to find God, where to go. You will be perfectly happy if I give you ways, goals, faraway, distant goals; you will be tremendously happy. Why? Because the goal helps you to remain the same as you are, the goal helps you to remain asleep and dreaming. It becomes a new dream, a new desire, a new ambition: How to attain God? It becomes a new ego trip.I am shattering your egos, because your egos are a kind of shell that surrounds you and keeps you oblivious to the reality. It keeps you encapsulated within yourself, does not allow you to open your eyes and see what is happening.God is this total existence happening. Be silent and know. There is nowhere to go, there is nothing to achieve, no ambition has to be fulfilled. God has already decided to be inside you; that’s why you are alive.So, don’t get unnecessarily confused. I am not proposing a way in competition with the Mohammedan and the Christian and the Hindu and the Parsi. What I am saying has nothing to do with Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism. What I am saying is simply a statement, a naked, bare statement of the fact that you are God – already, as you are. Nothing has to be changed at all. Only one thing has to happen and that is not a change really but just the other side of you. One side is sleep, the other side is awakening. One side of you, one aspect of your coin, is sleep, darkness, the night part; the other side is the day part. Just wake up…and you will be surprised that there was no need to desire anything. God has already given it to you. He has given himself; he lives in you, he resides in you. If I can help you to remember this, that’s all.That’s why you feel the difference but you cannot figure it out. This is the difference. All religions are ways; all religions are new directions for the ego, new projections, new desires, and sometimes far more dangerous than the ordinary desire is. A man desiring money is not in such a mess as a man who desires God, because money can be found by desiring; money can only be found by desiring, and God can never be found by desiring. God can only be found by non-desiring.So miserable is the man, most miserable is the man who desires God. The man who is greedy for money is not in such a great mess; he is far more sane – because money can be found only if you desire and work hard for it, compete, struggle. If you desire political power, then be madly after it; that is the only way to attain it. It will not come if you go on sitting in your room waiting for it; it will never knock on your door. You can wait for millions of lives – nobody will come and knock on your door and say to you that you have been chosen to be the prime minister of the country or the president. You will have to fight for it, you will have to be very violent, aggressive; only then is it possible.But if you go in search of God you will miss. The very search will be the cause of your missing. Where are you going? He is inside and you are going outside. All going is going outside. Go to Jerusalem or Kaaba or Kashi or Girnar or Bodhgaya – wherever you go, it is outside. All going is extrovert. Ingoing is not a going at all.What is ingoing? When you don’t go outside, you are in. It is not really a going at all; not even a single step has to be taken. There is no space inside where you can walk and go in. When it is said, “Go in,” it is said only metaphorically. What is actually meant is: Stop going out. Stop completely, a full stop, no more going outside. Then suddenly you are in – where else can you be when you are not going outside? When you are not going to Kaaba and to Jerusalem and to Kashi, where will you be? You will simply be inside, you will find yourself inside. Your outgoing was preventing you from finding yourself.Stop seeking: that is the only way to find God. Stop desiring: that is the only way to find God.I am giving you an insight, not a religion. And you are not my followers, remember. Nobody here is my follower – friends, of course, but nobody is a follower. The orange color creates the illusion that people are following me. Just to avoid that, I cannot wear orange myself. I love the color, but if I start wearing orange then it will become a logical proof that you are following me. Certainly, you are not following me; I am a white person, you are orange people – what connection can there be?You are not my followers, but friends. And because I love orange, out of your love you have accepted it. It is not a uniform; it is not that by wearing orange you become part of a certain sect or church. There is no church, no sect. Because I love orange, just out of love for me you are wearing orange. That is just a gesture of love, nothing else.You are not my follower, nobody is. But certainly you have chosen to be with me. That is your choice. You have fallen in love with a madman, and when you fall in love with a madman a little bit of madness is bound to enter your heart. That’s what is happening here. I am drunk, I am making you drunk. What else can I do? But this is not a religion. Hence you can love me and you can love Jesus, and there is no conflict. In fact by loving me you are bound to love Jesus. By loving me you will find for the first time the real taste of Jesus. By being with me you can love Buddha. In fact for the first time you will have an insight of what Buddha is. By being with me, in communion with me, you will be in communion with Zarathustra, with Lao Tzu, with Mahavira, with Mohammed. But this is a totally different approach. I become the door, and when you enter in me you find all the buddhas – because it is like the ocean: you can taste it from anywhere, it is salty. If you taste me, you have tasted all the buddhas, it is the same taste.You cannot find Mohammed in the Koran, and you cannot find Jesus in the Bible. You cannot become really religious by becoming part of a church – Catholic, Protestant – it is impossible. These are the mischievous people who have been creating a very ugly humanity. You can be a Jew only if you hate Jesus. You can be with Moses only if you are not with Jesus; that is a condition. And if you are with Jesus then you cannot be with Buddha; that’s a condition.That’s why they go on claiming, “This is the only way.” So even the idea that there are other possible ways drops from your mind. You are conditioned in such a way by every religion that, “This is the only truth, the only truth, the truth,” and the conditioning becomes so strong, steel-like, that it becomes impossible for you to think that there can be other ways, absolutely impossible. Unless you are very intelligent, alert, watchful, unless you look at your conditioning and become a witness, it is impossible.I was born in a Jaina family and, naturally, just as everybody else is conditioned, the conditioning was imposed on me. But I was continuously watchful, continuously alert, hence I was not caught by the conditioning. And the conditioning is so subtle that once you are caught in it you become incapable of thinking, seeing; anything that goes against your conditioning, you become deaf to it.For example, a Jaina cannot think that Jesus is enlightened – impossible. His conditioning will not allow him. And his conditioning is very logical in his mind, and you cannot argue with him. He will say, “Jesus eats meat; how can an enlightened person eat meat?” And how are you going to convince him? He has some logic there.Jesus drinks wine. He not only drinks wine but he also turns the whole sea into wine so the whole world can become drunk. It is a beautiful story, Jesus turning the whole sea into wine. Can an enlightened person do that? Not according to the Jainas. If there was a sea full of wine the Jaina tirthankara would come and do the miracle and turn it into water – and pure water, mind you, filtered water. And that too you are allowed to drink only in the day, not in the night. If you are really a Jaina you won’t drink it at night, not even water.My grandmother would not even allow poor tomatoes in the house, because they look like meat – just the appearance. Only when she died could tomatoes enter into the house. You will be surprised, Jainas don’t eat potatoes. Now, what have these poor potatoes done? But their ideas: anything that grows under the earth has not to be eaten, only things that grow in the open, in the sun, because anything that grows in darkness creates darkness in you. Logic! It is tamas; it will create tamasik energy in you; it will create a certain energy that will pull you toward the earth, downward. The potato is a secret agent of the earth – beware. Eat things that grow upward toward the sun; they will help you to be uplifted, your energy will be sattvik, pure. You will be under the law of levitation. The potato pulls you downward, it is heavy.And once you are conditioned from your very childhood, that’s how it starts appearing. Then eat a potato and you will feel very heavy and pulled downward – all these things will happen and then you will know that the teaching is right.Up to my eighteenth year I had not eaten in the night. Then I went with a few friends to see a fort, far away in the jungles. They were all Hindus, and the fort was such a beauty that the whole day they were not interested in preparing food. I was the only Jaina, and I could not insist, because thirty people were not interested in cooking food in the day. So I kept quiet. In the night they cooked food. Now, the whole day’s wandering in the forest, in the ruins of that old ancient castle – I was tired, hungry; I had never known such hunger. But my eighteen years’ conditioning – you cannot eat in the night…And then they started preparing beautiful food, and the smell of the food and so close by…. And they all started persuading me; they said. “Nobody is here, and nobody will tell your family, your parents. Nobody will ever know.” I resisted – but the more I resisted, the more I was tempted. Finally I yielded, I ate. The food was delicious, but the whole night I suffered hell. I vomited at least seven times. That eighteen years’ conditioning is not an easy thing to get rid of. I could not digest that food; my whole body revolted. Until all the food was thrown out I could not sleep. And then it was certainly a proof that whatsoever I had been told was right.But those thirty people, they slept well. I had only one consolation – that they would all suffer in hell. The whole night I was preparing for their hell, as bad a hell as possible. I was suffering my hell, and they were sound asleep and snoring. I was consoling myself, “It’s okay – just a few days more, then I will be in paradise and you will be in hellfire. Then you will know. The pleasures of this life are momentary,” I was telling myself.Your so-called religions only condition you against other religions. They make you antagonistic, they create conflict. They don’t allow you to create a brotherhood, they don’t allow you to create a humanity.Goldfarb was invited to a birthday party for the parish priest. Wanting to show his desire to be a good member of the community, he went to a jewelry store to get the good father a birthday present.“What would you recommend?” asked Goldfarb of the store clerk.“How about this lovely crucifix with Christ on it?”“Do you think he would like that?”“Absolutely.”“How much is it?”“One hundred and fifty dollars.”“One hundred and fifty dollars!” exclaimed Goldfarb. “Have you got one without the acrobat on it?”Jesus looks like an acrobat – if you are a Jew, that’s how it is. To a Jaina, Mohammed is not even worthy of being counted among the saints – what to say about the messengers of God? According to the Buddhists, even Mahavira, the tirthankara of the Jainas, is not worthy of being counted as a holy man, not even a moral man, because he moves naked – this is utter immorality. Buddhists cannot forgive him. This is exhibitionism, this is neurosis; the man is pathological!You have been given ideas in the name of religions. I am not giving you any idea; I am trying to take all ideas away from you.Just the other day there was a question saying: “Osho, sometimes you give wrong information to us.” Sometimes? My whole effort here is to destroy all the information that you have. All information is wrong. So I am not interested in giving you right information, because all information has to be taken out. You have to be left without information. When you are without information, without knowledge, not knowing what is what, in that state of not-knowing you bloom. Godliness starts opening up within your being.I am not teaching a way, I am not giving you a system of thought, a philosophy – just the contrary. I am against all knowledge, all philosophy, all systems of thought, all theologies, all religions. And by dropping all, you can be in communion with me. It is a communion, not a following.A communion means I respect you, I love you as equals. You are not inferior, just asleep. Your sleep does not make you inferior at all, your sleep simply gives you dreams. In fact, when Buddha became enlightened somebody asked him, “What have you gained?”He said, “I have not gained anything, but I have lost many things. I have lost my desires, my dreams, my sleep, my anger, my greed, my ambition, my ego – I have lost so many things. And I have gained nothing, nothing at all. But by losing all those things I have come home. I have become just myself – a purity, a clarity, a cloudless sky.”I am not giving you anything; on the contrary I am taking things away from you. In fact, if you think in terms of things, you are far superior to me, because you have many more things which I don’t have. You have a big ego, I cannot compete with you. You have great greed, possessiveness, jealousy, anger. You have a thousand and one things. I am a poor man compared to you, very poor, nothing to claim – or only nothing to claim. And if you are courageous enough, you are going to become a nothing yourself sooner or later.I am not teaching a way, I am not giving you a goal. I am taking all ways away, all goals away.The second question:Osho,Why don't you give your disciples a certain mode of conduct? Isn't a moral character necessary for a spiritual life?My whole effort is to give you a consciousness, not a character. Consciousness is the real thing, character the false entity. Character is needed by those who don’t have consciousness. If you have eyes, you don’t need a walking stick to find your way, to grope your way. If you can see you don’t ask others, “Where is the door?” Character is needed because people are unconscious. Character is just a lubricant; it helps you to run your life in a smooth way.George Gurdjieff used to say character is like a buffer. Buffers are used in railway trains; between two compartments there are buffers. If something happens, those two compartments cannot clash with each other; these buffers prevent them from clashing with each other. Or it is like springs: cars have springs so you can move smoothly – even on an Indian road. Those springs go on absorbing the shocks; they are called shock absorbers.That’s what character is, it is a shock absorber. People are told to be humble. If you learn how to be humble it is a shock absorber. By learning how to be humble you will be able to protect yourself against other people’s egos. They will not hurt you so much; you are a humble man. If you are egoistic you are bound to be hurt again and again. The ego is very sensitive, so you cover up your ego with a blanket of humbleness. It helps, it gives you a kind of smoothness, but it does not transform you.My work consists of transformation. This is an alchemical school. I want to transform you from unconsciousness into consciousness, from darkness into light. I cannot give you a character; I can only give you insight, awareness. I would like you to live moment-to-moment, not according to a set pattern given by me or given by the society, the church, the state. I would like you to live according to your own small light of awareness, according to your own consciousness. Be responsive to each moment.Character means you have a certain ready-made answer for all the questions of life, so whenever a situation arises you respond according to the set pattern. Because you respond according to the ready-made answer it is not a true response, it is only a reaction. The man of character reacts, the man of consciousness responds; he takes the situation in, he reflects the reality as it is, and out of that reflection he acts. The man of character reacts, the man of consciousness acts. The man of character is mechanical, he functions like a robot. He has a computer in his mind, full of information; ask him anything and a ready-made answer rolls down from his computer.A man of consciousness simply acts in the moment, not out of the past and out of the memory. His response has a beauty, a naturalness, and his response is true to the situation. The man of character always falls short, because life is continuously changing; it is never the same. And your answers are always the same, they never grow – they can’t grow, they are dead.You have been told a certain thing in your childhood; it has remained there. You have grown, life has changed, but that answer that was given by your parents or by your teachers or by your priests is still there. And if something happens you will function according to that answer which was given to you fifty years before. And in fifty years so much water has gone down the Ganges; it is a totally different life.Heraclitus says: You cannot step in the same river twice. And I say to you: You cannot step in the same river even once, the river is so fast-flowing. Character is stagnant, it is a dirty pool of water. Consciousness is a river.That’s why I don’t give my people any code of conduct. I give them eyes to see, a consciousness to reflect, a mirrorlike being to be able to respond to any situation that arises. I don’t give them detailed information about what to do and what not to do; I don’t give them ten commandments. And if you start giving them commandments then you cannot stop at ten, because life is far more complex.In Buddhist scriptures there are thirty-three thousand rules for a Buddhist monk. Thirty-three thousand rules! For every possible situation that may ever arise, they have given a ready-made answer. But how are you going to remember thirty-three thousand rules of conduct? And a man who is cunning enough to remember thirty-three thousand rules of conduct will always be clever enough to find a way out; if he does not want to do a certain thing he will find a way out. If he wants to do a certain thing he will find a way out.I have heard about a Christian saint: somebody hit him on his face, because just that day in his morning discourse he had said, “Jesus says if somebody slaps you on one cheek, give him the other.” And the man wanted to try it, so he hit him, really hit him hard on one cheek. And the saint was really true, true to his word – he gave him the other cheek.But that man was also something: he hit even harder on the other cheek. Then he was surprised: the saint jumped on the man, started beating him so hard that the man said, “What are you doing? You are a saint, and just this morning you were saying that if somebody hits you on one cheek, give him the other.”He said, “Yes – but I don’t have a third cheek. And Jesus stops there. Now I am free; now I will do what I want to do. Jesus has no more information about it.”It happened exactly like that in Jesus’ life also. Once he told a disciple, “Forgive seven times.”The disciple said, “Okay.”The way he said, “Okay,” Jesus became suspicious; he said, “Seventy-seven times I say.”The disciple was a little disturbed, but he said, “Okay – because numbers don’t end at seventy-seven. What about seventy-eight? Then I am free, then I can do what I want to do.”How many rules can you make for people? It is stupid, meaningless. That’s how people are religious, and still they are not religious: they always find a way to get out of those rules of conduct and commandments. They can always find a way through the back door. And character can at the most give you only a skin-deep, pseudo mask – not even skin deep. Just scratch your saints a little bit and you will find the animal hidden behind. On the surface they look beautiful, but only on the surface.I don’t want you to be superficial; I want you to really change. But a real change happens through the center of your being, not through the circumference. Character is painting the circumference, consciousness is transformation of the center.Once a carpenter was working in a church and he hit his thumb with a hammer. “Fuck’s sake!” he yelled.The Vicar happened to be passing and heard him. “You cannot use that kind of language here. This is a house of God,” he admonished.“Pardon, Vicar, but what’s a man to say when he whacks his thumb with a hammer?”“You can say, ‘God preserve me,’ or ‘Jesus help me,’” suggested the Vicar.Later, when the carpenter was sawing a piece of wood, he sawed right through his finger, which dropped to the floor. “God preserve me!” cried the carpenter, and the finger jumped back upon the hand and healed itself.“Fuck’s sake!” exclaimed the Vicar.The third question:Osho,Once someone asked me the meaning of the Christian god, and I answered spontaneously, “Love, trust, fear of death.”At that time, after years of a well-conditioned outside life and a repressed inner world, love and trust happened to me as an intense inner opening and an overflowing of energy. It happened just when I heard of you and started doing the meditations. From the outside it seemed like madness, but in all the craziness I got a clear, strong feeling of an energy which moves me somewhere I have searched for all the time.On the other side, great fear came up. Fear of death, connected with a childhood picture of an ancient god who had the power to punish human beings with death and eternal darkness. This feeling of fear still creates a certain heaviness in my mind and stops the natural flow of energy.Osho, can you speak about fear and death.The ordinary God is nothing but a projection of your fear. It is not love, it is not trust – because love knows nothing of fear, and trust knows nothing of fear. Just as light has never seen darkness, love and trust have never met fear. But in all the languages of the world there are expressions like “god-fearing”; the religious person is known as god-fearing. That is sheer nonsense. A religious person cannot be god-fearing, he can only be god-loving. If he is god-fearing he is not religious yet. How can you fear God?But your priests have made so much fuss about hell, punishment, karma; they have made so much fuss about a God who is a very angry God – if you disobey him he will throw you into hellfire, and for eternity. It is the priest’s work to create fear in you, because once fear is there you can be exploited. A fearful person will go to the church, to the mosque, to the temple, but he is not going to God, he is going to the priest really, and the priest exploits his fear.A really religious person has a totally different approach toward life; it is not of fear, it is of tremendous love. His God comes out of his love, his God is nothing but another name for his total love. His God is another name for his total orgasmic joy with existence.And that’s what is happening to you. Here, being with me, a sannyasin, meditating, love is arising, trust is arising. But at the same time you are feeling fear. This fear is totally different; it is not the fear created by the priests, because I don’t create any fear in you. And it is not the fear of death either, because you don’t know anything about death – how can you be afraid of something you don’t know at all? To be afraid you have to be at least acquainted a little bit – you cannot be afraid of the absolutely unknown, and death is absolutely unknown.It is not fear of death either. It is something else which you have not yet been able to figure out – it is the fear of a dying ego which appears like death. It is a death in a way, because you are so much identified with the ego, with the idea of “I,” that when the “I” starts evaporating you feel as if you are dying – obviously. Your identification is disappearing, you are passing through an identity crisis. Don’t cling to the ego, let it go – because the death of the ego is not your death. The death of the ego, on the contrary, is your real birth.You are coming closer and closer to the birth, to the real birth. You will be reborn. But you can be reborn only when death is gone, when ego is gone. With ego, death also disappears, remember – because you have never died. How can you die? You are not born either. You are God! You are divine energy. You have been here forever, and you will be here forever. Birth and death are only of the body and the mind, and between the body and the mind exists the ego. It is a creation, a conspiracy of bodymind. When the ego disappears your death disappears too. Once the ego is gone, you will be surprised that you are eternal, that you have been here always and always, and you will be here always and always. You are part of the truth which cannot die.You are coming close to something immensely valuable. But your mind is creating a problem; it is saying to you that it is fear of death. It is not fear of death, it is fear of ego disappearing. Allow it to go.I say to you, this is how it has happened to me. This is how it is happening to many of my people. This is how it has always happened to all the buddhas, down the ages: the ego dies – but everybody hesitates before the ego dies. We are so much identified with it that the death of the ego appears as if we are dying. We are not dying.It is like when the child is getting ready to be born when nine months in the mother’s womb are over. The child must be feeling a great fear – because this was his life. This nine months’ womb life, this is the only life he knows. And he is being thrown out of the womb. He must be feeling like he is being expelled from the Garden of Eden. He clings; he does not want to get out of the womb. He is afraid of the unknown.But nature does not allow him to succeed. He can cling for a few hours and create pain for the mother – because he clings to the womb and the womb is ready to expel the child because he is ready to go into the wider world. He is now mature enough; there is no need for him to be protected in a womb. And what kind of life can one have in a womb? There is no life at all. Twenty-four hours the child is asleep; he is as if in a coma. But still this is the only life he knows, hence the clinging.You know only one life, the life of the ego. It is not much of a life – it is only suffering, misery, sleep, dream – but that’s the only life you know. A moment comes when one becomes mature through meditation and you have to be expelled out of the ego. That is the second birth. In India we call such a person dwij – twice-born. A buddha is a dwij. One birth is from the mother, the physical, the biological birth. Another birth is through the master, the spiritual birth, the religious birth.Feel blessed. You are coming closer to a very vital point, a turning-point in your life. Don’t cling to the ego – relax, let go. Let the ego disappear; it is not you. And then for the first time you will know who you are. For the first time the mystery of your being will be revealed to you. And from there onward you start living; before that you were just sleeping.The fourth question:Osho,Why do you speak a strange kind of English? – although I love it.I don’t know English at all. In fact I don t know any language really. That’s why I can go on speaking so easily, unafraid, unworried, undeterred by language’s grammar, etcetera. I am not a great orator. I simply go on saying to you whatsoever happens in the moment.That’s why sometimes Napoleon turns into Nero, Nero turns into Napoleon; Greek becomes Latin, Latin becomes Greek. You are listening to a drunkard. It is a miracle that I can utter a few sensible words and you can make some sense out of it.Sometimes I even laugh about what I have said to you. Just the other day…whenever I see Pradeepa bowing her head down, then I know that I must have told something wrong. Just a few days ago I was saying “cropping the reap” instead of “reaping the crop.” Pradeepa is my criterion – then I just look at her and I know I have done it again.But what more can you expect from someone who is utterly drunk?An elderly gentleman with a walrus mustache, frock coat, and bowler hat jiggled the telephone receiver: “I say, operator,” he said, “I want to talk to Sir Reginald Barrett in Grosvenor Square, London.”“I’m afraid I can’t hear you, sir,” said the operator.“Sir Reginald Barrett, Grosvenor Square, London,” said the party.“I still can’t hear you,” said the operator. “I guess you are English, aren’t you?”“My dear madam,” said the gentleman, “if I were any more English I could not talk at all.”Fortunately I don’t know much English. Hence I can talk undeterred by any linguistic barriers. This is not English English, this is not American English, this is not even Indian English – it is simply Osho English. It has to be strange.And what about my Italian!Scene: Father visiting his son in jail.Father: “You-a no-a good-a bumma, you! I raise you to be-a a good-a kid-a!”Son: “Please, Father, don’t talk like that.”Father: “I’m-a ashame-a. You-a, you-a no good-a son.”Son: “Father, please, don’t talk that way.”Father: “Why-a I no talk-a this-a way?”Son: “Because you are not Italian!”I am neither Italian nor English nor Indian nor Chinese, and I have to talk all these languages. So I go on winging the wong number.The fifth question:Osho,Who are you?I don’t know at all. If some time you come to know, please tell me.The sixth question:Osho,The Devil seems to be as popular as Mao Ze-dong these days. Why? Why is the Devil so attractive?The Devil is nothing but the other side of God. The religions have been praising God and condemning the Devil, and the Devil is the other side of God. The word devil is beautiful; it comes from a Sanskrit root which means divine. Divine and devil both come from the same root, dev: in Sanskrit it becomes devadatta – gods. The Devil and the divine, both are the same – but if you repress one part of God, one aspect of his being, sooner or later it is going to assert itself.Now there are churches, in the West particularly, churches devoted to the Devil. Disciples of the Devil are growing, mushrooming all over the world. The First Church of Satan is there in America, where people gather and worship Satan. Satan means devil, that is Arabic for devil. All kinds of bizarre things are going on in the world, but the reason for them and the responsibility is that of the priests. For centuries they have been repressing God’s aspects. You cannot repress anything forever; sooner or later it will assert itself.In the East, particularly in India, there is no devil worship at all. It cannot happen – because we have accepted it, we have never rejected it. The Indian trinity, trimurti, the three faces of God, have to be understood. Brahma, Vishnu, Mahesh: these are the three faces of God. Brahma is the creator God, the aspect that creates, Vishnu, the aspect that maintains the world, the existence, keeps it running, and Mahesh, the destroyer who destroys the world.Now, Christians cannot conceive of Mahesh as God. God has to be always the creator. The Christian concept of God as creator makes it a very limited one. Then whose responsibility is it to destroy things? – because there is destruction too, and no creation is possible without destruction. Creation is possible only through destruction. God gives life – and who gives death? Somebody has to be responsible for death too, but God cannot be responsible for death.Christians are so afraid; their God is partial. The Indian idea of God is more total: with one hand he creates, with the other hand he destroys too. He is good and he is bad too; he is light and darkness both, life and death both. And if God is both, then only can God be transcendental. When you are both, you transcend both.You ask me: “The Devil seems to be as popular as Mao Ze-dong these days. Why? Why is the Devil so attractive?”It is because of a long, long repression through Christianity. The devil aspect of God has been completely denied. Now after twenty centuries of repression it has become very strong, it has gathered too much energy – it is exploding all over the place. It is certainly becoming more and more attractive. God seems to be poor compared to the Devil.Christians, particularly the priests, have been talking so much about God that they have made the word almost sickening, nauseating. They have talked so much about God and their God is so sweet, only sweetness is allowed to God. Their God has no salt; it is pure white sugar, which is another name for poison. So the Christian God has created a kind of diabetes all over the world. It is false because it is partial, and the other part will take revenge.“God” has to be accepted in its totality. This whole existence is divine – don’t reject anything. Everything is good in its place. Salt is needed as much as sweetness. Even bitterness has its own place, its own joy, its own taste. The thorn on the rosebush has its own function; it is a bodyguard to the rose, it protects the rose. Don’t deny it, don’t prune all the thorns, otherwise the roses will die.Life exists through polar opposites. And this has been a fallacious step, that we have chosen only one pole: God is only positive. Then the negative has to be given to some entity, some fictitious entity, the Devil. The Devil does not exist. There is no hell, all is paradise. Yes, there are two situations: you can fall asleep in the paradise or you can be awake, but there is no hell.I deny hell absolutely. And if there is misery in life, it is part of life. If there is death, it is a process of life, it is a renewal of life; it gives you a new body, a new model. The old rotten body is taken away and you are given a fresh new model. Death is not against life but in the service of life. Even what we know as bad is in the service of good. Yes, if you are wise enough you can transform poison into medicine. And if you are foolish even medicine can be dangerous, it can become poison.The West will have to change its idea of God. And the Western idea is no longer Western – it has spread all over the world. Christian missionaries have done such mischief; they have drowned all other kinds of religion; almost half the earth they have changed into Christianity. They have destroyed all variety. They have given a very singular, one-dimensional idea of God to humanity. And their idea of God is very juvenile, it is not even mature. And their idea of God is anthropocentric, it is made in the image of man. And they have been trying hard to make God a great saint. Their whole effort has created this situation: the denied part is ready now to explode. Denial is always dangerous; repression is dangerous. We have to pay tremendously for it.Accept both the polarities. The negative and the positive are both needed for the electricity to happen; the good and bad are both needed for the world to go on; they are like the two wheels of a bullock cart. The sinner and the saint are both needed. That’s my approach. I love the sinner as much as the saint – and if I have to choose, if I am forced to choose, I will choose the sinner rather than the saint, because the sinner is at least authentic. You cannot find a pseudo-sinner – have you ever heard the word pseudo-sinner? Pseudo-saints are there; in fact ninety-nine point nine percent of saints are pseudo – because there is rarely a Jesus or a Buddha. That phenomenon is very rare; we have made it rare. We have made it almost impossible for anybody to be a Jesus or a Buddha; we create all kinds of hurdles. And even if somebody becomes a Jesus, we don’t tolerate him – we kill the man the moment we become aware…Jesus lived only three years as Christ. For thirty years he was in preparation, in meditation, in search. After thirty years, when he attained his satori, he went to the marketplace and started giving the message that he had attained. It took three years for it to become known to people that this man had attained. They killed him immediately.When Mansoor attained godhood he declared, “Ana’l Haq! I am God!”His master, Junnaid, said, “Keep quiet. I know, you know, that’s enough. No need to tell it to anybody – otherwise you will be in danger and you will create danger for me and for other disciples also. Yes, I accept,” said Junaid, “I can see you have attained. But let it be a secret between me and you.”But Mansoor could not keep it a secret; it is very difficult to keep it a secret. Nobody has ever been able to keep it a secret. There would be moments when he was in deep ecstasy and he would start shouting again “I am God!”Soon the news spread. The priests went to the king and they said, “This is sacrilegious. This man has to be destroyed, this man has to be killed.”First you don’t allow anybody to become a Jesus or a Mansoor, and if one somehow escapes from your bondage and becomes one you kill him. And you go on preaching something which is absurd, pseudo. You create a saint against the sinner; he is bound to be pseudo because he has not absorbed the sinner into himself. He has no foundation – he is a house without any foundation, he is a house built on the sands. The sinner becomes the foundation. Unless the sinner is absorbed and transformed you will not find a true buddha. Your saints are pseudo, bogus, only on the surface, pretenders.If I am forced to choose I will choose the sinner, because the sinner has all the energies which can be transformed into a saint. But the saint has cut himself from all the sources of energies; he has become a plastic flower. He is almost hopeless; his case is hopeless.This calamity has happened – this Devil becoming too attractive – because of the priests denying God all reality, making God an abstraction. God is not an abstraction, God is not a person; God is the total harmony of existence. And in that harmony, in that orchestra, all the instruments are involved – the bad, the dark, the death, they also have to play their parts. They become the background, they become the context.You don’t see stars in the day – why? Do you think all the stars disappear? They are there in the sky; they have not disappeared. It would be too much work every morning to disappear and every evening to come back; it would create unnecessary trouble. They are there! Just because of the sunlight, the background is missing in which you could see them. When the night comes and the darkness comes, the background becomes available. In the dark night they shine forth. The darker the night, the more shining stars and the more stars you will be able to see.God is both – the darkest depth and the lightest height. Once this is accepted the Devil loses all attraction, the Devil dies. The Devil becomes a fertile land for God to grow; the Devil becomes a fertilizer. You can accumulate fertilizers in your house, you can accumulate manure in your house, and your house will stink. Spread the manure in the garden, and the same manure will sprout into beautiful flowers, the same manure will release great fragrance. Manure has not to be accumulated in the basement of your house, it has to be spread in the garden, in the open, in the sun.We have been repressing anger, greed, sex – everything that has been thought to be bad in some way we have been repressing in the basement of our being, in the unconscious. And that’s why every human being is stinking. Bring it into the light. Let it become manure, let it be a fertilizing phenomenon in your life, and you will have great flowers blossoming in you. You will attain to the one-thousand-petaled lotus.The last question:Osho,Why are you against the pundits and the learned people? Aren't they the experts that are running the world?Have a look at the world – and certainly they are running the world. That’s why the world is in a mess. The knowledgeable people are running the world and they are the most ignorant people – knowledgeable about superficial things. And sometimes these knowledgeable people are so ridiculous.Once I was talking on Mahavira. A great scholar, well-known all over the world, particularly on Mahavira, came to listen to me. After the discourse he stood up and he said, “I have one question to ask. My question is: Mahavira and Buddha were contemporaries – who was older and who was younger? I have spent thirty years of research on this project, but I have not been able to come to a clear-cut decision. A few scriptures say Buddha was older and a few scriptures say Mahavira was older, and there seems to be no way to decide. I am very much impressed,” he said, “by what you said about Mahavira. Can you throw some light on my problem?”I said, “You wasted thirty years of your life. How does it matter who was older and who was younger? What are you going to do if you come to a clear-cut conclusion? One thing is certain: whosoever was younger or older, you have wasted your life – thirty years! In these thirty years you could have become a Buddha or a Mahavira. Mahavira became a Mahavira in twelve years’ meditation, Buddha became a buddha in six years’ meditation.”I said to the man, “If you had worked on meditation you would have become buddha five times. Thirty years wasted – and Buddha became a buddha in six years. You would have been a buddha five times over. And don’t ask such foolish questions; it doesn’t matter.”But that’s how knowledgeable people are concerned. He was very angry at me, he became very antagonistic to me. He started writing articles against me. Now he is dead. So first he was wasting his life in searching for who was older, Buddha or Mahavira, and then he wasted his life in writing articles against me. The poor man, I really feel sorry for him.The learned people know only the superficial, which has no significance.Carruthers was visiting a small English town to do business. As his first appointment was not until twelve noon, he decided to play a round of golf early in the morning. The golf course was right on the edge of town, and he was first off.He sliced his first ball, and it went over the hedge that ran parallel to the first fairway. He did not bother to go and look for it; he played another ball which went straight down the middle.On returning to the club house at the end of the game the club professional approached him saying, “Excuse me, sir, were you by any chance the first off this morning?”“Yes, I was,” replied the businessman.“And did you slice your first ball over the hedge to the right?”“Yes, I did, as a matter of fact, old chap” replied the businessman.“Well,” said the professional, “that hedge runs parallel to a very busy street, and your ball landed on the head of a cyclist. The cyclist swerved into the middle of the road, and in order to miss the cyclist a car swerved in front of a bus; and in order to miss the car, the bus went up onto the pavement and into the shop front of a jeweler’s. The shop collapsed, and in the process a lot of very valuable jewelry has disappeared.”“Oh, my God!” cried the businessman, shaking at the knees. “What shall I do?”“Oh, no problem, old chap” said the professional. “Just make sure that you keep your right hand a little further round the handle, and everything will be fine.”That’s how the professional, the expert, the knowledgeable person, works. He knows everything about the meaningless, the insignificant; he goes into insignificant details and he goes on missing the central thing.I am not against the pundits and the learned people, I am simply compassionate toward them.Semyonov, a local party secretary, stopped Kagonovich on the street. “Comrade,” he asked, “why don’t you come for ideological instruction every Tuesday and Thursday evening?”“I don’t need it,” said Kagonovich.“Who was Karl Marx?” asked Semyonov.“I don’t know.”“Who was Vladimir Lenin?”“I don’t know.”Semyonov went on and on. Finally Kagonovich interrupted, “You ask me who is this and who is that. Let me ask you! Who is Rudolf Ulyanov?”“I don’t know,” replied the secretary.“Ah!” said Kagonovich. “But I know that one. While you are at ideological instruction every Tuesday and Thursday night, Rudolf Ulyanov is screwing your wife!”Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

https://oshoworld.com/be-still-and-know-07/

The first question:Osho,I know that you love contradictions. A lot of it I can accept now as two sides of one coin. But today after lecture some questions still arose.On the one side you say the good and the bad are two sides of the same coin and both have to be and the one can't be without the other. On the other side you want to create a better world with your sannyasins.On the one side you tell us not to think in terms of the future. On the other side you are talking about the coming third world war.On the one side you tell us not to wish anything. On the other side it seems you want to avoid the third world war.On the one side you say things are okay as they are, there is no goal, nothing to achieve, to change. On the other side: what are you doing here? What are we doing here?I can feel there is an answer, but I can't point it out. Can you?It is not that I love contradictions – life is contradictory. Existence itself is possible only through contradictions. It is the mind that has been trained in Aristotelian logic that becomes disturbed because of contradictions. The Aristotelian logic gives you a linear mind, a one-dimensional mind. It says: A can only be A and can never be B, and B can only be B and can never be A, and for two thousand years our minds have been conditioned by this logic.This logic never had any sway over the mystics, and now even scientists are escaping from the Aristotelian prison. If you want to be true to life you cannot be a follower of Aristotle; to be true to life you will have to say things as they are. If you want to be true to Aristotle then you will have to repress a few things of life, deny, at least avoid, not look at them, choose only what fits with your logic.The whole world has existed up to now according to one-dimensional logic – and existence is multidimensional, it is rooted in contradictions. In fact, to call it a contradiction is again to use a word from Aristotle.The mystics use the word paradox, not contradiction. In the very word contradiction there is condemnation; something is wrong, something has to be put right. But a paradox is a totally different phenomenon; nothing has to be put right. A paradox is a mystery, elusive, inexplicable.Existence is a mystery. Mathematics is incapable of understanding it; mind is utterly impotent in understanding it, because mind knows only one way. The Aristotelian way is the mind’s way. And anybody who knows life knows that Aristotle has been a calamity, the greatest that has ever existed in the world. And he is the father of modern philosophy, the father of modern science. But there are revolts against him. Mystics have always been revolting, now physicists are revolting.According to Aristotle there is no mystery; everything is explainable in logical terms – that is his fundamental tenet. And my fundamental tenet is: nothing is explainable in terms of logic. If you try to explain life in terms of logic you destroy life.It is as if to explain the beauty of a rose you take the rose to the chemist to dissect it, to analyze it, and to find out where the beauty is. The chemist is capable of analyzing the rose, but he will find only chemicals, not beauty. Beauty will evaporate. Beauty was in the paradox of the rose. It should not be according to logic – hence logic is very blind.Your problem is that you suffer from “Aristotelitis.” It is one of the most deep-rooted diseases.You say: “I know that you love contradictions.” It is not so that I love contradictions. What can I do? Contradictions are there. If I have to be true to the totality of existence I have to love them, otherwise something will have to be denied. And the moment you deny something you miss something immensely valuable, and the denial will never allow you to know the whole. And only the whole is true; the parts are only parts. They have some meaning only in the context of the whole; in themselves they are meaningless.That’s why science has created great meaninglessness in the world. It was bound to happen; it is a by-product of scientific methodology. Science tries to explain everything cleanly, with no vagueness; it wants to reduce everything to clear-cut categories. And it has succeeded, but in its success man and his spirit has failed.The success of science is rooted in Aristotle, but man’s failure – the failure of his joy, the failure of his love, the failure of his capacity to sing, dance and celebrate – is also rooted in Aristotle. But there are clear-cut signs of revolt, particularly within these last thirty, forty years – many great scientists have revolted against Aristotle. The first one to revolt was Albert Einstein.Aristotle is very absolutistic: A is absolutely A and never B, man is absolutely man and never a woman. He believes in the absolutes, and Einstein brought the idea of relativity. He said absolutes don’t exist; there are only relative things. A man is relatively more a man than a woman and a woman is relatively more a woman than a man, but the question is not one of absolute distinction – they overlap. And you may be a man in the morning and you may not be a man by the evening; you may be a woman in the evening and you may not be a woman by the morning. You are not one-sided, you have many sides.Have you not seen a woman in anger? Then she is more masculine than any male. And have you not seen a man when he is in love? – his tenderness, his feminineness. He is more feminine than any woman can ever be. When a woman is in anger, enraged, her whole denied part starts functioning, and the denied part is very vital and alive because it has never been used.I have heard a future story:A man went into a hospital to purchase a brain; because his own was not functioning well he wanted to replace it. The surgeon took him around; there were many brains available. He showed him the brain of a scientist, the price only a hundred rupees; the brain of a great, famous, well-known mathematician, and the price only two hundred rupees; and the brain of a great general, and the price only three hundred rupees – so on and so forth. And then he came to the brain of a great political leader, and the price was ten thousand rupees!The customer was a little puzzled. He said, “What do you mean? Do you mean that the politician has a greater brain than a great, Nobel prize-winning scientist?”The surgeon said, “Please don’t misunderstand us. It is not that the politician has a greater brain than the scientist or the general or the mathematician or the poet, but this is a brain which has never been used. It is brand new, hence the price.”Whatsoever is not used and denied in you remains very vital. Hence a woman enraged is far more dangerous than a man; and if you have been in relationship with a woman you know it perfectly well – she can drive you crazy! Because that is the denied part, the unused part. When it is used it has vitality, newness. And when a man is tender, loving, he is more tender and loving than a woman. He can be more womanly because that is his denied part.Carl Gustav Jung accepted that man is bisexual; no man is simply man and no woman is simply woman. Man has a woman part, a very intrinsic part, and woman has a man inside her, very intrinsic. Now this is a totally different world. Old categories lose meaning, old absolutes disappear.And then came the theory of uncertainty – because up to now science was aware only of the superficial world of matter. It has not penetrated into the mysteries of matter as mystics have done in the inner world; they have penetrated into the mysteries of consciousness. And when they penetrated the mysteries of consciousness they became aware that it is not Aristotelian at all. Sometimes A is A and sometimes A is B; and not only that – that sometimes A is B – there are times when A is both A and not A simultaneously.Mahavira said that; his philosophy is known as saptabhangi – sevenfold. He must have appeared a very strange man. You asked one question and he would always answer your one question with seven answers, because his philosophy was sevenfold. He said, “I have come to see the seven aspects of the inner world.” You asked him, “Does God exist?” and he would say, “First: perhaps he exists. Second: perhaps he does not. Third: perhaps he exists and yet does not exist. And fourth: perhaps he neither exists nor does not exist.” And so on and so forth. He would give you seven answers. You would leave him more confused than you had come. That’s why he could not influence many people. His religion remained one of the smallest although it had the potential of becoming one of the greatest religions of the world.But now the days of Mahavira are coming. Albert Einstein has made the way for it. As the physicist entered deeper into the mysteries of matter he was very much puzzled – Aristotle no longer works, no longer helps. On the contrary, if you remain hung up with Aristotle you have to deny a few things which you cannot deny – they are there.For example: matter does not exist at the deepest level of matter; matter is only apparent, it is maya. Shankara said it thousands of years ago: it is illusion. By “illusion” he does not mean that it does not exist; by “illusion” he simply means it appears to exist – something else exists. Don’t be deceived by the appearance. And the scientist found himself entering more into the world of Shankara than into the world of Aristotle. Matter disappears, there is only energy – energy moving so fast that you cannot see its movement and it gives you the idea of solid matter.Nothing is solid, everything is liquid. And when there is nothing solid, what meaning can the word liquid have? Then a new problem arises: if there is nothing solid, what do you mean by “liquid”? Liquidity had meaning only in reference to solidity; the moment solidity disappears, liquidity disappears – and you are dumb, in awe.Only energy is, and the ways of energy are very paradoxical, very mystical. One particle of energy jumps from its place to another place; it is continuously lumping. It is taking quantum leaps. The term quantum leap comes from quanta. “Quanta” means the ultimate particles of energy, and “quantum leap” means a very different leap from what you understand by the word leap.When the ultimate particle of energy jumps from place A to B the phenomenon is very mysterious: it simply disappears from A and appears at B and you cannot find it anywhere in between. You come from your place to me; you will be found in between. How can you just jump from your place to my place? Even if you jump, you will have to pass through. Even if you take the fastest plane, still you will be in between. But the ultimate particle of matter simply disappears from one place and appears at another place and you cannot find it in between at all. Now what to make out of it? It should not be so, but it is so.First scientists figured, “We must be missing it – maybe we don’t have sophisticated enough instruments. How can it be?” The old Aristotle was haunting them: “It must be somewhere in between.” But now we have more sophisticated instruments – it simply disappears. It becomes unmanifest in one place and becomes manifest again in another place. What happens in between nothing can be known about, because it becomes unmanifest, it simply disappears from existence. It moves into a totally different dimension which is not known at all and may never be known at all, because it is the unknowable.And it was thought always, according to Aristotle and Euclid, that a point can never be a line. It was found by the physicists that the point can be both together: it can be a particle and a wave, it can be a point and a line. Euclidean geometry used to say – you must have read it at school – that two parallel lines never meet. Now there is something like non-Euclidean geometry which says they meet. What to make out of it? Euclidean geometry says you can draw a straight line. A straight line is the shortest distance between two points – a well-known definition, every schoolboy knows about it. But non-Euclidean geometry has come with great force and is changing the whole course of scientific thinking.Non-Euclidean geometry says you cannot draw a straight line at all; it is impossible to draw a straight line. Why? Because you are sitting on an earth which is round. So whatsoever you draw, it appears straight because you don’t know that you are sitting on a round globe. Go on drawing the line, go on drawing the line, and soon you will see that it becomes a circle, because it will cover the whole earth. And a straight line cannot be a part of a circle, obviously; if it is a part of a circle it is not straight. No straight line can create a circle, but every straight line that you know, if drawn to its ultimate, will become part of a circle. Then it is an arc, not a straight line.And the whole universe is circular. The whole universe, all the movement, is circular; everything is a circle. Straight lines are not possible; they are imaginary lines.Mystics have always talked in paradoxes; now physicists are talking in paradoxes. And the reason is the same: mystics entered reality through their being and came across the mystery; physicists are coming across the same reality from another door – the outward door.I am not in love with contradictions – they can’t be helped. Existence is a paradox.You say, “A lot of it I can accept now as two sides of one coin.”That is again a hangover from Aristotle. I have to say to you many times, just not to disturb you too much too early, that these are two aspects of the same coin. Then it becomes a little acceptable to you. You can accept that one coin can have two aspects and they must be facing in opposite directions. You can accept the negative and the positive, you can accept the dark night and the bright day, you can accept life and death, as two sides of one coin. But when I am using the simile of the coin I am not really being true to the reality; I am compromising – compromising with your Aristotelian mind.Sooner or later, when you become more accustomed, when you start seeing the paradox, I will not say to you that they are two aspects, two sides of one coin. The negative is the positive and the positive is the negative. Life and death are not two sides of one coin – life is death. But that will be a little more difficult to accept, although the truth is so. The day you were born you started dying. The process may be completed in seventy years, that is another thing – that it takes time – but time matters not. The day you were born you started dying – immediately. It is not the other side of the coin, it is the same side of the coin. Life is death, and day is night, and love is hate, and friendship is enmity. Then it becomes more difficult.But if I look at your difficulty, then I cannot take you into the world of truth. I have to persuade you slowly, slowly so first I say, “These are two aspects of the same coin.” The day I feel that now you are ready to accept the paradox without questioning I will say, “Life is death.” I will not say that God and the Devil are two aspects of one energy, I will say God is the Devil – two names of the same energy, not two aspects.You say, “A lot of it I can accept now as two sides of one coin.” That is not understanding, just acceptance. Listening to me again and again you start figuring out that it must be that each phenomenon has two sides. It is not a question of sides. And each phenomenon has many dimensions, not only two sides.“But today,” you say, “after lecture some questions still arose. On the one side you say the good and the bad are two sides of the same coin and both have to be and the one can’t be without the other. On the other side you want to create a better world with your sannyasins.”Certainly! A better world will be a world where good and bad are absolutely accepted and absorbed. I don’t mean by using the word better that it will be a good world against the bad. My concept of a better world is a world which will be multidimensional, a world which will accept the earth and the sky so totally that the sky is not higher and the earth is not lower, which will accept the body and the soul so wholly that there is no question of who should be the master.I have said to you many times, “Let consciousness be the master of the body and mind.” That is just to persuade you toward a quantum leap. I know you cannot take that leap immediately; you will have to be seduced into it.The better world will be where the duality of body and spirit is dissolved: the body becomes the manifest spirit and the spirit becomes the unmanifest body, they are both one. How can one of these two be the master? The very idea of twoness is wrong, so there cannot be anybody who is the master and anybody else who is the slave. You are one entity.I talk to you in terms of, “from sex to superconsciousness” because you cannot understand right now unless some hierarchy is brought to you. “From sex to superconsciousness” – even that becomes very difficult for rotten, old minds, orthodox, conventional people to understand why I say “from sex to superconsciousness.” But please don’t tell others: sex is superconsciousness! Not “from sex to superconsciousness,” but sex is superconsciousness. There is no higher, no lower, there is no “from” and no “to”; there is no journey, you are already there as you are. But to assert such pregnant truths I have to prepare you.My vision of a better world is not the vision of a good world, where people are virtuous, have good character, don’t cheat each other, don’t lie, are very compassionate toward each other, very loving, great servants of humanity. That is not my vision of a better world. That has been the vision for centuries, and it has not been fulfilled because it cannot be fulfilled in the very nature of things. It is not possible – you have been denying the bad part.For me, a real sannyasin will neither be good nor bad in the old sense of the words. He will simply be. And whatsoever he is in a certain moment, he will be totally in it. If he is angry his anger will be total; if he is loving his love will be total.The old idea of a good man was that he would never be angry. That brought repression into the world – and once you are repressed you go on and on living with your repressed part. The repressed part remains a burden because it has not been absorbed. Once absorbed it releases great energy in you. It makes you vital, it makes you passionate, it makes you throbbing with infinite life. Repressed you are divided in two, you are cut into two; you live, but your life is only so-so.Sisters Maria Theresa and Mary Elizabeth were walking down a street when they were grabbed by two men, dragged into an alley and raped. Twenty minutes later the nuns continued their stroll.“What is Father going to say,” said Sister Maria Theresa, “when we tell him we have been raped twice?”“What do you mean, twice ?” asked her companion.“Well, we are coming back this way, aren’t we?”Repress something and it will come by the back door. It will find its way; it will control you from the unconscious. You cannot get rid of it so easily, in fact there is no way to get rid of it. It is part of you, such an organic part that you cannot be alive if you cut it off. That’s why your saints look so dead, and the deadlier they are, the more you respect them.Just a few days ago a man came to me and he was talking about a saint, Devraha Baba, who is known in the north of India as the ageless saint, because at least this much is certain, that he is a hundred and fifty years old, maybe more. Now that is his only great quality, nothing else. The man was very impressed. He said, “I am a disciple of Devraha Baba.”I asked him, “What is great in it, to live a hundred and fifty years? Many animals live that long, many trees live for thousands of years. There are trees four thousand years old. There are animals who easily live a hundred years, a hundred and fifty, two hundred years.”And I told the man about an experiment. Scientists have discovered about rats…. First they work on rats because they have found one thing: that men and rats behave similarly. They are the most ancient companions: wherever man is found, rats are found, and wherever rats are found, man is found. Their companionship seems to be eternal. Only two are man’s eternal companions: rats and cockroaches. Wherever man is, these two things are always there. And rats behave very similarly.Many experiments have been done on rats. If you give them half their normal food they live double. If you give them double their normal food they live only half the span of their life.Now these people like Devraha Baba, Jaina monks, they are living on half their normal food. They eat only once, and that too in a very miserly way, yet they can live double. How does it happen? – because when you don’t get enough food your life flame burns low; instead of gaining intensity it starts gaining length. In colder countries people live longer than in the hotter countries, because in colder countries you cannot live so passionately so intensely; the cold prevents you. In hotter countries you are more passionate.Hence it is not strange that the first book on sexology was written in India: the Kama Sutra of Vatsyayana, and it is not strange that the most strange sexual stories have been written in the very hot countries like Arabia. The reason is: when the sun is hot you also live in a hot way. When there is no sun and it is all cloudy, your life also burns low.Food is fuel: if you eat less you will be thin, if you eat less you will have less sexual desire, if you eat less you will have less possibility of being angry, if you eat less you will live at a very minimum level of life. You can live long, but this is not life. Then why not get frozen in a deep freeze? Then you can live forever.And that was one of the reasons why the escapist monks found it a great attraction to go to the Himalayan caves; it is a natural way of living a frozen life. And not only did they escape to the Himalayas, they also tried to live without clothes, naked or almost naked. If your body remains too cold your blood is nothing but frozen; then you can live long, but length has no value, time has no value, and length is in time. Depth has value, and depth is a totally different matter.When I say “a better world,” I don’t mean people will be living for two hundred years, three hundred years, because they will be great saints. I simply mean people will be living passionately, totally, wholly. Even if they live a very short life their life will be a fulfillment.My idea of a better world is not your idea of a better world. Listening to me always remember: my words have my meaning, and become capable of separating your meaning from my meaning.You say: “On the one side you tell us not to think in terms of the future. On the other side you are talking about the coming third world war.”For me there is no future, no past; all is present. To you I say, “Don’t think of the future,” because if you think of the future you will miss the present. I am so rooted in the present that it is only the present that extends into the past and into the future.It is like you are hiding in your room and looking from the keyhole at what is happening outside. You see a man suddenly appearing from nowhere, because just a moment before he was not there because he was not in front of your keyhole – he was in the future. Now suddenly he appears before the keyhole; you can see him for a moment and then he is gone again. Now he is in the past.But I am outside the room. When for you he was in the future, for me he was in the present; when for you he has again become in the past, he is still for me in the present. Once you have known how to live in the present then all is present. So if I sometimes talk about past or about future, don’t misunderstand me. For me there is no past and no future but only the present. I live in the present.For you the third world war is in the future; for me it is already there, it has arrived. It may take a little time to come before you can see it, before it comes in front of your keyhole, but then it will be too late, then nothing can be done about it.And you say: “On the one side you tell us not to wish for anything. On the other side it seems you want to avoid the third world war.”I don’t want to avoid anything, not even the third world war, but I want to become a help to you so that you can be aware of it. And the third world war can be used as a device for your awareness. If you become alert that this earth is going to die, your life will be transformed.Jesus used to say again and again: “Watch, beware! The Day of Judgment is very close by. In your life, this very life you will see it happening.” It has not happened up to now, but it was a device Jesus was creating, a situation in which people could become aware that the time is very short and much has to be done, and we should not go on playing with stupid games – money, power, prestige.It happened in the life of a great mystic, Eknath: A man used to come to him for years, must have been a man of a very philosophic bent. He would ask Eknath again and again, “I cannot believe that a man can be so innocent as you, so saintly, so holy. Sometimes great doubts arise in me – maybe you are holy only on the surface; maybe deep inside your mind you still desire things that we desire, you are still ambitious. Maybe your ambition is very subtle and we cannot see it; maybe deep down in your dreams you still commit sin. Help me to get rid of this doubt, because this has become a barrier between me and you.”Eknath would laugh and would never answer.One day early in the morning the man came and he said, “I could not sleep the whole night. Now it is too much – it is becoming a nightmare. Seeing you I see such beauty, such grace, that I cannot believe it is possible in a human body. Seeing you I believe God is, but the moment I go home doubt starts sprouting, mushrooming: ‘How can it be? After all, he is also made of body and mind. Maybe there is still some sexual desire hidden in his unconscious.’”That day Eknath did not laugh. On the contrary, he looked very serious and sad. He said, “Friend, today I have to impart something very essential, urgent, to you. And before I discuss your question I would like to say what I have to give to you, because I may forget. If I go on discussing with you I may not remember.”The man said, “What is it? What is that which is so urgent?”Eknath said, “Just the other day by chance I looked at your hand, and your life line is finished. Just a little fragment is left, seven days at the most. Today is Sunday – I don’t think you will be able to survive next Sunday. By next Sunday evening you will be gone. Now you can ask your question.”The man stood up. He said, “What question? I will come again.”Eknath said, “Wait! Why is there so much hurry? It is enough time – seven days.”The man said, “You say it is enough time? – seven days? I can’t waste it on stupid doubts. And what am I to do about you? Whether you suffer from sexuality or sin, that is your business. I am going home.”Eknath tried to hold him but he escaped. He said, “I have no time for philosophical matters anymore.”Just a moment before when he had come he was so strong, so young – and just a moment afterward when he was going down the steps of the temple of Eknath he was shaking and trembling. He had to take the support of the wall.He went home, he gathered his family, and he said, “Only seven days are left and I am going to die. Tell all my friends and all my enemies to come – I would like to forgive and be forgiven. There are only seven days, so what is the point of quarreling with people and fighting and competing? Finished, the game is finished!”He laid himself on the bed. He became so weak that he could not get up from the bed. He was fed on the bed and continuously he was chanting, “Rama, Rama, Rama, Rama,” remembering God for the first time in his life. And every day he was asking, “How many days are still left?” And as the seventh day started coming closer and closer he became more and more oblivious of the world. He started looking at people indifferently, he started forgetting people’s names, their faces. He stopped recognizing people; he stopped recognizing his own wife and children, his own father and mother.And the seventh day came and he was crying, and he was chanting the whole day and asking again and again, “How far is the sunset? – because Eknath has said, ‘The moment the sun sets, you are finished.’ Exactly at sunset I am going to die.”And the sun was coming down every moment, coming closer and closer to the western horizon. Just a few minutes more…and Eknath arrived. The whole family started crying and weeping. Eknath said, “Wait! Let me see the person.”Eknath went there, shook the man. It was very difficult for the man to recognize even Eknath – and he used to call him his master, and for at least twenty years he had been sitting in satsang with him, in communion with him. And he could not recognize him.Eknath said, “Can’t you recognize me? I am Eknath, your master.”Then a little recognition arose and he said, “Yes, vaguely. I am in a very cloudy state. How far is the sun from the western horizon?”Eknath said, “Forget all this nonsense. I have come to ask you one question: in these seven days what was going on inside you? Sex, greed, anger, jealousy? What was going on inside you? I have come to ask that question.”The man said, “I am dying and you are talking philosophy. Death was so close to me that I could only remember God. I don’t remember even for a single moment that sex was there, greed was there, enmity was there, anger was there. No, they had all disappeared.”Eknath said, “You are not going to die – get up! This was just an answer to your question. The day I became aware that death is, since that day my inner being has changed. How does it matter whether death is to come in seven days or seventy years? Once you become aware that this life is going to slip out of your hands, it has already slipped. Then you have to prepare for the other shore, then you have to prepare for something beyond.”The third world war is coming closer, but I am not interested in avoiding it or bringing it. Who cares? My whole interest is in you, and I want you to become aware that this earth is not going to live for long. If this becomes an awareness in you it will be a transforming force. And if millions of people are transformed in this way, this earth may be saved – but that will be just a payoff, a consequence.I am not desiring that the world should be saved. It is such a stupid world, it is such a stupid humanity – if it is gone it is good. I am not very much interested in saving this stupid lot – they have lived here for millions of years and they have proved only a burden and a corruption, they have polluted everything.But I am certainly interested in using this as a device, which is far more potential than Jesus’ statement that the Day of Judgment is close, because that is an abstraction. But the third world war is coming closer every day, because Russia is preparing, America is preparing; they go on piling up atomic bombs, hydrogen bombs, death bombs, and they go on inventing new ways for killing humanity instantly. So it is a very, very real danger. Why not use it as a device? It can shake you up, it can wake you up. And if millions of people become meditators, there is a possibility the world war may not happen. But that is not my interest. My interest is to save people – people who are worth saving.And the last thing you ask: “On the one side you say things are okay as they are, there is no goal, nothing to achieve, to change. On the other side: what are you doing here?”Just explaining this to you: that there is no goal, that there is nothing to achieve, that everything is good as it is.I will tell you a Sufi story:There is a story told by Sufis about a man who read that certain dervishes, on the orders of their master, never touched meat and did not smoke. Since this tends to fit in with certain well-established beliefs, especially in the West, this man made his way to the zawia – assembly place – of the illuminated ones, to sit at their feet. They were all over ninety years old.Sure enough, there they were, not a spot of nicotine or shred of animal protein among them, and our hero gasped with delight as he sat drinking in the unpolluted air and tasting the bean-curd soup which they provided. He hoped that he would at least live to a hundred.Suddenly one of them whispered, “Here comes the great master.” And all stood up as the venerable sage came in. He smiled benignly and went into the house, heading for his quarters. He did not look a day over fifty.“How old is he, and what does he eat?” asked the enraptured visitor.“He is one hundred and fifty years old, and I don’t suppose any of us will reach that venerable age and station,” wheezed one of the ancients. “But, of course, he is allowed twenty cigars and three steaks a day, since he is now beyond being affected by frivolities and temptations.”It is a beautiful story. There comes a moment when a man goes beyond all duality – then he is allowed everything.I can talk about the future because I live in the present – it is allowed. And I can talk about saving the world from the third world war because I have no desires left – it is allowed. I can go on teaching you day in, day out, year in, year out, saying continuously, hammering continuously: “There is no goal, no purpose, nothing to achieve.” Still it is allowed for me to teach you.Why is it allowed for me to teach you? – because I am not a teacher anymore. And I am not giving you a doctrine, and I am not giving you a character, and I am not giving you a discipline. I am simply imparting my joy that has happened to me. With me all is okay – third world war or no world war. If the third world war happens I will be the same, if it doesn’t happen I am the same.If the third world war happens, if you are alive and I am alive, I will continue the morning discourse, the evening darshan – everything will continue. The third world war will go on destroying the earth and I will go on doing my own thing, not being bothered by it at all. It does not matter.Drop the Aristotelian mind. Only then will you be able to understand me well, to understand me at all.The second question:Osho,I have been so much conditioned as a Catholic that I see no hope for myself. Can you still help me?Maria, Catholic or communist, Mohammedan or Maoist, Jaina or Jew, it makes no difference, it is all the same. Of course, Catholics do it more systematically than Hindus, more scientifically. They have developed a great expertise for how to condition people. But all the religions are doing it more or less, all the societies are doing it in their own way: everybody is conditioned.The moment you are born conditioning starts, from your very first breath; it cannot be avoided. The parents will condition you, the children you play with will condition you, the neighborhood will condition you, the school, the church, the state. And consciously not much conditioning is being done, but unconsciously the child goes on and on accumulating it. The child learns by imitating.So don’t be worried. This is the normal situation in the world: everybody is conditioned. And everybody has to come out of the conditioning. It is difficult. It is not like undressing – it is like peeling your skin. It is hard, it is arduous, because we have become identified with our conditioning. We know ourselves only as Catholics, communists, Hindus, Mohammedans, Christians. And the greatest fear of dropping the conditioning is the fear that you may fall into an identity crisis. Hence sannyas.Sannyas is just a device to help you so that you don’t start feeling that you are falling into an abyss, a bottomless abyss. I take away your conditionings – you will feel very empty – I have to give you something to play with for the time being. Sannyas is that toy to play with for the time being. But sannyas is given to you in such a way that it never becomes a conditioning; it remains fun, it remains sport – involved yet you remain a witness to it.It is difficult to drop the conditioning, because that is your whole past, your mind, your ego, all that you are. But if you are ready, if you are courageous, if you have guts enough to come along with me it is possible, it is not impossible.The local procurer in Mexico grabbed the distraught tourist stepping down the gangplank. “I got a nice young girl for you – twelve years old, a virgin.”When the tourist refused the procurer said, “Then I got a nice young boy for you, twelve years old, a virg…”“Look!” roared the tourist, “I don’t want a young girl, I don’t want a young boy, I just want the American consul!”“Hmmm,” murmured the procurer. “A little difficult, but I try.”It is a little difficult, but I try. Maria, give me a chance to try. It has happened to so many people. I have so many Marias. Become part of this happening, don’t remain a spectator. Join the dance. My invitation is for all, my invitation is unconditional.Whatever conditioning you have got can be dropped, because it has been forced on you from the outside – and because it has been forced on you from the outside it can be taken away from you from the outside.I cannot give you God, I cannot give you truth, I cannot give you your inner core, but I can take all the rubbish that has been heaped upon you. And once that rubbish is removed, God starts becoming alive in you. Once all the obstacles are removed, the spring of your life starts flowing, the innocence is regained. Innocence regained is paradise regained; you enter again into the Garden of Eden.And one thing is certain, that you are not contented with being a Catholic. How can anybody who has any intelligence be contented with being a Catholic or a Hindu or a Jaina or a Buddhist? All these sects are dead. It was beautiful when Jesus walked on the earth; to have followed a few steps with him would have been a tremendous transformation. Those few people were fortunate who broke bread with him, drank wine with him – must have laughed, danced, sung, celebrated. Those few people were real Christians.How can you be a Christian if Christ is missing? And how can you be a Buddhist if Buddha is not present?A master is absolutely necessary for the disciple to go through the mutation. I am available, my heart is open for you. Please come in. And all the junk that you are carrying will be dropped. It is always difficult, but not impossible. I can save at least the essential core and that is the real thing. If I can save your very center, then let the circumference remain Catholic, communist, Hindu or Mohammedan – it cannot affect you.There was this King Edward potato who one night decided that he fancied a night out on the town. So he jumped in the tub and had a scrub, put on his best red jacket and went up West.Sitting in a bar he spied this luscious young tomato, so he thought to himself, “I fancy that – I will chat it up.”In the corner of the pub was a bunch of punk carrots – green hair, everything. One of them turns to the other and says, “Hey, yon potato is chatting up your tomato.”The other says, “I am not having that. We will get him at chucking out time.”So come closing time they get this potato outside. What a mess. They kick in his eyes, rip up his jacket – totally mash him up.When he wakes up in the hospital the surgeon says, “I have got good news and bad news for you.”So the potato says, “Well, let me have the good first.”The surgeon says, “We managed to save your eyes.“And what is the bad?”“You will be a cabbage for the rest of your life.”I can save your eyes, and that’s what matters. Then you can be a cabbage or a Catholic, whatsoever you want. On the circumference you can be anything, but at the center become consciousness, become a witness. Your being a Catholic or Hindu or Mohammedan is a content of your consciousness. Don’t get identified with the content; remember that you are the watcher. There is Catholic upbringing, there is Mohammedan conditioning, there is Hindu hypnosis – watch! They are separate from you. You are a pure consciousness, a mirror, reflecting all that has been put upon you from the outside.Once you know that you are separate you are free from all conditioning, and then you can use your conditioning. I am not saying to become unnecessarily a nuisance in your society; I am not saying to get into unnecessary trouble for yourself and others. You can go on acting being a Catholic – it is beautiful. You can go to the church every Sunday and enjoy it, but remember that you are not a Catholic – the Catholic upbringing is just on the circumference. You are only a witness.Be a witness in the church, be a witness in the temple, be a witness while you are reading the Gita and be a witness while you are reading the Bible – and this witnessing will become the foundation of your liberation.The third question:Osho,Once I thought about energy as if energy was mine and I liked to think that I had a lot of energy. Now I have realized that I am only a passage, a medium, a vehicle for the energy of the divine. So how come that sometimes I am so full of energy and overflowing from each pore, feeling that it is impossible to contain that much and I will explode – and after a few hours I am empty with no energy even to say that I would like to have more energy? Is there no way to keep the flow of energy constant? And again, sometimes I feel such appetite for life that literally I am going around hugging everybody, and I would like to hug trees and stars and flowers, and then after a few hours I feel that life is no longer worth living and it is only out of respect for life that I don't kill myself. But I start asking God, “Please, take back your life – it is too painful and boring.” Is there some relation between these phenomena? Would you please talk more about energy?You are coming closer to the point, to the target of understanding, but you have not come exactly to the point yet; you are missing only by inches.You say: “Once I thought about energy as if energy was mine and I liked to think that I had a lot of energy. Now I have realized….” Still that “I” continues; before it was identified with energy, now it is identified with realization. “Now I have realized,” you say, “that I am only a passage, a medium, a vehicle for the energy of the divine.”To be a passage means you are no more. You cannot realize that, “I am only a passage,” otherwise you are still there – and if you are there you cannot be a passage. You have to disappear completely. Nobody remains there to realize that, “I am a passage” – then you are a passage.That’s why this problem is arising. Sometimes you are less and sometimes you are more. When you are less, more energy is flowing; when you are more, the flow stops. When you are a little more there as a realizer, as a spiritual being who has understood the flow of energy, when you are there identified with this new idea of being a passage and a medium, energy disappears because you obstruct it. Sometimes when you are not there – not even as a realizer, not even as a medium, when simply you are not there – the energy starts flowing.You ask: “So how come that sometimes I am so full of energy…?” Whenever you are not, you are full of energy; whenever you are, energy disappears. Godliness can exist only in your absence; you cannot coexist with God. But you are still there in a subtle way.You ask: “How come that sometimes I am so full of energy…?” Who is this “I am”? You are enjoying this: “…I am so full of energy.” Energy comes when you are not, and immediately you jump in and you say, “…I am so full of energy,” and energy starts disappearing.You say: “…overflowing from each pore, feeling that it is impossible to contain that much…?” Who is there to contain? Who is there to count how much it is? Who is there to weigh? In a subtle way you are hiding by the side or looking from the corner of your eye.A guest had come to Mulla Nasruddin’s house. Mulla Nasruddin was giving him food. The guest was saying, “Now it is enough – I have taken five puris, now no more.”Nasruddin said, “Five? You have taken eleven, but who is counting?”This is also counting! Who is there to contain? You jump in – it always happens. Not only with you, it happens with everybody. Whenever those rare moments come when you are not, energy flows. Suddenly the mind recoils, comes back, feels great: “So much energy, impossible to contain!” And immediately you fall to the opposite polarity.You say: “…and after a few hours I am empty, with no energy even to say that I would like to have more energy? Is there no way to keep the flow of energy constant?” Who wants to keep the flow of energy constant? Just see the point – it is you. The old habit goes on coming back in new ways.Rosenfeld, a New York men’s clothing manufacturer, was returning to America after a business trip to Israel. On the way back he decided to stop off in Rome and take in the sights.Two weeks later he finally arrived home. “How was the trip?” asked his sales manager.“Fantastic!” replied Rosenfeld. “In Israel I sold a thousand more suits than any of us expected. Then I stopped off in Rome and saw all the historical sights. I got in with a sightseeing group and we had an audience with the Pope.”“The Pope himself? You don’t say!” exclaimed the sales manager. “What does he look like?”“Oh,” said Rosenfeld, “I would say about a forty-four short.”A tailor is a tailor, a businessman is a businessman. Even if he goes to see a buddha he will come with this information – a forty-four short.They say that a shoemaker never looks at people’s faces, he goes on looking at their shoes. In fact, that is his only way to judge about people. Seeing the shoe he knows whether you have money in your pocket or not. He knows how things are going in your life, whether you are happy or unhappy. In fact, a good shoemaker can predict everything about you just by looking at your shoes; the psychoanalysis of the shoe will show everything about you.Old habits, and it is so with everybody…. The “I” is the most ancient habit; for millions of lives we have carried it, so “I” comes again and again. You will have to be a little more watchful, a little more alert. Who wants to keep the flow of energy constant? Exactly the same entity that wants the flow to remain constant is the cause of it not being constant. Be a little more alert.Mrs Hatton wanted to scare her husband out of his terrible drinking habit. One night she dressed up like the Devil and waited for him in an alley.Soon the bar closed for the night and Hatton staggered toward home. Mrs. Hatton jumped out at him and yelled, “Yah! I am the Devil!”Hatton held out his hand and said, “How da ya do? I married your sister.”This is awareness – even drunk.Learn a little more awareness, be aware. The “I” will come in many forms, shapes, disguises. It can become spiritual, it can become holy, it can become saintly, godly. It can try every possible way to save itself.When you are feeling full of energy you are not, hence great love arises. The ego poisons love; you start hugging people, trees. People have complained to me and trees too, because they may not be in the same energy space as you are. Be a little watchful.But I know, when the energy flows one is constantly in a sharing state; one would like to share with everybody, even with trees and rocks. But when it disappears you will feel very, very empty, so empty that you would like to commit suicide. This happens only when you reach a peak of energy, and then coming back to the valley is very disturbing. People who live in the valley and never go to the peak never think of suicide.That’s why in poor countries suicide is rare, in primitive countries absolutely nonexistent. Animals don’t commit suicide – they never go to the peak. Because they don’t know anything about the peak they never feel the ugliness, the darkness of the valley. Because they have never smelt the fragrance of the divine they can never smell the stinking existence that they are living.So this is going to happen to every sannyasin. You will reach peaks of joy and then when you fall from the peaks the only desire will be to be finished with it all. But the fall is not happening on its own – you are the cause of it, it can be stopped. And the only way to stop it is: when you are on the peak, enjoy the peak, enjoy the sunlit peak, the pure air, the whispering of the clouds, the closeness of the stars, enjoy that; and when you fall into the valley, enjoy the darkness of the valley, the dangers of the valley – and don’t bring yourself in – both are good. In fact, the valley will allow you a little rest so that you can again be ready to go to the peak. The valley is a kind of sleep; it is needed after a day’s hard work. Tomorrow morning you will be again rejuvenated, you can again track your path toward the peak.Enjoy both – and you can enjoy both if the “I” disappears. And if the “I” disappears – I would like to give you the real mystic statement about it – if the “I” disappears there is no peak, no valley; everything is the same. Wherever you are, godliness is flowing through you; wherever you are, you are in a state of blessedness. Wherever you are, not only are you blessed, you bless the whole existence too.The last question:Osho,Are all enlightened masters rascals like you? To me, your rascaliness is even more predominant than your joke-telling. Are you trying to trick us all into enlightenment.A thousand and one thanks for the compliment.Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,In the West many group-psychoanalysts, such as Bion, Ezriel, Anzien, Pichon-Priviere, treat a group as a unity and they analyze the group mentality, mood and resistances, but not as individuals. For them, as a man is made of many aspects and parts, but is a unity, so a group is made of many persons but is a unity too.Here with you, the importance of the group is very much stressed in therapy, work, meditation, energy darshan; on the other hand great importance is given to individuality. Osho, please, has a group a kind of unique soul beyond individuals, or is it only a bunch of people occasionally gathered together? Are different social and ethical implications concerned in such a case? Please comment.This is one of the fundamentals of fascism, that individuals don’t exist, only groups are real. But then the problem arises: where will you put the full stop? If the group is real and individuals are not real, or are just parts of the group, then the church is far more real – it is a bigger group; then the nation is far more real because it is an even bigger group; then the whole of humanity is still more real because it is an even bigger group. And the individual is completely lost. And whenever there is a conflict between the individual and the group, of course the individual has to sacrifice himself – because he is unreal. He exists only as a part of the group.This is the way to destroy revolution completely, totally. This is not psychoanalysis; this is trying to bring fascism from the back door. But all the societies love fascism. No society wants individuals, because the very existence of the individual is a question mark on many things the society goes on doing.An individual is bound to be a rebel. An individual is a nonconformist, he cannot conform. He can say yes only to things which he feels are worth saying yes to, but it depends on his own feeling, his own intuitive understanding, his own intelligence. He cannot be forced to yield. He can surrender out of love, but he cannot be made to surrender; he would rather die than surrender. He cannot be an obedient slave – not that he does not know how to obey. When he feels for something, when he is committed to something, involved with something, he obeys, he obeys totally, but he is really obeying his own inner light; he is not following any commandments from the outside.To be an individual is to be nonpolitical. The whole of politics depends on people who are not individuals, who are only phony individuals, who appear to be separate but are not separate – dependent on the group, utterly dependent, for their safety, security, respectability, power, prestige – for their ego.The real individual has no ego, hence he need not depend on the society. The society gives you the ego, and if you want to be on an ego trip you have to depend on people; only they can nourish your ego. The individual knows his real self, hence he needs no ego.But, the individual will not go to a psychoanalyst; there is no need for him. To be an individual is to be whole and healthy.The problem arises…psychoanalysis has become very important and significant because we have taken away people’s individuality. We have given them phony egos which don’t satisfy. They are like unnourishing food – colorful, appealing, but not giving you any nourishment.And the man who lives with the ego is always missing himself; he is always feeling empty, meaningless. He wants to fill his being with something; he may become obsessed with food just as a way to feel full; he can eat too much, he can become obsessed with food. Or he can become obsessed with money, with gold, with power. These are all ways to somehow feel significant. But nothing succeeds, everything fails. You can hope only while things are far away; when you achieve them, suddenly you see you have been chasing shadows.You are not feeling empty because you don’t have much money. You are feeling empty because you have not yet encountered your real self, you have not come to your authentic individuality. Meditation is the way to individuality. It makes you a light unto yourself.No, an individual is not a part; an individual is a universe in himself. But no society wants individuals, hence for centuries individuality has been destroyed and a plastic thing has replaced it. That plastic thing is called “personality.”People are very much confused about personality and individuality. They think personality is individuality. It is not – in fact it is the barrier. You will never attain to individuality if you are not ready to drop your personality. Here the group therapies, meditations, work, this communion…all is devised in such a way that it destroys your personality, the plastic self, and throws you back to your real individuality.Individuality is born with you, it is your being. Personality is a social phenomenon, it is given to you. When you are sitting in a cave in the Himalayas you don’t have any personality, but you have individuality. Personality can exist only in reference to others. The more people know you, the more personality you have – hence the desire to have name and fame. The more people respect you, the more you enjoy the personality; it becomes strengthened.Hence a great longing for respectability. You can attain it through money, you can attain it by renouncing money. You can attain it by eating too much or you can attain it by eating too little, by fasting. You can attain it by accumulating things or you can attain it by accumulating knowledge. But the whole idea is: you are looking in the others’ eyes to see how they are feeling about you. You can become very virtuous, very moral, just to attain a personality, but the personality is not going to fulfill you. And down the centuries the individuality has been destroyed, people are carrying personalities.In these group psychotherapies about which you are asking me, and the people like Bion, Ezriel, Anzien, Pichon-Priviere, and their psychoanalysis – who goes to these people? The people who have lost contact with their beings, the people who are too much confined to their personalities and have no idea of any individuality. They are ready to become part of a group. They feel very at ease in becoming part of a group, because the moment they become part of a group they have no responsibility. They can relax, they have no anxiety. Now the group takes the responsibility.That’s why people are Hindus and Christians and Mohammedans. Why? Why do people belong to rotten, utterly out-of-date, so-called ideologies? For a single reason: it gives you security, a feeling that you belong, that there are people who are with you – you are not alone. The Christian knows that millions of people are Christians. The Hindu knows that he is not alone, millions of people are with him – how can he be wrong? How can millions of people be wrong? He must be right. He knows nothing of what is right and what is wrong, but the crowd around him gives him the feeling that he does – a false feeling, obviously.Truth has nothing to do with the crowd; truth has always been attained by individuals. A Buddha attains it, a Jesus, a Mohammed, a Moses, a Zarathustra. But they attain to truth when they are absolutely alone in their deep meditative states, when they forget all about the world and the other, when they are no more obsessed by the other in any possible way, when they are utterly alone drowning in their own consciousness and reaching the very bottom core of it. Then they know what truth is.But the crowd keeps you away from yourself. The crowd is an escape from your real being. The crowd makes it possible for you to remain interested in others; it never allows you any self-encounter.The groups in this commune have a totally different orientation. It is not to force you to become part of the group. On the contrary, the group is just a help for you to drop your personality and be individuals. If by dropping your individuality you become part of a group, you are committing suicide. And that’s what these people are helping people to do.People are tired of themselves; they want to commit suicide. If they cannot commit suicide physiologically, at least psychologically they can commit it. They may not be courageous enough to really commit suicide, hence these group psychoanalysts are giving them ways to commit psychological suicide: “Become part of the group.”Becoming part of the group you are no longer anxious, no longer burdened. For a few days while you are in the group you feel a certain kind of relaxation; out of the group you will be back in your personality. Hence you will need the groups again and again; after a few days, a few weeks, you will again feel to participate in a group. Now the group becomes like an intoxicant which helps you to forget yourself.This is not the purpose here. Here the purpose is totally different: you have to be helped to stand on your own feet, to be yourself.You ask me: “In the West many group psychoanalysts treat a group as a unity.” No group can ever be a unity; a group can at the most be a union. And the difference between union and unity is great. In unity you become one, you dissolve yourself completely, you are no more separate. In union you remain separate, but you are together for a certain purpose. Once the purpose is fulfilled the union disappears. But the unity, once attained, never disappears – it is not purposive.With people you need only unions, with existence you need unity.Even a love affair is a union not a unity, a friendship is a union not a unity. Once the purpose is fulfilled the love affair will disappear. You may cling for a few days just out of a sense of gratitude, out of a sense of responsibility, duty, out of a sense of all the promises that you have given in the past – you may cling for a few days, but that clinging cannot go on for long. Sooner or later it is finished, the purpose is fulfilled.Unity means there is no way to finish it; it can only be with “God” – unity with existence, union with people. In unity you become one, inseparably one, but in a group you are not inseparably one. It is a temporary commitment, you can drop out of it any moment, you can say no any moment; you still remain capable of separating yourself. Remember the difference between unity and union.When a group, a psychotherapeutic group meets together, it is a kind of union. You have met for a certain purpose for a few days: to help each other, to be helped by the wisdom of the psychoanalyst – if he has any. He may not have any. His psychotherapy may be just an escape for him to avoid his own problems.It happens many times: listening to other people’s problems you can easily forget your own problems. Getting involved with other people’s anxieties you can avoid your own anxieties; they look very small compared to other people’s problems. You can even feel a little good inside: “My problems are not so great.” Listening to other people’s problems you become focused on others.Your so-called psychoanalysts, more or less, are simply avoiding their own problems – because I know them. Many of them have become sannyasins, many more are on the way. They are in the same misery, in the same mess, as you are. But they are knowledgeable, they are experts, they have studied. They can help a little, they can supply a kind of expertise; maybe a little bit of help is possible. Sometimes they may not be able to give you any help, but they may function as a placebo.A placebo literally means “that which pleases”; it is a medical term. Sometimes there are people who come to the physicians who have no problems, no real problems, just imaginary problems. They are given placebos – just sugar pills – they have no medicinal quality in them, but the patient believes that he has been given a great medicine. His illness is imaginary; he needs an imaginary medicine. A real medicine will create some trouble. Taking those imaginary medicines he is helped, he feels good.Sometimes it happens: the moment the doctor comes to see you, half your disease is already gone. He has not given you any medicine, but he just comes smiling, holds your hand, and now you know that you are in the hands of an authority. That’s enough to feel relief. And his smile, and his authoritative manner, and all the gadgets that he brings – the cardiogram, the stethoscope, the thermometer – and a few things he does on your body. And then he smiles and says, “Don’t be worried. This will be gone within two days.” Half of it is already gone!Hence a doctor has to take big fees. If he takes no fee from you, you will not be helped. The bigger the fee, the greater the doctor. When you come to the highest authority, certainly you know you are going to be helped, it is going to happen. This man is a magician – whomsoever he touches he cures. This very belief is medicinal, and then any medicine will do. Much depends on the physician and his demeanor.These group psychotherapists – and there are now many kinds all around the world – they are a kind of placebo. You feel good knowing that somebody knows; he may know, he may not know. My own observation is that they are much more in a mess than you are, but they have found a way. The psychoanalysis may not help you but it helps them.I have heard:A young woman entered into the office of a psychoanalyst. The psychoanalyst immediately said, “Undress!”The woman said, “But I have no physical problem; it is a question of my mind.”The psychoanalyst said, “Did you hear me or not? Undress. If you don’t want to undress, get out. Then I won’t take the case at all.” Now what do you do when some authority says “Undress”? You undress.Reluctantly the woman did it. And the psychoanalyst jumped on the woman, made love to her, and when they were off the couch he said to her, “Now this takes care of my problem – what is your problem?”Blind people are being led by other blind people. I am not a psychoanalyst. I am not here to treat your minds and cure them. I am here to bring you out of your minds – healthy, unhealthy, neurotic, non-neurotic, it doesn’t matter. I don’t take any note of your mind, what kind of mind you have. Any kind of mind – you have to be taken out of it. So I don’t go into the details, I simply start hammering. Once you are out of your mind, once you have an awareness that you are a witness of your mind, the mind disappears with all its diseases.And in fact, to tell you the truth, mind is the disease. It is not a question of ill minds and healthy minds – there are no healthy minds at all. Mind as such is the disease!But these people – psychoanalysts, psychotherapists, psychiatrists – they are fixing your minds. They may help a little bit, but their whole effort is to make you well adjusted to the society. Now the real problem is: Is the society healthy? Is the society natural? Is the society as it should be? If the society itself is insane, helping you to be adjusted to this insane society is not a real help.And as I see it, the people who become psychologically ill are more sensitive people than the others. The others who are never psychologically ill are not healthy but only insensitive people, dull. They don’t have much intelligence, they can’t see the problems of life. That’s why they remain undisturbed.Those who feel the problems of life, those who see the ugliness we have created all around, the violence, the war, the way we have lived up to now – against each other, destructive to nature, to people, to birds, to animals. The way we have behaved up to now is absolutely insane. Those who are more sensitive among us, they become disturbed because they can feel. The less sensitive are not disturbed because they can’t feel; they have rocklike hearts. They look sane.It is a very strange world. The really sensitive people become insane and the utterly insane people look sane, for the simple reason that they have grown a stone-like shell around their beings; they can’t feel anything. They go on dragging their lives in the normal way. The normal is not really normal, it is only average. To be normal is very rare.A Buddha is normal, a Jesus is normal. But ask Sigmund Freud – Sigmund Freud thinks Jesus is neurotic. Now whom are you going to choose, Jesus or Sigmund Freud? Who is neurotic?Sigmund Freud is utterly neurotic, very much afraid of death – and he calls Jesus neurotic, who goes to his death with a prayer on his lips, who can pray from the cross, “God, forgive these people because they know not what they are doing.” This man is neurotic? And Sigmund Freud? – it is reported that at least three times in his life he fainted, fell into a coma, became unconscious, just at the mention of the word death – just at the mention of the word. Nobody was crucifying him. And Jesus is neurotic?Mansoor is neurotic? When his hands were cut he laughed. He looked at the sky and said, “You cannot befool me,” and had a hearty laugh.Somebody in the crowd asked, “Why are you laughing? Have you gone mad? They are killing you. They have cut off your hands, now they will cut off your feet, and then they will cut out your tongue and they will destroy your eyes.”No man was ever tortured so much as Mansoor, not even Jesus, not Socrates. Part by part he was killed, very cruelly killed, but he laughed to the last.He said, “I am laughing because you are not killing me; the man you are killing is not me. That’s why I am laughing – you are killing the body and I am not the body. It is so ridiculous. I had never thought that you would be so foolish, and I am telling God, looking upward to the sky: “You cannot befool me. Even if you have come in the form of the murderers, I recognize you – because only God exists and nobody else. Today he has come in the form of murderers, as death – it is my ultimate test.”This person is neurotic? And just the mention of the word death is enough to make Freud tremble and fall from his chair and faint. And this is the founder of psychoanalysis? Psychoanalysts are avoiding their own problems. Except a man enters into meditation, he goes on avoiding his problems.You ask me, “Here with you, the importance of the group is very much stressed in therapy…” Yes, but always as a union, not as unity. It is a temporary arrangement, an experiment. You are not to become one with the group. You have to function in harmony with the group, but you remain the individual. Just like in an orchestra different instruments are being played, but each instrument remains different, unique. Each contributes to the whole, but you can contribute to the whole only if you are separate, otherwise who is going to contribute and to whom?In an orchestra the flute-player is contributing, the guitarist is contributing, the pianist is contributing – but the pianist is a pianist and the flute-player is a flute-player. The flute is a flute and the piano is a piano; they retain their individualities. But for the moment they have joined hands together – it is a union not a unity. The flute has not become part of the piano. If it does the whole beauty will be lost.Here in the groups, the emphasis is that you should be individuals and yet capable of functioning in harmony with others. That’s what is happening on a greater scale in the whole commune: everybody should remain an individual, yet be capable of participating in the communal life – participating in the work, in the play, in the music of the commune. But it is not expected that you should destroy your individuality; that will be suicidal, that will be a murder. On the contrary, the whole effort is to sharpen your individuality, to give you more and more uniqueness The more meditative you become, the more unique, incomparable, you become.The Buddha is a peak – part of the infinite universe but not part in the sense that he is replaceable; not like a part in a car that you can replace. He is unique, he is irreplaceable; nobody can replace him. The higher you rise in awareness, the more you are in tune with the universe, and at the same time the more unique you go on becoming. Hence the uniqueness of Buddha in contrast to Jesus, the uniqueness of Mohammed in contrast to Mahavira. Where else can you find such unique individuals?But we have lived in a society which destroys individuality and gives us false toys in the name of individuality – gives us a personality. This personality is a burden, and you are always ready, absolutely willing to put this burden aside.In group therapies you can do that, you can put the personality aside – you don’t do anything about your individuality and you put the personality aside. Then what do you become? You are simply drowned in the group mind, you start functioning as a part of the group. You don’t attain to a soul – in fact you lose much. Of course, because the personality is discarded, the anxiety that was there is no longer felt; but this is not a way to get rid of anxiety – it will come back. How long can you live in a group? Sooner or later you will be back in the society and there you will again cling to the personality, it will be needed. And soon the desire will arise to go to another group for a few days to put the personality aside so you can feel free – but that freedom is at a great cost. Freedom is good only if it happens around the center of your individuality; otherwise it is not helpful, it is harmful.The group that takes your individuality away destroys you, destroys something very essential in you. It functions like an intoxicant.You say: “On the other hand, here great importance is given to individuality too.” Yes, in the group you learn how to be in tune with others and at the same time you learn how to remain yourself. It is a paradoxical process: remain yourself more and more and yet become a great contribution to the orchestra of life. Between these two poles your real being will become more and more sharpened.You say: “Osho, please, has a group a kind of unique soul beyond individuals?” No, but a group can have a mind – not a soul. A group can easily have a mind; that’s how people are. All the Mohammedans have a certain kind of mind.I was a student at a university and I was staying with one of my professors. He loved me tremendously. Not only did he love me – he was a rare man, very old, must have been almost of the same age as my father – he not only loved me, he respected me too. I had to tell him again and again, “I am just your student – you need not be so respectful toward me.” It was embarrassing for me sometimes, because whenever I would enter the room he would stand up, even if there were other people. Once the Vice Chancellor was present; I entered the room, he stood up. The Vice Chancellor could not believe his eyes. I had to ask the Vice Chancellor to forgive me, “It is all my fault – I should not have entered.”I was staying with the professor. It was a winter morning; I was reading a book in the sun outside on the lawn. The professor’s mother came – very old, must have been eighty, she asked me, “What are you reading?”Just to tease her, because she was a fanatical Hindu I said, “This is the holy Koran.”That old woman simply forgot that she was eighty. She snatched the book away from me, threw it away, outside on the road, and told me, “How dare you bring such a book in my house!”I said, “Now you have committed a sin. It was not the holy Koran, it was the Bhagavad Gita – I was just joking.”She ran, brought the book, touched it seven times with her head, cried and wept, and I said, “What are you doing? It is the holy Koran. I am just teasing you.”She threw the book in the fire. I told her, “You have the mind of a Mohammedan.”Mohammedans have a very obstinate, stubborn mind. Hindus also have an obstinate, stubborn mind – but it is not so tight, it is a little loose. The reason is that so many buddhas have happened in this country and they have been hammering on the society, they have made it loose in many places. But Mohammedans have not known anybody else except Mohammed.That’s what has happened to Catholics. The word catholic means one who is very liberal, but that is not the case – Catholics are worse than communists.Just the other day a friend from Rome sent me a letter saying that the new Pope has released a five-page epistle, very stern, very hard, cruel. And the friend writes, “It seems that the epistle has been written keeping you in mind.” Of course the name is not mentioned, but whatsoever is said seems to show that the Pope must have some idea of me in his mind. He must be reading The Mustard Seed, Come Follow to You…because he says, “There are people now on the earth who are claiming that their interpretation of Jesus is more correct than the Vatican’s interpretation. Beware of these people. Don’t even listen to them and don’t read them. If you read and listen to them you are bound for eternal hell.”Now these people create a certain mind – but not a soul. Catholics have a certain mind, Mohammedans have a certain mind, Hindus have a certain mind. People who have no individuality start having a certain mind – the mob mind.In the army you will find there are no individuals. The whole effort in the army is to destroy the individual and give you a uniform, a number. Now, to give you a number is a subtle way of destroying your individuality: a name gives you a uniqueness, “No. 11” takes all individuality from you.You are a totally different matter – if you die, a person dies; if No. 11 dies, who cares? You cannot be replaced by anybody else, but No. 11? – there is no problem. You can fix “No. 11” on anybody and he becomes No. 11.In the army, scientifically, technologically, the individuality is destroyed. Your name disappears, you become a number. Your hair is cut in the same way. You are forced to follow stupid orders year in, year out: left turn, right turn, about turn…for what?Once a philosopher got recruited into the army. The first thing was the morning parade, and the captain said, “Right turn!” Everybody turned toward the right except the philosopher.The captain said, “Are you deaf?”He said, “No. I can hear you are saying, ‘Right turn,’ but why? I cannot do anything unless I can explain to myself the reason.”Now you don’t say such things in the army – and the professor was very well-known. The captain said, “This will be difficult. I myself don’t know why, but this has to be done, and for three hours every morning. And not only right turn – left turn, about turn, go forward, come back – and I don’t know why. And nobody has ever asked – people simply do it. This is a training in obedience.”The professor said, “Then it is impossible for me!”He was given another job, in the kitchen, something that he could do creating no problem for others. He was given a full bag of peas and told to sort them out, smaller ones on one side and bigger ones on the other side. After two hours when the captain came, the philosopher was sitting in the Rodin posture – with his hand on his chin in great thought – and the peas were exactly there as they had been left.The captain said, “What are you doing? Have you not started yet?”He said, “How can I start? – because there are a few big ones and a few smaller ones and a few which are in between. Unless I know exactly where those which are in between go, how can I start?”He had to be discharged immediately from the army. This type of person is not needed in the army, and they can become contagious.In the army there is no “why.” You are simply told to do such a thing and you have to do it. In fact, the more stupid a thing it is, the better it prepares you for the work of the army. Following stupid orders for years, one day they say, “Shoot this man!” and you shoot the man, robotlike, without asking why – you have forgotten how to ask why. In the army, the group mind arises – not a group soul, remember.The soul is always individual; mind is always group. Any mind, watch carefully, and you will find it belongs to some group. If you believe in God, that means you belong to a certain group which believes in God; they have given the idea, the conditioning, to you. What are your beliefs? From where do they come? They come from the social mind – from the church, from the state; you can find the source from where they come.You can watch your mind and you will be surprised that all that you carry in your mind and think is yours is not yours. It has all come from different sources – from parents, teachers, priests, politicians – others have given it to you. There is something like a Hindu mind and there is something like a Mohammedan mind and something like a Jaina mind and something like a Buddhist mind – but there is no Buddhist soul, there is no Christian soul.Minds certainly belong to groups. And it can happen that if you participate in a psychotherapy group you may become part of the mind of the group leader, the ideology.It happens – it is now a well-known fact – if you go to a Freudian psychoanalyst, slowly, slowly you start bringing dreams which are needed for Freudian psychoanalysis. You start adjusting to the psychoanalyst. It is a very subtle process. If you go to the Jungian psychoanalyst you bring other kinds of dreams to him. If you go to the Adlerian, again different kind of dreams, you dream as if somehow you start buttressing the ego of the psychoanalyst. He buttresses your ego, you buttress his ego; it becomes a mutual arrangement. He interprets your foolish dreams in such great detail and brings such beautiful meanings to them, such profound significance to them, that naturally you would love to bring more and more dreams of the same kind – which make him happy.When the doctor comes to see you, you want to make him happy. If he makes you happy, it is a natural understanding that you want to tell the doctor, “Your medicine is helping, I am getting better.” And you are not lying. You are not consciously, deliberately, cheating him. This is a simple process of becoming part of another mind. In the army it is very, very prominent but in the society also it is very prominent.Sergeant Major Macgregor walked into a Glasgow drugstore and took a beat-up condom out of his kilt. “How much, mon,” he asked the proprietor, “would it cost to fix this?”“Let us see,” murmured the druggist. “I could launder and disinfect it, heat-weld the holes and tears and insert a new elastic in the top. That would cost you two shillings, the same price as a new one.”Macgregor said that he would think it over.He returned the next day. “You have convinced me, mon,” he announced. “The regiment has decided to replace.”The regiment…In the army you will find it absolutely clear-cut that the people have lost their minds. The regiment has the mind. And on a smaller scale the same is the case in the society.But my effort here is to create individuals. And the soul is always individual; it cannot be given to you by anybody. It is already in you, it has to be discovered.In a group, function as a union but never as a unity. In a group, drop your personality but never your individuality. Say yes, but remain capable of saying no.The no has not to be killed completely. If you become utterly incapable of saying no, your yes is meaningless.What I am doing here is not psychoanalysis; it is alchemy, pure and simple alchemy. It is an effort to transform your being from the level of mind to the level of the soul. It is a journey, a pilgrimage.The greatest adventure that can happen to a human being is the movement from mind to no-mind, the movement from personality to individuality. The no-mind has an individuality; the mind is social.The second question:Osho,What is hell? Is there really such a place?Religion has survived up to now because of your fear and greed – I mean the false religion of course. The true religion has nothing to do with fear and greed. In fact, the true religion means transcending fear and greed. Fear and greed are not two things, they are one. Fear standing on its head becomes greed; it is one energy, two poles of the same energy.The priests must have discovered it very early, that man can be dominated easily if he is made afraid. They created hell. It is imaginary, it is pure imagination – there is no place like hell. Of course, there is a space like hell, but no place.Hell is not geographical, it is psychological. It is not somewhere down underneath the earth. If you dig a hole from here and you go on digging and digging, you will reach America, and the American will come to India. And the American believes somewhere down in the earth there is hell and the Indian believes somewhere down in the earth – and the earth is round.And there is no heaven either – that is to satisfy your greed. Hell is to create fear and heaven is to create greed. And these are the two strategies of the priests to dominate you, to oppress you, to exploit you.One day a great Sufi mystic Rabiya was seen running in the marketplace with a burning torch in one hand and a pot full of water in the other hand. People stopped her and they said, “What are you doing? Where are you going? We have heard stories about you, that you are a little crazy, but this is going too far.”She said, “Don’t stop me! I am going to burn your heaven – this torch is for that – and I am going to drown your hell – this water is for that. And unless your hell and heaven are taken away from you, you will not find God, because God cannot be found by those who live in fear or those who live in greed.”So the first thing, there is no hell, no heaven, as places somewhere. But still they exist – in a totally different way – they exist within you: Whenever you are in anger you are in hell, but that is psychology not geography. And whenever you are in love you are in heaven; that too is again psychology not geography.The Western religions know only two words: heaven and hell. The East has a third word also, moksha. That means absolute freedom from both heaven and hell. That means transcending psychology. No fear, no greed, no mind, and suddenly you enter into the world of eternity, immortality, into the world of godliness.You carry your hell within you and you carry your heaven within you, and each moment it is up to you to be in hell or in heaven.I have heard about a great saint who was never known to be sad. He was nearing ninety years of age but he was always happy, always cheerful, always bubbling with joy, like a small child overflowing with joy. People gathered; they were celebrating his ninetieth birthday, and maybe this was going to be the last so all the disciples had come from faraway places. They asked him, “We have only one question – and soon you may leave us, your body is getting older and older. Before you leave, please satisfy our inquiry: What is the secret of your joy? Nobody has ever seen you sad.”The old man laughed. He said, “There is not much of a secret in it. Early in my life I discovered that it is up to me to be in hell or to be in heaven, so every morning when I wake up, the first thing I ask myself is: ‘What do you want today – heaven or hell?’ And I always decide for heaven. That is my simple secret.”A whole busload of women from the Hadassah and the United Jewish Appeal overturned on a Miami freeway and everybody was killed. In heaven Saint Peter, without thinking, assigned them to hell. They had hardly been there a week, however, when Satan phoned Peter and demanded that he remove the women to heaven. They were a disrupting influence.“Why, what have they done?” asked Peter.“They have banded together, collected money, and employed engineers to install air-conditioning.”If you have intelligence, awareness, even in hell you can manage to air-condition it.That’s what I am doing. Can’t you see the hell all around? But somehow I have got a few people banded together and we are trying to create a small heaven of our own. What to do? People have decided to live in hell, they are not ready to listen, then the only wise choice is: we can create our own heaven. And if we can create our own heaven, that will become an example, a model, that this way also one can live.When people come for the first time to our commune they are surprised. Just the other day a young priest wrote a letter to me, a Catholic priest, who now has become interested in me, and wants to get married, and wants to be rid of the Catholic church. He has written a letter to me saying, “I have heard that you have got the most beautiful people in the whole of the world around you. Can you find a wife for me?”I have told Laxmi to write to him, “Why one? Just come here. And I need not find any wife for you – the women will chase you, they will find you.”We have got the most alive lot of women in the whole of the world here.Heaven and hell are not realities but ways of living. You can live in jealousy – that’s how people live. You can live in competition, you can live in conflict, you can live in ambition. That’s how you have been brought up to live. This is the way to hell.A Zen master was asked by the Emperor of Japan… The Emperor had come and asked the same question. Maybe you are the reincarnation of the same Emperor, because the Japanese tend to be reborn in India – this is the land of their master, Buddha. Every Japanese holds the desire to come to India some day. If they die without coming in this life, they are reborn here. They die with the desire.The Emperor reached the Zen master and asked him, “What is hell and what is heaven?”The Zen master looked at the Emperor and said “You son-of-a-bitch. Have you looked at your face in the mirror lately? I have never seen such a dirty-looking fellow before.”The Emperor was enraged. He had not expected such a thing from such a great saint. You don’t know great saints. You know only small, puny saints. A real saint is not a cat, he is a tiger.The Emperor was so enraged that he pulled his sword out of its sheath. He was going to cut off the head of the master. Just as the sword was coming closer, the master said, “Wait! You are entering hell. This is the gate to hell.”The way the master said “Wait!” was so powerful that the Emperor’s hand was stopped in the middle, and he understood – “True.” He threw the sword away, fell at the feet of the master, and the master laughed and said, “This is the way to heaven. You have already experienced both within a single moment. The distance is not far.”Whenever you are surrendered to existence, whenever you live in trust, love, prayerfulness, joy, celebration, you are in heaven.But what I am doing here is to help you to go beyond both – because the person who lives in heaven can fall into hell any moment. They are not far away, they are very close by – just a small fence and that too is tattered because it is very old. And for centuries there has been an argument as to who should repair it. The Devil is not ready. Why should he be worried about it? Nobody wants to enter hell. If it is God’s worry that hell people may enter into heaven, then he should repair it. But God is a miser, and they go on quarreling.One day it happened: God said, “If you don’t repair the fence – which has really been destroyed by your people and your nuisance on the other side, our people have not done anything – I am going to court.”The Devil said, “You can go, but where are you going to find an advocate? They are all here on my side. Go to court.”Hell is a state of mind when you live in plenty and yet you live in poverty, when life is such a blessing and yet you live in sadness. When the flowers bloom you don’t bloom. When the stars shine you don’t shine. When the clouds are in the sky floating in freedom, you don’t enjoy the freedom. When the cuckoo calls from a distant wood and you remain deaf. When the peacock dances you don’t dance. This is hell, and you are the creator of it.Mahatma Gandhi died and went to heaven. He was royally welcomed by St. Peter as a great saint and told that any request of his would be granted. Gandhi said, “All my life I have been nonviolent. Now I would like to live a life like Adolph Hitler.”That seems to be absolutely psychological, right. If you live a repressed life this is going to happen. Adolph Hitler would like to live like Mahatma Gandhi, and Mahatma Gandhi would like to live like Adolph Hitler. The rejected, the denied part will take revenge. So I see a point in this fictitious story.St. Peter replied, “This is too horrible a wish to be granted – but we will let you see Hitler in hell. That will give you an idea and you may drop your desire.”Gandhi was taken to hell where he saw Hitler surrounded by beautiful naked dancing girls and many bottles of wine. “How can this be hell?” cried Gandhi “This is heaven.”“Of course it is hell,” said St. Peter. “The bottles all have holes and the women don’t.”The third question:Osho,Why is it that one becomes so attached to the physical peculiarities of a master: his beauty, his gentleness, his language, his mispronunciation – so that alongside the awe and respect he inspires there grows such a feeling of tenderness and familiarity? If this is a device I want to be caught by it forever.A love affair is a love affair. It is not logical. When you love a person, you love his wholeness, you love him as he is. And the only way to be with a master is to fall in total love. Hence you start liking everything of the master – yes, even his mispronunciations. Of course it is easy to love his beauty, his grace, his wisdom, but that is not enough – unless you start loving him in his totality.I know that if sometimes I don’t mispronounce a few words, you miss – when I mispronounce, I can see the joy!Vivek goes on telling me every day, “Don’t say ‘aunt,’ it is ‘ain’t.’” And whenever I come across it, just to be compassionate to you, I again say “aunt.”And there is one more difficulty: there are a few things I cannot figure out. My whole life I have been unable to figure out what is left and what is right. In school when I used to go to the parade I used to write on my hands, “This is right, this is left.” So whenever this question of “aunt” and “ain’t” arises I am puzzled – whether it is “aunt” or “ain’t,” or vice versa.Yes, it is a device. If you can’t love me in my totality you will miss me.A man with a rosary around his neck, wearing a hooded cloak and sandals, carrying a begging bowl and with a long white beard, was surrounded by a crowd in a certain town. They clamored for his blessings and he led them to the top of a hill where he sat in silence for several hours.Finally someone approached timidly and asked him to address them.“I know that you have all been waiting for the words of the great teacher so-and-so,” he said, “and I hope that his visit to this town, which is now over, has conferred the customary blessings upon it. But my own job is now finished, as he will have passed through the streets in our absence…”“Then who are you?” shouted a frenzied worshipper.“Me? Oh, I am the decoy.”He was just a device of the master, so that the foolish people could go with him outside the town and the master could pass through the town unhindered, undisturbed – or would be met only by those who had eyes. All those who were blind followed this man because they could only see the outer garb. He looked like a master, they followed him. Only a very few people must have remained in the town, who were not deceived by the personality.My mind is just a mechanism. For me now it is absolutely useless; it is just for your sake that I go on feeding it a little bit. Just for your sake I am speaking, otherwise now there is no point for me. In fact there is no point for me even to breathe. It is only for you that I am breathing, speaking, living. Those who have eyes will be able to see it.Everything is a device. Remember it: you have to see the device to grow beyond it.And as far as the pronunciation is concerned, it is a miracle that I don’t mispronounce all the words, or that even when I mispronounce you can still understand – because language is very alien to my being now – not English, but my own mother tongue is alien. I have become a stranger to my own mind; the distance between me and the mind is infinite. I am surprised myself that the mind goes on functioning. What I have known has been known in silence; no language can express it.And from my very childhood I was not interested in any subject that was taught in the school – hence my poor history. I was always puzzled why these stupid names have to be remembered. Why, for what sin are we punished, to remember the names of some people, dates, exact dates, exact names…? And all that these people have done is ugly. History is bunk. Why should we be punished? So I was never present in the history class. I was never interested in language, any language.My whole interest was, from the very beginning, how to transcend mind. Neither history can help, nor geography, nor mathematics, nor language – nothing can help. All these things are irrelevant. My whole being was moving in a totally different direction.So it is just a miracle happening that I go on speaking to you, conveying to you something which cannot be conveyed, expressing something which is inexpressible, saying the unsayable. And you have to forgive many things.Landers and his girlfriend were dining at the famous House of Hung Lo. Landers said to the waiter, “Bling us some flied lice.”The waiter left and returned with won ton soup. They ate it, and Landers again said to the waiter, “We want flied lice.”This time the waiter brought them two orders of egg roll. As the waiter walked away, Landers called loud enough for everyone in the restaurant to hear, “How about the flied lice?”The Chinese waiter came back to the table and said, “Can’t you pronounce fried rice, you plick?”Somehow I am managing… So if I manage and say “fried rice,” then I slip somewhere else – “you plick,” you have to forgive me.But everything is a device, remember, and as you get closer and closer to me, more and more subtle devices will be used. The day is not far off when we will be simply sitting in silence and there will be no question of language, words. Get ready for it, because that which I really want to communicate can only be communicated in silence.Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Would you say something about your father's death yesterday?It was not a death at all. Or it was the total death. And both mean the same thing. I was hoping that he would die in this way. He died a death that everybody should be ambitious for; he died in samadhi, he died utterly detached from the body and the mind.I went to see him only three times during this whole month he was in the hospital. Whenever I felt that he was just on the verge, I went to see him. The first two times I was a little afraid that if he died he would have to be born again; a little attachment to the body was there. His meditation was deepening every day, but a few chains with the body were still intact, were not broken.Yesterday I went to see him. I was immensely happy that now he could die a right death. He was no longer concerned with the body. Yesterday, early in the morning at three o’clock, he attained his first glimpse of the eternal – and immediately he became aware that now he was going to die. This was the first time he had called me to come; the other two times I had gone on my own. Yesterday he called me to come because he was certain that he was going to die. He wanted to say good-bye, and he said it beautifully – with no tears in the eyes, with no longing for life anymore.Hence, in a way it is not a death but a birth into eternity. He died in time and was born into eternity. Or it is a total death – total in the sense that now he will not be coming anymore. And that is the ultimate achievement; there is nothing higher than it.He left the world in utter silence, in joy, in peace. He left the world like a lotus flower – it was worth celebrating. And these are the occasions for you to learn how to live and how to die. Each death should be a celebration, but it can be a celebration only if it leads you to higher planes of existence.He died enlightened. And that’s how I would like each of my sannyasins to die. Life is ugly if you are unenlightened, and even death becomes beautiful if you are enlightened. Life is ugly if you are unenlightened because it is a misery, a hell. Death becomes a door to the divine if you are enlightened; it is no longer a misery, it is no longer a hell. In fact, on the contrary, it is getting out of all hell, out of all misery.I am immensely glad that he died the way he died. Remember it: as meditation deepens, you become farther and farther away from your body-mind composite. And when meditation reaches its ultimate peak, you can see everything.Yesterday morning he was absolutely aware of death, that it had come. And he called me. This was the first time he had called me, and the moment I saw him I saw that he was no longer in the body. All the pains of the body had disappeared. That’s why the doctors were puzzled: the body was functioning in an absolutely normal way. This was the last thing the doctors could have imagined, that he could die. He could have died any day before. He was in deep pain, there were many complexities in the body: his heart was not functioning well, his pulse was missing; there were blood clots in the brain, in the leg, in the hand.Yesterday he was absolutely normal. They checked, and they said it was impossible; now there was no problem, no danger. But this is how it happens. The day of the danger, according to the physicians, didn’t prove dangerous. The first twenty-four hours when he was admitted to the hospital one month before were the most dangerous; they were afraid that he would die. He didn’t die. Then for the next twenty-four hours they were still hesitant to say whether he would be saved or not. A suggestion had even come from a surgeon to cut the leg off completely, because if blood clots started happening in other places it would be impossible to save him.But I was against cutting off the leg, because one has to die one day – why distort the body and why create more pain? And just living in itself has no meaning, just lengthening the life has no meaning. I said no. They were surprised. And when he survived for almost four weeks they thought I was right, that there had been no need to cut off the leg; the leg was coming back, becoming alive again. He had also started walking, which Dr. Sardesai thought was a miracle. They had not hoped for that much, that he would be able to walk.Yesterday he was perfectly normal, everything normal. And that gave me the indication that now death was possible. If meditation happens before death, everything becomes normal. One dies in perfect health, because one is not really dying but entering into a higher plane. The body becomes a stepping-stone.He was meditating for years. He was a rare man – it is very rare to find a father like him. A father becoming a disciple of his own son; it is rare. Jesus’ father did not dare to become a disciple; Buddha’s father hesitated for years to become a disciple. But he was meditating for years. Three hours each day, in the morning from three to six, he was sitting in meditation. Yesterday also, in the hospital also, he continued.Yesterday it happened. One never knows when it will happen. One has to go on digging; one day one comes across the source of water, the source of consciousness. Yesterday it happened; it happened in right time. If he had left his body just one day before he would have been back in the body again soon – a little clinging was there. But yesterday the slate was completely clean. He attained to no-mind, he died like a buddha. What more can one have than buddhahood?My effort here is to help you all to live like buddhas and die like buddhas. The death of a buddha is both. It is not a death, because life is eternal. Life does not begin with birth and does not end with death. Millions of times you have been born and died; they are all small episodes in the eternal pilgrimage. But because you are unconscious you cannot see that which is beyond birth and death.As you become more conscious, you can see your original face. He saw his original face yesterday. He heard the one hand clapping, he heard the soundless sound. Hence it is not a death, it is attaining life eternal. On the other hand, it can be called a total death – total death in the sense that he will not be coming anymore.Rejoice!The second question:Osho,When hearing the story over dinner of Dadu and two of his disciples, Rajjab and Sundero, I was baffled by how deeply affected they both were by the death of their master. One, Rajjab, never opened his eyes again, and the other, Sundero, died in the same bed as his master, Dadu. How can an enlightened person be so affected by the death of his master or beloved one?It is one of the most beautiful stories. There is no parallel to it in the whole history of religion, but it has to be understood. You have misunderstood it totally; it is very easy to misunderstand it. Apparently, what you have understood is what is understood by people who read the story.The question arises: why are two enlightened persons so much affected by the death of their master? They are not affected at all. It is not happening out of misery; it is a totally different dimension.Rajjab never opened his eyes again. He was asked once why he had closed his eyes. He said, “Because I have seen the most beautiful thing in the world – now there is nothing else to see.”Dadu was the most beautiful flower. Now what is the point of keeping your eyes open? For what? If you have the Kohinoor with you, you will not go on collecting pebbles on the seashore – or will you? Rajjab is not affected. It is not out of sadness that he closes his eyes; there is not a single tear in his eyes. He is not weeping, he is not crying.With closed eyes he continued to dance and sing the songs of Dadu. But he said, “Once you have seen God in human form, then there is nothing else worth seeing. I would like the impact of my master on my eyes to be the last and the most penetrating. I would not like it to be covered by dust.”Then the whole story takes a totally different turn. It is tremendous love. It is not an attachment to the master’s body, it is great understanding.Once you have seen a master…and Rajjab lived very, very close to Dadu. The day he became an initiate he was very small, just seven years old. He had come with his parents to participate in a religious festival; he was not even aware of Dadu. Dadu was also there at the festival. The parents had gone to pay their formal respects, because it was known in the country that Dadu was enlightened. They didn’t believe, but this country is very traditional and formal. If people hear that somebody is enlightened, whether they believe or not they at least go and touch his feet. Maybe he is, then why miss the opportunity? If he is not, you are not losing anything by touching his feet. This is cunningness, businesslike.The parents had gone; Rajjab followed the parents. The parents touched his feet, but Rajjab was transformed. The moment he saw Dadu he recognized something from his past lives. This man was not new, this quality was not new. He had known him before. That almost always happens if you have lived with a master before – immediately a recognition.He fell at his feet. The parents tried to persuade him to come back with them. He said, “I have found my real parents. Now you can go.” He touched the feet of his parents and said, “Just as you have touched the feet of Dadu formally, I touch your feet and say good-bye.” A seven-year-old child! Must have had a maturity of many lives behind him.The parents cried and wept, but Rajjab said, “It is impossible. I have found the man – I cannot leave him even for a single moment.”And from that time, for twenty years, he was in the service of the master; looking after his needs, sleeping in the same room, continuously on guard for what he needed.And the day Dadu died Rajjab simply closed his eyes. It was closing eyes to the world. He was saying, “Now there is nothing more to see. I have seen that which is really worth seeing. Now why waste your eyes and why collect dust? Once you have mirrored God then there is nothing else – you have seen the ultimate.”It was not out of attachment that Rajjab closed his eyes; it was out of great understanding. And he was not unhappy. He danced, he sang songs, as long as he lived – but with closed eyes, so that he could still see the master inside. Twenty years’ continuous communion with the master – the master had almost become a part of his soul. By closing his eyes he was still keeping company with the master. Don’t misunderstand him.Rajjab is one of the most beautiful disciples ever.And what happened to Sundero, another disciple? When Dadu died he laid himself down on the same bed and remained on the same bed; he never left the bed again. The master had slept on it his whole life; it was full of his vibe, it was full of his presence, it was soaked with him. He would not leave the bed. “Why?” people would ask him.And Sundero would say, “There is nowhere to go. I have arrived – this is my home. This is my moksha, this is my heaven. And I would like to live in this beautiful space that the master has created in this bed, and I would like to die here.”It is becoming so attuned with the master that you don’t feel your life and your death as separate from him; that is the meaning of it.Sundero was so attuned with the master’s life that it used to happen sometimes that he would speak in Dadu’s name. And he was told by people, “You are not Dadu!”Then he would say, “Yes, forgive me. I forget. But if you ask in reality, then I am Dadu – I have become one with my master.”That is the ultimate state of disciplehood: when the disciple becomes one with the master. He used to say that he was Dadu. He has written songs in which his name is not given but Dadu’s name – and people think that is not good. And the scholars go on discarding all that has been written by Sundero; they think that is not from Dadu.But I say to you: it is from Dadu. Sundero has become just a hollow bamboo on the lips of Dadu. Sundero no longer exists as a separate entity. That is the ultimate goal of a disciple: when the disciple and master meet and merge and become one. Sundero has become one with the master, hence he has every right to sign “Dadu.” He signs his poems as Dadu, not as Sundero – and I totally agree with him. And I would like the scholars to be a little more sensitive.These things are not for scholarship, these things are not for learned people. These things are for lovers. Only lovers can understand these things. Such a beautiful phenomenon, that a disciple cannot sign his name, he has forgotten.Sometimes people would come to invite Dadu and Sundero would say, “Yes, I will come.”And they would say, “But we have not come to invite you, we have come to invite Dadu.”Sundero would say, “But who am I? Why give trouble to the old man? I can come – I am his younger form. I can travel long distances more easily – why create trouble for him?”And Dadu sometimes used to send Sundero. People would invite Dadu and he would send Sundero. And people were very puzzled: “We have invited the master, not the disciple.” But they were not able to understand that the master and the disciple, at the ultimate peak of their love affair, disappear into each other.Hence, the day Dadu died, Sundero did not say a single word about his death, did not go to the funeral at all. Everybody left for the funeral. Thousands of disciples had gathered, and they were crying and weeping and they were in great misery. And what did Sundero do? He entered into the bed of the master, covered himself with his blanket – became Dadu. When people came back they thought, “This is sacrilegious.” They told Sundero, “This is not right – you are going mad. Have you gone crazy or something? This is the master’s bed – you get out.”He said, “But I am no more. Sundero has died. Have you not gone to his funeral? You have gone, you have burnt him. I am Dadu. Now Dadu will function through me.”That’s why he never left the bed, not even for a single moment. He lived on the bed, he died on the same bed – because he had become the master.I call this game the “MAD” game! By “mad” I mean: M represents master and D represents disciple – “Master-and-Disciple game” – it is a mad game! Unless you also become mad you will not understand it.And I am happy to see that some madness is entering into you. You are on the way. You will not be out of this buddhafield for long. I can see you approaching closer and closer. Sooner or later the color orange is going to be your color too – and I hope that before you leave the body this happens.Become Rajjab, become Sundero! Don’t think about them – these people are not to be contemplated upon. These people are to be lived. It is only by living that one can understand such tremendous phenomena.The third question:Osho,If you were in a desert instead of being here, would you feel the same?I am in the desert. Where do you think I am?This is the desert. To live with unconscious people is to live in a desert. To live with people who are not blooming, flowering, is to live in a desert. It is a human desert – far more empty than any desert can ever be.To become enlightened among unconscious people is to live in a desert. That is the fate of all the buddhas. I say one thing, you understand something else. Constant misinterpretation is bound to happen, because I talk from a totally different plane. I talk out of a fullness and you receive only through the mind. You receive only the words – and words cannot convey my message.My message can be conveyed to you only if you really become committed, involved in the energy field that I am creating, if you really become a plant in my garden, if you allow me to destroy your ego – because that is how growth begins. The death of the ego is the beginning of growth. Just as the seed has to die in the soil, the ego has to die in the master. Once your ego is completely gone you are a beautiful tree, with much foliage, greenery, flowers, fragrance.My effort is to make this desert a garden. And there is every possibility of succeeding, because people are getting ready. Hesitating, which is natural; waiting, thinking, which is natural. But you cannot be here long thinking and waiting; sooner or later the quantum leap…. You cannot go on misunderstanding me for long.If you just remain here, even if you misunderstand my words, I am working on you – not through the mind; I am playing on the instrument of your heart. Words are just to keep you engaged so that I can enter into your heart.Yes, the work of a master is like a thief.There is a Zen story; Zen masters have loved it tremendously. When you come across it for the first time you will feel puzzled about the story – it is about a master thief.A man was known as a master thief in Japan; he was well-known, famous, all over the country. And of course he was a master thief, so nobody had ever been able to catch hold of him. He was never caught red-handed – although everybody knew that he was the one who had stolen – he had been stealing even from the treasury of the king. And he was always leaving marks of his, so everybody would know who had been there.In fact, it had become the fashion to brag about it, if the master thief had thought you worthy to steal something from. It became an aristocratic bragging. People would brag, saying, “Last night the master thief has been to our house.”But the man was getting older, and one day his young son said to him, “Now you are getting older, teach me your art.”The father said, “Then come with me tonight – because this is not something that can be taught. You can only imbibe the spirit of me; if you are intelligent enough you can catch it. I cannot teach it to you, but you can catch it. I cannot give it to you, but you can get it. We will see. You come tonight with me.”Naturally the son was afraid – the first time. The wall was broken, they went into the palace. Even in his old age the father’s hands were like a surgeon’s, unwavering, unshaking, although he was becoming very old – with no fear, as if he was working in his own home, breaking the wall. He did not even look here and there he was so certain of his art. And the young man was trembling – it was a cold winter night and he was perspiring. But the father was doing everything silently.Then the father entered into the house. The son followed, his knees trembling, and he was feeling he might fall any moment. He was losing all consciousness because the fear was such…if they were caught, then?The father was moving in the dark house as if it was his house and he knew everything about the house, and even in the dark he could move without stumbling against the furniture, against the doors. Making no noise at all, noiselessly, he reached into the innermost chamber of the palace. He opened a cupboard and told the son to go in and find whatsoever was valuable. The son entered it. The father locked the door, shouted, “A thief! A thief! Wake up!” and escaped through the hole that they had dug in the wall.Now this was too much. The son could not understand it. Now he is locked in the cupboard, trembling, perspiring, and the whole house is awake, people are searching for the thief. “What kind of father is this? He has murdered me,” he thought. “And what kind of teaching is this?” This is the last thing he would have ever imagined: he has created a living nightmare for him. Now he is certain to be caught. And he has locked the door from the outside; he cannot even open the door and escape.After one hour he reached home – the son – and the father was fast asleep and snoring. He threw aside his blanket and said, “What kind of nonsense is this?”The father said, “So you are back. No need to tell the whole story – you also go to sleep. Now you know the art, we need not discuss it.”But the son said, “I have to tell you the whole story, what happened.”The father said, “If you want to tell it you can, otherwise I don’t require it. Just that you have come is enough proof. Now from tomorrow night you start on your own. You have got the intelligence, the awareness that a thief needs. I am immensely happy with you.”But the son was so overflowing, he wanted to relate the whole thing – he had done such a great job. He said, “Just listen, otherwise I will not be able to sleep at all. I am so excited. You almost killed me.”The father said, “It is hard, but that’s how a master has to act many times. Tell me the whole story. What happened?”He said, “Out of nowhere – not from my intellect, certainly not from my mind – this has happened.”The father said, “This is the key to all mastery in all the fields of life, whether you are a thief or a meditator, whether you are a lover or a scientist or a painter or a poet, it doesn’t matter. Whatsoever the field, this is the master key – that nothing happens from the head, everything happens from somewhere below. Call it intuition, call it no-mind, call it meditation – these are names, different names for the same thing. It has started functioning, I can see it on your face; I can see the aura around you. You are going to become a master thief. And remember through being a master thief I have attained to meditation. So remember: this is the way for you to attain meditation.”The son said, “When I was standing inside that damned cupboard and people were searching for the thief, a woman servant came with a candle in her hand; I could see from the keyhole. Something from nowhere…I started making noises as if I was a cat – and I have never done it before. The woman servant, thinking that there was a cat in the cupboard, unlocked it. As she unlocked it – I don’t know how I did it and who did it – it happened! I blew the candle out, pushed the woman away, and ran. People followed me – the whole house was awake, the neighborhood was awake. And they were coming closer and closer and I was on the verge of being caught.Then suddenly I came across a well. I saw a rock just by the side of the well – I don’t believe that I have that much strength to pick that rock up now, but it happened.”When you are in such situations your whole energy becomes available to you. You don’t live only on the superficial level. When life is at stake, your whole energy becomes available.“I moved the rock, picked up the rock – I cannot believe that I could even shake it now – and threw it in the well, then ran away. The noise, the sound of the rock falling in the well…and all the people who were following me stopped following me. They surrounded the well; they thought I had jumped into the well. That’s how I am back home.”The father said, “Now you can go to sleep. I am finished. Never ask me anything again. Now you start on your own.”The work of a master is a difficult work. He has to shout from the peaks, and you are crawling in the dark valleys of life. You are living in your graves, and he has to shout from eternal life. Misunderstanding is natural; because of that misunderstanding every buddha lives in a desert.A couple were applying for a marriage license.“Your name?”“Ole Olson.”“And yours?”“Lena Olson.”“Any connection?”The bride blushed. “Only once. He jumped me.”“Any connection?” and the woman’s mind immediately interprets it in her own way, the only way she can.Monsieur Foucard was visiting London for the first time. While walking about he felt nature calling and looked around for a public latrine like those in Paris. He could not find one and, in desperation, stepped into a dark building entrance. Immediately a bobby tapped him from behind, “You can’t do that here, you know.”Later he tried to go behind a tree, but another bobby stopped him. In a few minutes he was again prevented by a policeman. Finally he noticed a shingle: “Dr. Dingley, Urologist.” Dashing into the office, Foucard said, “Doctor, I cannot – how you say? – relieve myself.”The doctor handed him a bottle and told him to step behind the screen. In a few seconds the Frenchman cried, “Doctor, another container, s’il vous plait.”The doctor handed him one, and in a few minutes had to repeat the process. When the now happy Frenchman stepped out, the doctor asked, “My good man, who told you that you could not relieve yourself?”“Ze entire London Police Department.”It is natural. I speak from one world, you listen from a different world. Between me and you there is a great desert. If you allow, it can become a garden – but only if you allow; it cannot be imposed on you. You cannot be forced; great things never happen through enforcement. You cannot be regimented, you cannot be ordered, commanded. All commandments have failed. Religion has not succeeded because the priests have been ordering people: “Do this, don’t do that.”I cannot say to you: “Do this, don’t do that.” I can only relate my understanding to you. I can open my heart. I can go on playing on my flute. If you become enchanted by it – yes enchanted is the word – if you become allured by it, if you become completely oblivious to yourself, your past, your mind, your ideas, your prejudices, your upbringing, if my presence can help you to unburden, your seed will fall in the soil.The soil is ready, the spring has come. Now it is up to you – it is all up to you. A little courage, and the desert can be transformed into a garden.The fourth question:Osho,You said today that there is nothing like a “group soul,” but I have been strongly feeling something like that in the commune. Not only that, but this feeling of a collective soul is becoming more and more intense and attuned day by day. It is something new for me, and very beautiful, and actually I experience it as the most beautiful thing that is happening for me here. I know that each of us has to awaken alone, but I feel that this “collective soul” is a tremendous help, at least for us not to create other dreams…. Am I dreaming now of a “collective soul”?No, it is a fact, you just don’t know the right word for it. “Collective soul” is not the right term, it is very misleading. Soul can only be individual. Then what is happening here in this commune? Anybody who enters the ashram for the first time immediately becomes aware of something. He can see it on people’s faces, he can see it in their walk, he can see it in the way they are working. He can see that it is no ordinary humanity. He can feel some grace, some joy permeating the whole place, some playfulness, some sense of humor. And people are working seven days a week. Nobody is looking at the clock – except the Indians.People are enjoying the work; it is play, it is creativity. They are not tired. In fact, the deeper they go into this creativity, the more nourished they feel, the more energy is released in them.Anybody can see that something is there like an inner connection that connects all the sannyasins into one whole. It is not a collective soul, it is only falling into the same rhythm. I have a rhythm. The closer you come to me, the more you start falling into the same rhythm. Then my breath and your breath synchronize, then my heart and your heart synchronize.And all the sannyasins are getting synchronized with me; hence they are also synchronized, as a consequence, with each other. It is a synchronicity. It is an orchestra. We are all playing different instruments, but in harmony, in accord.That harmony you are calling the “collective soul.” It is not a collective soul. An army has a collective mind, no soul at all, because soul can never be collective. Soul is always individual. It is found in your deepest aloneness; there is no other way to find it. But in a commune…this is the chemistry of a commune, that it helps you to become harmonious with others. And the more harmonious you are with others, the closer you come to your own soul, because harmony brings you closer to the soul. When a person is absolutely in harmony with the universe he becomes enlightened.A paradox to be remembered: a buddha is one who is absolutely in harmony with the universe, and yet a buddha is one who is an absolutely unique individual. He plays his flute or his guitar, but he plays his flute or guitar in absolute accord with the whole. He does not go in his own egoistic way – he is not an idiot.Remember: either you are a buddha or you are an idiot. The word idiot is beautiful; it simply means doing something privately. Literally it means doing something privately; hence the words like idiosyncrasy. The idiot does not mean a fool; the idiot is far more potent a word than the fool. The idiot simply means one who is trying to live through his ego, who is playing his instrument against the whole and trying to succeed. He is an idiot, he is going to fail, he is doomed to fail. His life will never know any blessing, any benediction.Your feeling is right, you are just using a wrong word. Yes, a harmony is being created. I am in tune with the universe. You don’t know what the tune of the universe is; it is invisible. Right now you cannot connect yourself with the universal rhythm directly. But I am in tune with the universe – call it God, nirvana, enlightenment – I am utterly lost in it. I have no song of my own to sing; I am singing the song of the universe. You can fall in tune with me.That is how you become a disciple: when you find somebody with whom falling in love brings joy. Falling in love is falling in tune with somebody.Your ordinary love affairs are ugly, because you are both in discord. Your love affair is superficial. Because you like the blonde hair of a girl, or the shape of the nose, or the color of the eyes, or the curves of the body…and you fall in love. Now curves of the body, color of the eyes, the blonde hair, are not going to last long. Sooner or later you will be fed up with them – the same curve, the same eyes, the same nose – sooner or later you will stop seeing them. This is not love. Hence conflict arises immediately. All so-called love affairs are nothing but conflicts disguised – jealousies, possessiveness, domination, ego trips.But when you fall in love with a master it is a totally different phenomenon. You feel the rhythm of the master; and slowly, slowly your heart feels the call and you enter into an adventure. Slowly, slowly, more and more people enter into that adventure…a commune is created.First the buddha: Buddham sharanam gachchhami – I go to the feet of the buddha. Then the disciples arise, those who have gone to the feet of the buddha: Sangham sharanam gachchhami. Then many, many disciples gather, and they start feeling attuned not only with the buddha but a certain attunement with each other also arises naturally. They are all attuned to one center, hence they start feeling an attunement with each other. A brotherhood, a sisterhood, arises; that is the sangha – the commune.And when you have fallen in love with a buddha and have fallen in love with a commune, the ultimate surrender arises: Dhammam sharanam gachchhami. Then you know that it is neither the buddha nor the commune. Behind the buddha is the universal law, the ultimate law – dhamma. Buddha only represents the ultimate law in a visible form; his commune represents it in an even grosser way.These are the three shelters. First you take shelter in the buddha, then you take shelter in the commune, and then you take shelter in the ultimate law. This is what is happening here.You are moving in the right direction; your feeling is perfectly right. Intuitively you are right, just intellectually you are using a wrong word. Drop that word.The fifth question:Osho,I never want what I get; I reject it. I always want what is not given to me; this I try to get. I never feel satisfied with what I have, I always want something else. And I never say what I really want. I suffer much from this but, it seems, not enough as I still cling to it. Can you please say something about this?This is the way the world is made. The world is a great device of God. Just as masters create small devices for the disciples, God creates the ultimate device for all beings. The world is a device.It was Christmas time and a professor, a professor of philosophy and logic, went to a toyshop with his wife to purchase something beautiful, a new toy, for their only child as a Christmas gift. They tried many toys but they were all old, a little bit modified here and there. The shopkeeper, seeing that they were not satisfied, went inside the store and brought out an absolutely new toy they had never seen before. It was a jigsaw puzzle.He said, “This is the latest and the best – you must like it.”They tried to fit the jigsaw puzzle together. First the wife tried – ladies first. She failed, she could not figure it out. The husband laughed – the male chauvinist laughter – and he said, “Wait! I will do it.” And he was a logician, a professor of philosophy; if he cannot do it, then who will be able to do it? He tried hard. First he was very much inspired and finally he was simply perspiring – the whole inspiration became perspiration. He was drenched in perspiration. And a crowd had gathered, and there was no way to figure it out. The puzzle remained a puzzle, became more and more puzzling.Finally he asked the shop owner, “What kind of jigsaw puzzle is this? If I cannot do it – I am the Head of the Department of Logic in the University, mathematics is my hobby – if I cannot do it, then how do you hope that a five-year-old child will be able to do it?”The shopkeeper said, “Who told you that anybody can do it? This toy represents the world. It is made in such a way that it cannot be fixed. This is just a lesson for the child about how the world is.”Do whatsoever you like – everything fails. And when I say everything, I mean everything. But it takes millions of lives for people to arrive at this point, because in one life you cannot try all there is. You try a few things; they fail, but the hope remains: maybe you have not tried the right things.You earn money, you become the richest man in the world – you become an Andrew Carnegie. And at the peak, when you have become the richest man in the world, suddenly you see your whole life has been a wastage. Money is there, but there is no contentment inside – and life has gone down the drain.You can see the misery of an Andrew Carnegie. When he was dying, somebody who was writing a biography said to him, “You must be the most contented man in the world.”He said, “Contented? I am the most discontented man in the world. Don’t you know I am the wealthiest man in the world? That is my discontent. Now I know there is no more to wealth; all that is possible I have attained, and yet I am dying empty. My life has been just a wastage. Next time, if God gives me another opportunity, I am not going to try money anymore – it has failed.”But the hope is there – he will try politics…? Those who attain to political power, they fail. But then they think maybe it is knowledge: “We should try knowledge.” And so on and so forth.Remember: the world is made as a device by God. Everything here is bound to fail. You can hope and you try, but nothing is going to succeed. The day you understand that nothing is going to succeed is the day of great transformation. That is the day sannyas is born.In Detroit, brothels are now automated. One puts twenty dollars in a slot and a door opens.A politician decides to have a go. He puts in the twenty bucks and the door opens. He finds himself in a corridor with two doors: one reads “Blonde,” the other reads “Brunette.” He chooses the door with “Blonde” written on it. He then finds himself in another corridor with two doors: one reads “Tall” and the other reads “Small.” He opens the door with “Tall” written on it and finds himself in another corridor with two doors: one reads “Big Tits,” the other reads “Small Tits.” Immediately he chooses the door with “Big Tits” on it, and finds himself in another corridor with two doors, the one reading “Small Ass,” the other “Large Ass.” He rushes through the door with “Small Ass” written on it, and again finds himself in a corridor with two doors, one with “Real Screw” on it, the other “Fancy Fuck.” He throws himself on the door with “Real Screw” on it – and finds himself in the street on the other side of the same building.But you can try other ways. You will always find that you end up in the street on the other side of the building.The whole of life is like that – otherwise there would have been no reason for sannyas. There would have been no reason for religion to exist at all. Religion exists only because the world fails. It is the failure of the world that brings you to a new awareness: that if the cherished goal cannot be found in the world, then let us try it inward.There you have not tried yet. Move inward. Contentment is a quality of your center; it is not found on the circumference. Fulfillment is when you have arrived at your real, authentic being; it is not found in the ego.The sixth question:Osho,When we don't understand you rightly, how do you feel?I simply feel that you don’t understand me – and that is that. It is not a question of feeling anything else. I say, “Two plus two is four,” and you don’t understand – so I understand that you don’t understand. I try again next day. I go on hammering, “Two plus two is four.” If you understand, good; if you don’t understand, good. It is not a question of feeling. I don’t feel hurt, I don’t feel frustrated, because from the very beginning I am not expecting you to understand.Frustration comes through expectation. If I am expecting that you are going to understand, then, of course, when you don’t understand there will be frustration, deep frustration. If I am hoping that you are going to behave in this way and you don’t, then certainly I will feel hurt. You have disobeyed, you have not proved worthy enough, you have not risen to the occasion. But I have no expectation at all, of anybody.So whatsoever you do, I go on giggling and seeing it all. If you misunderstand, then I say, “Old man, try again.” What else can be done? And this is not a new situation; this has been always so and this is going to be always so.In fact, to expect that people should understand you is a subtle desire to dominate them. Why? If they don’t want to understand you it is perfectly okay. It is their life. They don’t want to go in a certain way – it is their choice and they are free.Hence I never give detailed information about how you should live – although you go on asking me: what you should eat, when you should go to bed, when should you get up in the morning…. You go on asking about these stupid details. And these stupid details have been given by your great – so-called great – saints down the ages. I don’t give you one single detail.I simply give you my insight, I share my insight. I open up my heart before you. If you can partake of anything, I am obliged, I am thankful that in some way my love, my understanding, helped you to become more loving, more understanding. But misunderstanding is accepted.Krishnamurti gets very angry – sometimes even hits his head – when he sees that people are not understanding him. Why be so worried about it? He is taking things too seriously, he is not playful. You can ask me the same question a thousand and one times; I am not going to be angry. Each time you ask the question I am happily ready to share whatsoever is possible.Why is Krishnamurti so serious? He was brought up by wrong people, the theosophists. They are very serious people. They had made a very mysterious philosophy out of all the religions of the world, a kind of synthesis. It is not a synthesis, it is just hocus-pocus, fragments from one place and a few fragments from another place. They were very serious people, and they wanted Krishnamurti to become the “World Teacher.”Now, how can you become the world teacher? There has never been a world teacher and there will never be. Unless the world decides to be your disciple, how can you be a world teacher?In India there are many. All the shankaracharyas are called jagatguru – world teachers. I know one shankaracharya who has only one disciple! I asked, “What kind of world-teacherhood is this?”He looked a little embarrassed. I told him, “Don’t feel so embarrassed. I will suggest a way out to you.”In Hindi, jagatguru means world teacher. Jagat means the world, guru means teacher.I told him, “You do one thing – you start calling your disciple Jagat – and then you become jagatguru. Don’t feel so embarrassed; there is always a way. One can wriggle out of laws and words and… Call him Jagat, and you are the guru, certainly.”Theosophists wanted Krishnamurti to be a jagatguru – a world teacher. And they tried hard. They could not make him do it, because he was a really intelligent person. If he had been just a little less intelligent he would have become a jagatguru, a world teacher. But he wriggled his way out. But even though he has come out of their grip, the scars are left. The seriousness is still there; he is not playful, he has no sense of humor.I am not serious. What I am saying to you is said out of playfulness. It is more a gossiping than a gospel.Watson, a Clevelander in Paris, was unable to find a bordello, so he asked a gendarme to give him directions. The policeman did not understand English very well. Watson tried pidgin English and pointing. “Me,” he said, pointing to his chest.“Ah. You wish to eat?” said the gendarme.“No, no.” said Watson. He tried again, taking out a twenty-dollar bill.“Ah. You wish to gamble?”“No, no, no!” shouted the American in disgust, and he unzipped and zipped himself.“Ah, oui, oui.” said the gendarme.“Wee-wee, my ass. Where the hell is the nearest whorehouse?”I am talking a different language, you understand a different language – but there is no need to make much fuss about it. It is natural.A hippie was walking along the road when he saw a big rock by the side of the road, wobbling. Being a strong hippie, he picked up the rock to see what was underneath. To his surprise, out jumped a leprechaun. “To be sure, I am grateful to ye, lad.” he cried. “And in return for your kindness I will grant you three magic wishes.”“Far out!” drawled the hippie. “Hey man, well, I wanna be uptight, outa sight and in the groove, baby.”“Okay.” said the leprechaun, and turned him into a Tampax.There is no problem when you misunderstand me or don’t understand me – there is no problem. I simply enjoy, whether you understand or misunderstand. My enjoyment remains undisturbed.And I am not a messiah, and I am not a missionary. And I am not here to establish a church or to give a doctrine to the world, a new religion, no. My effort is totally different: a new consciousness, not a new religion; a new consciousness, not a new doctrine. Enough of doctrines and enough of religions. Man needs a new consciousness. And the only way to bring consciousness is to go on hammering from all the sides so that slowly, slowly chunks of your mind go on dropping. The statue of a buddha is hidden in you. Right now you are a rock. If I go on hammering, cutting chunks out of you, slowly, slowly the buddha will emerge. It takes time.And there is no hurry either. I am not in a hurry, because the problem with hurry is: the more you are in a hurry, the more the whole thing is delayed. And if you are not in a hurry at all, things start happening sooner. I can wait forever, I can wait infinitely. But the miracle is: if you can wait infinitely, things can happen instantly.Right now the buddha can pop up in your consciousness; suddenly a bud can open and become a flower. And one never knows when it is going to happen so one has to simply go on working. And the work should never be thought of as work but as worship. Working with you I am worshipping you. Talking to you I am loving you – not giving you a doctrine but my heart. Handle it with care.Enough for today.

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Be Still and Know 01-10Category: RESPONSES TO QUESTIONS

Be Still and Know 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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The first question:Osho,Today when you talked about your father, for the first time it became very clear and close for me that everybody, I also, can become enlightened. Although you have said so many times that we are all buddhas in the center, I always felt it very, very far away. Suddenly all your teaching from the last two and a half years became immediate, maybe because your father was kind of close for me. I saw him in his house eating a chappati, saw him taking his morning walk through the ashram – and he became enlightened! Too much! I want to tell you that I had a great realization in lecture.Great truths take time to sink in. And this is the greatest of all, that you all are potentially buddhas. It is impossible for your mind to accept it. You can accept somebody far away, a Siddhartha Gautam, being a Buddha, a Jesus Christ, a Zarathustra, a Lao Tzu. They are so far away, millions of light years away; they have become mythological. They are no longer thought to be real persons. They have lost all substance, they have become pure shadows – pure poetry with no words, pure silence with no sound. You can imagine them, but you cannot feel them.Hence, although I go on repeating again and again that you can become a buddha – in fact you are a buddha, unaware of the fact. On the circumference maybe there is a great storm, just as on the surface the sea is stormy – sometimes more, sometimes less, but there are always waves, bigger or smaller; there is always turbulence, disturbance. But at the depth there is not even a ripple; all is silence.You are the center of the cyclone, but you are not aware of your center. And down the ages priests have condemned you so much that it has become almost impossible for you to conceive of yourself as a buddha. The priests have condemned you according to your circumference; they know only your circumference. In fact they are interested only in condemning you, so whatsoever they can condemn they see very predominantly in you. They choose that which can be condemned, because through condemnation you are reduced to slaves: slaves of religion – Catholic, Protestant, Hindu, Mohammedan, Jaina, Buddhist; and slaves of societies, cultures, civilizations, political ideologies – communist, fascist, Gandhian.The only way to reduce you to a slave is to condemn you so badly that you lose all self-respect. And it can be done because your circumference is there, and you also are aware only of the circumference. You are fast asleep snoring at the center. Only at the circumference are you a little bit awake, and that too because of the disturbance, noise.In the marketplace you are a little bit more alert. When you sit silently in your meditation room you start falling asleep, because the only kind of alertness that you know is that which is created by the noise around you. You know only one kind of awareness, which is pathological because it is out of disturbance, not out of stillness.That’s why it is one of the basic experiences of all meditators that the moment they start meditating they start falling asleep. Hence the Zen master has to walk among his disciples with a stick in his hand: whenever he sees somebody asleep, he hits him immediately. The hit you can understand, because it is on the circumference. Suddenly the energy rushes upward in your spine, and you are awake, alert. The Zen tradition says that when the master hits you, bow down to him in deep respect. He has obliged you; he has taken great trouble to hit you.You know only one kind of alertness – when you are hit, when you are in some danger, when you are in some accident. It is because of this that people go mountain climbing, because when they are climbing mountains and the danger is great they become a little alert. It is because of this that people compete in car races, because the speedier the car goes, the more danger is close by. Death can happen any moment, you have to become alert.Danger has an attraction. The only attraction of danger is that you become a little alert, but this is a superficial kind of alertness. Real alertness has to happen at the center, otherwise you can remain alert on the circumference because of the noise, disturbance, but it is coming from others, it is not your own, and your center can go on sleeping.I go on telling you this again and again. Why do I say it again and again? So that it can sink in and can reach your center. It takes time, and it takes a right moment.My father’s disappearance from the body may have been the right moment for you. Yes, he was a simple man, just like anybody else. So was Buddha and so was Mahavira and so was Jesus – simple people, innocent people. He was not in any way extraordinary; that was his extraordinariness. I have known him from my very childhood – so simple, so innocent, anybody could deceive him.He used to believe anybody. I have seen many people cheating him, but his trust was immense; he never distrusted human beings although he was cheated many times. It was so simple to see that people were cheating him that even when I was a small child I used to say to him, “What are you doing? This man is simply cheating you.”Once he built a house and a contractor was cheating him. I told him, “This house is not going to stand, it will fall, because the cement is not in the right proportion and the wood that is being used is too heavy.” But he wouldn’t listen; he said, “He is a good man, he cannot cheat us.”And that’s what actually happened; the house could not stand the first rains. He was not there, he was in Mumbai. I sent him a telegram telling him, “What I have been telling you has happened. The house has fallen.” He did not even answer. He came when he was supposed to come, after seven days, and he said, “Why did you unnecessarily waste money on the telegram? The house had fallen, so it had fallen. Now what can I do? That contractor wasted ten thousand rupees and you wasted almost ten rupees unnecessarily – those could have been saved.”And the first thing that he did was to celebrate that we had not moved – because we had been going to move within two or three weeks. He celebrated: “God is gracious, he saved us. He made the house fall before we had moved into it.” So he invited the whole village. Everybody was just unable to understand: “Is this a moment to celebrate?” Even the contractor was called, invited, because he had done a good job: before we moved, the house fell.He was a simple man. And if you look deep down, everybody is simple. The society makes you complex, but you are born simple and innocent. Everybody is born a buddha; the society corrupts you. And the function of a master is to take away all the corruption that the society has worked on you. The function of the master is to undo what the society has done to you, and you will be a buddha again.The child functions from the center when he is born; we teach him how to function from the circumference. That is our whole educational system all over the world: teaching the child how to function from the circumference. We pull him away from his center, we make him more and more accustomed to the circumference, to living on the circumference – twenty-five years of conditioning, education. We have given good names to ugly things. We call it education – it is not education, nothing can be a greater “mis-education.”The very word education means drawing something out, to draw something out. When you draw water out of the well it is education. Just like that, when something is drawn outward from your center it is education. But this is not what is going on in the name of education; it is forcing things upon you. It is not bringing your center to function. It is not sharpening your center; it is dulling it, making it more and more sleepy, dozy.The society succeeds the day your center goes into a coma and your circumference remains functioning. Then you are a robot, a machine, no more a man.Because we function from the circumference buddhas look so unreal – of course, because they function from a totally different center. That’s why I say that unless you are in contact with a living buddha, you will never believe that you can become a buddha. But a living buddha also, slowly, slowly, appears faraway. It is because of your mind working; it is a strategy of the mind to save itself from going through that revolution. So you create a distance – it is imaginary.There is no distance between me and you, not at all. I am just a neighbor to you; not even a fence divides me from you. But you cannot believe it, because that is too dangerous for you, for your established pattern of life. You can’t allow me too close; you will create a distance.Pradeepa has asked a question: “Osho, whenever you quote Lao Tzu as saying, ‘Everybody is clear, only I am muddleheaded,’ I love it, because I am also muddleheaded. But there must be some difference between my muddleheadedness and Lao Tzu’s.”There is none, Pradeepa. But you cannot believe it. Lao Tzu is exactly as muddleheaded as Pradeepa. Lao Tzu will agree with me, Pradeepa will not agree. There is the problem: how can Pradeepa agree that her muddleheadedness…? Lao Tzu must be meaning something very mysterious, something of a totally different dimension.No. Lao Tzu is simply saying there is no need to be a great genius to know godliness. Godliness is available to all, unconditionally to all, categorically to all. You do not have to fulfill certain conditions, you do not have to rise to a certain level. Godliness is available to you as you are, because “God” has become you. There is nobody else inside you. Just a look…So it is beautiful in a commune, because when you live in a commune you live with people not knowing whether this man is going to become a buddha; then one day suddenly the lotus opens: that man has become a buddha. It gives you great courage. You know this man, he is just like you. You have been drinking tea with him, gossiping with him, reading the same newspaper, listening to the same radio, looking at the same TV, you have been to the same movie. You know him, inside and out; he was just like you. If he can become a buddha, then why not you? In fact, his becoming a buddha becomes the greatest uplifting force in your life.That is the beauty of a commune, because many people with whom you were working will one day become buddhas. Somebody was working under you…for example, one day Deeksha finds that the man who has been washing the pots has become a buddha. Then Deeksha can believe that, “Although I am an Italian, and nobody has ever heard of any Italian becoming a buddha, still I can become one.”Have you ever heard about any Italian…? At least I have not heard of it. But it is going to happen here, because this commune is ninety percent Italian: you eat Italian food, you drink Italian water – everybody is turning ninety percent Italian. My effort in creating a commune is simply to make you alert and aware that one day the cobbler of the ashram becomes enlightened, another day the guard becomes enlightened, and people go on blossoming. Each blossoming brings new courage, new inspiration, and in that courage and inspiration your spring comes closer to you. A great self-respect arises, and a trust: “Existence has not forsaken us. If people like me are becoming buddhas, then I am also on the way. Sooner or later…” And it is going to be sooner than later – because if so many people start flowering, then the season has come and it is time not to resist. It is time not to fight anymore, but to be in a let-go.The second question:Osho,What exactly do you mean by saying, “Be still and know” and also, “Seek the strength of no-desire”?Be still and know is one of the most fundamental sutras of the inner alchemy. But by being still is not meant that you have to force stillness upon yourself. A forced stillness is not true stillness. One can sit like a buddha, almost like a statue, absolutely still, and yet deep down there may be great turmoil, a thousand and one thoughts rushing. There may be great traffic in the mind. The body can be forced to sit silently for hours, and you can also learn tricks to still the mind.For example, if you chant any mantra for hours, any name of God, if you simply go on chanting “Allah, Allah, Allah,” it functions like a tranquilizer. Repetition of a single word or a single mantra creates a certain melody in your mind soothing, very soothing, very calming. And a kind of stillness will be felt which is not the true kind – because the sound of a certain mantra is simply changing the chemistry of your mind. The change is not alchemical, it is chemical.Sound is chemistry. Hence music can help you to become still. And, moreover, when a certain word or a mantra is repeated constantly, you become hypnotized by it. That’s the secret of all hypnosis. You look at a flame, a candle flame, constantly – what are you doing? You are repeating the flame through the eyes, again and again and again. It is a repetition, it is a mantra – through the eyes. Or you can repeat a mantra inside yourself; that is through the ear, through the sound. Any sense can be used. Perfume, incense can be used; the same incense can hypnotize you.Hypnosis means going into deep sleep, artificial sleep. That’s exactly the meaning of the word hypnosis: a sleep deliberately created. It can be through a tranquilizer, it can be through a soothing silence, sound, music, perfume, incense – there can be a thousand and one ways, but you will become hypnotized. And, hypnotized, you will feel a kind of stillness which is not true.And also, if you repeat a certain mantra again and again, you will feel bored. Boredom also brings sleep. That’s why doctors suggest to people who cannot sleep that they count sheep from one to a hundred, and then backward from a hundred – ninety-nine, ninety-eight, back to one – and then go up the ladder again…go on coming up and down. How long can you do it? Somewhere after going three or four times up and down the ladder you will fall asleep. It is the most ancient formula for falling asleep: count sheep from one to a hundred and then come back – because it is such a boring job that you lose all interest in it. And the moment you lose all interest in it, there is nowhere to escape except in sleep.Mothers know it perfectly well. Hence the lullaby: the mother goes on repeating a single note again and again and the child falls asleep. And children have their own mantras: they can suck on their thumbs – that is a mantra. The child goes on sucking on the thumb; it is very consoling, soothing. He believes that it is the breast of the mother, and he falls asleep. Children invent their own methods – the teddy bear, or just the corner of the blanket, and the child holds it; if you take the blanket away from him he cannot sleep.Even grown-ups are not really grown-ups; they have their own ritual of going into sleep. For example, if every day you clean your teeth before going to sleep, try it one day without cleaning the teeth and you will be surprised: you cannot fall asleep. Something is missing. You have created a mantra. You change the dress, a different dress than you use in the daytime…you go into a subtle ritual.A few people who are religious, so-called religious, they will do some prayer. That too is a ritual. Grown-ups are not really grown-ups; they have grown in age, but not psychologically, not spiritually. The world is full of children of many ages: one year, two years, up to seventy, eighty, ninety – all children.I am not talking about this stillness. When I say “Be still and know,” I mean a stillness that comes out of understanding, not out of any kind of hypnosis. And out of understanding the first thing that happens is: “Seek the strength of no-desire.” The more you look into your life, you will find your life is in a mess because of desiring.Why are you in such a storm continuously? It is because of the desire – not only one desire but a thousand and one desires. And no desire can ever be fulfilled, no desire has ever been fulfilled. Desire as such is incapable of being fulfilled, intrinsically it is unfulfillable. Hence each desire creates turmoil, expectation, hope, then frustration, hopelessness. And you have a thousand and one desires surrounding you, and you go on supporting your own enemies.When you look in, when you watch, you become aware that desire is the cause of your whole misery. Seeing it, desiring disappears – just by seeing it, desiring disappears. Seeing that desire never leads anywhere, but that you go on moving in circles and desire goes on goading you in the same repetitive patterns, seeing this – not because I am saying it, but seeing it on your own – desire disappears. And the disappearance of desire is the stillness, the real stillness, I am talking about.It brings two things to you: great strength, because all the energy that was involved in a thousand and one desires is released. Now energy no more leaks from you; you don’t have any holes for it to leak from. You become a reservoir of great energy. And the second thing: because now there is no noise of desires clashing, conflicting with each other, there is no civil war going on…what to do? To be or not to be? To do this or to do that? When there is no conflict, no desire, when all the storm is gone, the silence that follows the storm, that is the stillness I am talking about.Be still and know.And I am not saying that by being still you will be ready to know – no. Just by being still you will know. Being still and knowing are the same phenomenon, because when you are still like a mirror, a still lake, no ripples, then the whole firmament, the whole sky, is reflected in the lake. The stars come down, and the moon, and the clouds – all are reflected in tremendous beauty in the lake. When your consciousness becomes a still mirror, a still lake, a silent reservoir of energy, the universe is reflected in it.You will not attain to knowledge, remember. You will become wise, you will become a buddha. You will not become a great scholar, a great pundit, a great theologian or a philosopher. You will be a buddha. You will have an innocent kind of knowing: you will know how to live, you will know how to die, you will know how to love – you will know the real art of life. And the real art of life consists only of three things: how to live, how to love, how to die. And these things you will not know from scriptures; these things you will know from your innermost core.I call this education. “Be still and know, seek the strength of no desire.” It is desire that is making you weak, it is no-desire that will make you strong. It is desire that is creating continuous storms in you, it is no-desire that will bring stillness – and a stillness that comes on its own is authentic; it is not a kind of hypnosis. It is not through mantra, it is not through any device, it is not through any trick. You are not trying to pretend to be still: you are simply still. This will give you a new birth, you will be reborn.Jesus says: “Unless you are born again, you shall not enter into my kingdom of God.” I say the same to you – but the rebirth is a state of no desire, a state of no-mind, a state of total stillness.The third question:Osho,I always think of committing suicide, and wonder what you would say about my death?I am reminded of a beautiful anecdote:The minister, who got himself a little mixed up now and again, was standing over the open casket of the dearly departed, Joe Hall.“Our friend Joe Hall is not dead,” he orated. “Only the shell is here to be buried; the nut has departed.”Why should you think of suicide? Are you a nut or something? If you have become a sannyasin you have already committed suicide. Sannyas is a suicide – the real one. It is not destroying the body, because destroying the body is not going to help; you will be immediately born again somewhere in some other womb. It will only be renewing the body; it is not real suicide.Sannyas is real suicide, because it destroys the mind, it takes you beyond the mind. And if you are beyond the mind you will not be born again. Why be born again and again? Why go on in this vicious circle?I know you are bored with life. If you are really bored, then meditation is the way, not suicide – because suicide will bring you to the same life, maybe an uglier life than you have right now, because suicide will create its own ugliness in you. To commit suicide is such an ungrateful act toward existence. It gives you life as an opportunity to grow, and you throw away the opportunity.And unless you grow, unless you grow and become a buddha, you will be thrown back into life again and again. Millions of times it has happened before: it is time now you should become aware. Don’t miss this opportunity.Being here with me, learn the real art of suicide. The real art consists not in destroying the body…the body is beautiful, the body has not done any wrong. It is the ugly mind. The body is beautiful, the soul is beautiful, but between the body and the soul there is something which is neither body nor soul. This in-between phenomenon is the mind.It is mind that goes on dragging you back into the womb. When you die, if you commit suicide, you will be thinking of life. Committing suicide means you are thinking of life. You are bored, fed up with life; you would like a totally different kind of life, that’s why you are committing suicide – not that you are really against life. This life you are against. Maybe you don’t want to be the way you are: you would like to be an Alexander, a Napoleon, an Adolph Hitler; maybe you want to be the richest man in the world and you are not. This life has failed, and you would like to be famous, successful – destroy it!People commit suicide not because they are really finished with life but because life is not fulfilling their demands. But no life ever fulfills anybody’s demands. You will always go on missing something or other: if you have money, you may not be beautiful; if you are beautiful, you may not be intelligent; if you are intelligent, you may not have money.Once a man stopped Andrew Carnegie, who had gone for a morning walk in the garden. Andrew Carnegie was the richest man in America; the man who stopped him was looking like the very incarnation of a beggar. And the man said, “Please don’t be deceived by my appearance. I am an author, I have also written a book.”Andrew Carnegie asked, “What kind of book have you written?” The man said, “I have written a book entitled One Hundred Ways to Become Rich.”Andrew Carnegie could not stop himself laughing. He said, “One Hundred Ways to Become Rich? And you are a beggar! What kind of book is this?”The beggar started laughing, and he said, “This is the hundredth way of becoming rich – it is included in my book.”The beggar also thinks of becoming rich, writes books about how to become rich – even thinks that by begging he will become rich. But Andrew Carnegie is not happy either; he was one of the most unhappy men ever born on the earth. He lived in unhappiness, he died in unhappiness. The day he died somebody asked, “You must be dying fully contented – because you are leaving such a lot of money behind you. You are the richest man in the world.”Andrew Carnegie opened his eyes and said, very sadly said, “I am not fulfilled in my desires. My target was far higher – I have not been able to reach it. I could accumulate only ten percent of my target.”But even if you achieve one hundred percent of your target, how is it going to help? One is going to remain unfulfilled. Each life you will find the same thing repeated; forms change, but the discontent remains.People think that those who commit suicide are against life – they are not. They are too lusty for life, they have great lust for life; and because life is not fulfilling their lust, in anger, in despair, they destroy themselves.I will teach you the right way to commit suicide. Not the destruction of the body; the body is a beautiful gift from existence. The mind is not a gift from existence; the mind is a conditioning by the society. The soul is a gift, the body is a gift, and sandwiched between the two, the society has played tricks with you: it has created your mind. It gives you ambition, it gives you jealousy, competition, violence, it gives you all kinds of ugly diseases. But this mind can be transcended, this mind can be put aside. This mind is not a must.I am sitting before you and I say it through my own experience, I say it on my own authority: that mind can be put aside. It is so simple, you just have to know the knack of it. And remember, whenever I say that I say it on my own authority, I am not saying that I am saying it authoritatively. Those two expressions are totally different. When something is said authoritatively it is a commandment; you have to believe in it. If you don’t believe in it you will suffer, here or hereafter. The priest speaks with authoritativeness, the politician speaks with authoritativeness.A realized man speaks not with authoritativeness but on his own authority – because he knows it. I am not saying follow me, I am not saying believe in me. I am simply stating a fact: that I have known it this way, it has happened to me…it can happen to you.Life is very precious and the greatest treasure is hidden in it – and that treasure is of becoming a witness.A real story for you:One day, in 1928, Bucky Fuller stood on the shore of Lake Michigan and planned to throw himself in. He was ready to give up because he was a failure financially, by the standards of the upper middle class which he had been born into.As a construction engineer he had not succeeded. And because his daughter had just died of polio, the whole universe did not make any sense to him and he was ready to throw himself in. He stopped himself and said, “Wait, I can’t be sure. Maybe there is something I can do in this universe that is important.” He said, “Well, what can I do? Let us see what a man of average intelligence can do if he starts questioning everything that is taken for granted and starts looking for alternatives.”I don’t know if he ever was a man of only average intelligence – in fact no one ever is – but by questioning everything he came to realize, as he said, that when you don’t accept anything except that which can be experimentally verified, you are overwhelmed by the inherent integrity and rationality of the universe. The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible, as Einstein said. And that gives you faith in the sane, sound center of the universe we mentioned earlier. As Ezra Pound wrote in the death cells at Pisa, looking at the stars, “Out of all this beauty something must come.”Now Bucky Fuller is one of the wisest men in the West – not yet a buddha, but on the way, very close. And the art that has brought him so close to becoming a buddha is the art of questioning everything that is accepted by the society: it is the art of becoming an inquirer.Transform your life into a quest. Question the values that you have accepted. Question all that you have been brought up to believe in. Question the way you have lived up to now. Question your mechanicalness, question your robotlike existence.Yes, something drastic has to be done, but it is not suicide. It won’t help, it won’t change you; you will be back again in another womb somewhere. Millions of stupid couples are making love every moment. Beware, you will be caught in some net somewhere. And you will get only what you deserve, remember; you can’t get more than you deserve. You get the womb that is right for you. And dying in suicide is dying in such anguish, because it is one of the most unnatural things to do, most abnormal things to do.No animal commits suicide, no tree ever commits suicide – only man. Only man can go that insane. Nature knows nothing of suicide; it is man’s invention. It is the most ugly act. And when you do something ugly to yourself you cannot hope that you will get a better life. You will die in an ugly state of mind and you will enter an uglier womb.But what is the need to commit suicide? Just question: you must have lived in a wrong way, that’s why life has not become a song. You must have lived foolishly, stupidly, unintelligently; that’s why life has not attained to celebration. You cannot dance with joy with the stars and with the flowers and with the wind and with the rain, because you have lived with wrong kinds of ideas imposed on you by the same kind of people as you are.It is a perpetual phenomenon; stupidity goes on perpetuating itself. Parents go on giving stupidity to their children and the children in their turn will hand over their stupidity to their children. This is the heritage. This is called tradition, heritage, culture – great names.Question all that you have lived without questioning up to now, and your life will have a new intelligence arising in it. Your life will become more sharp.Sheela has asked a question: “Osho, you say ‘Drop the mind.’ The more I drop the mind, the sharper and sharper my brain is becoming.” She is puzzled There is no need to be puzzled: the brain is a totally different thing from the mind. The mind is given by the society, the brain is part of your body. The brain is neither Hindu nor Mohammedan nor Christian; the mind is a Hindu, Mohammedan, Christian. The brain is simply a beautiful biocomputer. The more you drop the mind, the sharper your brain will be, the more intelligent. It is the mind that is creating your mediocrity.Sheela, you need not be puzzled by it; this is how it is going to happen. The more and more people drop their minds, the more and more they will be able to function intelligently, because the brain will be unburdened. The brain will not be expected to carry unnecessary luggage.Right now your brain is carrying so much rubbish. That it functions at all is a miracle. Just look how much rubbish you are carrying: of being a Hindu, of being an Indian, of being a Japanese, of being a Buddhist, of being this, of being that, a fascist, a communist – religious ideologies, philosophical ideologies, political ideologies. They are heaped upon you, layer upon layer. Your brain has lost all its functioning. Once the mind is dropped, the brain will come to its total functioning.And every being is born intelligent. It is society that creates unintelligence. No child is born unintelligent. Have you ever seen a bird which is unintelligent or a bird which is wise, intelligent? All birds are alike. Have you seen a rosebush which is foolish or a rosebush which is a genius? All rosebushes are alike. So are all human beings: they come with the same potential but fall into different gangs.These are all gangs: Indians, Chinese, British, American. These are all gangs, and politicians are the criminals. Then there are religious gangs…. And their whole effort is not to allow your intelligence to function, because an intelligent person is bound to become rebellious.Question your values. If you have been a Catholic, question it; if you have been a Protestant, question it; if you have been a Hindu, question it. Question all that you have lived up to now; something is basically wrong somewhere.Ezra Pound is right. And do you know from where he is writing this? From his death cell. “Out of all this beauty something must come.” Ezra Pound in a dark cell, just waiting for death to come, can write such a tremendously important sutra: “Out of all this beauty something must come.”The birds singing, and the trees, and the flowers, this infinite universe – is it the place to commit suicide? It is the place to dance, to sing, to celebrate, to love and to be loved. And if you can love this existence, if you can feel blessed with this existence, I promise you that when you die you will not be coming back again – because you will have learnt the lesson. Existence never sends anybody back to the school if once they have learnt their lesson.If you can learn to rejoice, you will be accepted. Doors of higher mysteries will be opened to you. You will be welcomed into the innermost mysteries of life. That’s what I call the true art of committing suicide. My name for it is sannyas.The fourth question:Osho,Suddenly there you were yesterday just bending over your father, and I felt such love and joy and closeness seeing you in this natural situation that it is haunting me. It is as if a door opened and I saw something through it, something familiar and tremendous, and now it is gone. What was it?It is not gone, and it will never go. Things like this come, and come forever. They are not momentary glimpses. Your heart opened suddenly; it needed such a situation for the opening. I immediately felt something happening in your heart – a great cry arose in your heart, you exploded into a totally different plane.It is not gone, it can’t go. It is there. It will come now in different situations, appear in different situations. You are just keeping your back toward the door; the door is open. But more and more often you will encounter the door. Once it happens you know it is there, you cannot avoid it. The mind will say it is gone; the mind would like to persuade you that it is gone. And the mind will ask questions about it so that the whole thing can become intellectual.It is the mind which is asking, “What was it?” The heart knows; the mind asks and knows nothing. The heart has known what it was, but the heart and its knowing is so deep that it cannot be conveyed to the mind. And mind feels a little puzzled. And it has not happened only to you, it has happened to many people. It was such a situation. Many people had suddenly cried – not out of sadness, no. There was celebration in their tears; they could not contain it. It was a spiritual experience for many of the sannyasins. And it will remain with you – don’t ask what it was.There are things one should not ask questions about, because questions drag them to the level of the mind. There are things which should be left as they are: mysterious, miraculous. With wonder, with awe, accept. The moment the question mark is put, the plane of experience changes. The question mark brings them to the mind. The heart knows no questioning, it knows only how to trust.In that moment, you loved, you trusted. In that moment, you were so blissful you could have died laughing. But to die laughing is one thing; it is easier. To live laughing is far more difficult. Now that is the task, now that should be your sadhana. Live with that vision. Yes, many times you will forget about it – but it is there. Just a little groping and you will find the door again.Don’t let it become just a memory in the mind. Let it remain a reality. It is a reality, but mind will try to make it a memory. Once something is made a memory, the mind can put it in the safe deposit, in the biocomputer, and you can forget all about it. Once in a while you can remember, and later on you will start feeling, “Maybe it happened – or did I just imagine it? Maybe it was just because of the whole situation and the impact of it that I felt something which was not really happening in my heart.” These things mind goes on doing.Be careful about the mind. Mind will drag you many times from the very door of God. Mind is your basic enemy. Listen to the heart, because the heart is the friend.The fifth question:Osho,This is not a question, rather a statement which should not offend you at all. Krishnamurti said lately in Saanen, Switzerland: A rose is not likely to bloom next to a guidepost.I love roses, but also other flowers.First, there is nothing that can ever offend me. There is no way to offend me; it is impossible because only the ego can be offended. If the wound of the ego is there then small things offend. But there is no wound anymore; I am absolutely healed and whole. The ego is very touchy because it is a wound. Once the ego is not there you cannot offend that person – impossible.So the first thing for you to remember: you can make any kind of statement you like, but you cannot offend me. Try, and try again!Secondly, you say: “Krishnamurti said: A rose is not likely to bloom next to a guidepost.”Roses bloom everywhere, and unless you know that they can even bloom on the guidepost, let alone by the side, roses can bloom even on the guidepost – unless you know it, you know nothing.A Zen story:A disciple came to the master. He had gone to see a polo game. The master asked him, “Tell me a few things. Were the riders on the horses tired?”The disciple said, “Yes, at the end of the game they looked tired.”Secondly the master said, “Were the horses tired?”The disciple said, “Yes, a little bit, not as much as the riders, but even the horses were tired.”Then the master said, “The last and the final question: were the posts, the wooden posts which are needed in the game, were they tired too?”Now this was too much. The disciple hesitated a little.The master said, “Go into your room and meditate over it. Tomorrow morning you can answer.”The whole night he could not sleep; he tossed and turned. “The wooden posts – how can they be tired? What a stupid question to ask. But when the master asks, it can’t be stupid; there must be something in it.” The whole night he tried hard. Early in the morning as the sun was rising he rushed to the master, fell at his feet, and he said, “Yes, master, they were tired.”The master said, “I am happy. Your going to the polo game has not been useless.” Others who were present, they could not understand what was going on. Wooden posts tired?Somebody asked the master, “What nonsense is this? How can wooden posts be tired?”And the master said, “If wooden posts cannot be tired then nobody can be tired, because this whole existence is one.”If man gets tired, if horses get tired, then wooden posts also get tired. The whole existence is a manifestation of one energy.I know why Krishnamurti has made that statement. But my own suggestion is unless you come to know that roses can bloom not only next to a guidepost, they can even bloom on the guidepost, you have not known anything.And thirdly you say: “I love roses, but also other flowers.”Why only roses and why only flowers? Love should be unaddressed. Love need not be oriented toward the other. Love oriented toward the other is not true love, love as relationship is not true love. Love as a state of being is true love. One can love a woman, one can love a man, one can love one’s children, one can love one’s parents, one can love roses, one can love other flowers, one can love a thousand and one things – but these are all relationships.Learn how to be love. So it is not a question of to whom your love is addressed, it is simply a question of your being loving. Sitting alone, still love goes on flowing. Absolutely alone, still, what can you do? Just as you breathe…you don’t breathe for your wife; it is not a relationship. You don’t breathe for your children; it is not a relationship. You simply breathe – it is life. Just as breathing is life for the body, love is the life of the soul – one is simply love. And then only does one know that love is “God.”Jesus says: “God is love.” I say to you: “Love is God.” The words are the same, but the significance is very different. Jesus says: “God is love.” Then love becomes only one of the qualities of God. He is wise also, powerful also, a judge also, and many things more. Amidst all those qualities he is love too. Jesus’ statement was very revolutionary in those days, but not anymore.I say: “Love is God.” Then it is not a question of God having many other qualities. In fact God disappears – love itself becomes God. Love is the real thing. God is the name given by the theologians to something they know nothing about. There is no God; the whole existence is made of the stuff called love.But if you love the word God it’s perfectly okay, you can call it “God.” But remember always it is love, and you will know this love only when love has become a state of your being, a simple state of your being.The sixth question:Osho,Why do I hate homosexuals?Deep down you must be a homosexual, otherwise why should you hate them? Hate is love upside-down, hate is love doing sirshasana – headstand. Hate knows yoga postures. And do you think you are a different person just by standing on your head? Many fools think that way: standing on their heads they think they are yogis; otherwise they were just ordinary people. Now, standing on their heads they are special people; distorting their bodies they think they are coming closer to God. They may be useful in a circus, but it has nothing to do with spirituality – otherwise the people in circuses would be the most enlightened people in the world. You have seen girls in circuses doing such postures – almost unbelievable, as if they are not made of blood and bone and flesh but of rubber. Do you think they become enlightened?Hate is a trick: you hate because you want to repress. And hate is not good, because it does not harm the other, it simply harms you.There are millions of people who hate homosexuals. That simply means millions of people have the capacity of becoming homosexuals if the opportunity is given to them. They have a deep longing for the forbidden fruit. Just to keep themselves in control, they create a great wall of hatred.That may be the case; or it may be a simple, ordinary phenomenon of life that we don’t like people who are not like us. People who are unlike us we hate. Why? – because they create suspicion in us. Hindus hate Mohammedans – not that there is anything specific to hate in Mohammedans. Mohammedans hate Hindus – not that there is anything special in Hindus which has to be hated. But whosoever is not like us has to be hated because he is a stranger, an outsider, and the outsider creates fear. And who knows? – maybe he is right. To protect yourself from this doubt you create a safety measure; that hate functions as safety, a shelter.It is not a question of homosexuality. If you don’t dress like other people, as they dress, they hate you, they don’t like you.Now my sannyasins are in great trouble all over the world. Just a few days ago many letters have come that in Australia, the school, college, university authorities are very disturbed by my orange people, because many teachers, many professors have become sannyasins. And a problem is being created by the parents and their leagues. The problem is being created that these orange people and their presence may corrupt their children, so the parents are against them. The Catholic priest comes in his robe; he is accepted, he does not corrupt. But my sannyasins, just because they are coming in orange robes, can be a dangerous influence.Anybody who is not behaving like you, not living like you, is hated. This is your experience in Pune too. The people are not really in any way harmed by you – my sannyasins are the most harmless people you can find anywhere – but people are against you just because you look different.The homosexual has a very different lifestyle, and you are heterosexual. He belongs to another religion, he has another politics, he is not a man like you. The moment somebody says that he is gay, a gap arises, a great gap. Now how can you communicate?But all these fears have to be dropped; these are all defense measures. They simply show that you are not yet settled in your being – afraid any outside influence may take you away, off your ground.A little Hollywood fruit was following a husky, good-looking man down the street murmuring, “My, what a pretty man.” Unable to resist temptation, he went up and felt his ass.The man swung round. “What the hell is coming off here? Beat it, will you?”Sadly the queer retired, but kept following and, unable to control himself, felt his ass again.“I thought I told you to beat it,” the man snarled.A third time, however, the queer could not resist, and lovingly felt the attractive can. The man swung round and knocked him to the ground.The injured fruit looked up at the big brute and said sarcastically, “Tourist!”It is not only that you hate the homosexual, the homosexual also hates the heterosexual; he also thinks that he does not belong to him.We have created unnecessary labels. We have put labels on every man, and not one label – a thousand and one labels on every man. Remove all the labels. Man is simply man – homosexual, heterosexual, “autosexual,” doesn’t matter – man is simply man.Respect man, love man. Respect his individuality, respect his differences. And that is possible only if you respect your individuality. That is possible only if you are grounded in your own being and you are unafraid.I would like a world utterly fearless, where all labels can be removed.Once it happened:I entered an air-conditioned train compartment in Mumbai. The only passenger in my cabin immediately fell on the floor and touched my feet – a traditional Hindu sashtang when your whole body touches the floor. I told him, “Wait! Wait! I am not a Hindu.But he had already touched my feet. He was shaken; he said, “Then who are you?”I told him, “Can’t you see my beard? I am a Mohammedan.”He said, “My god! And I have touched your feet! Why didn’t you say so before?”I said, “But you didn’t give me any time. The moment I entered you jumped in such a hurry. Excuse me, but I am a Mohammedan. You can go to the Ganges and take a dip and you will be purified.”But now the thing was that we had to live in the same compartment for twenty-four hours. And he was very much worried about what he had done – such a sin, never heard of before. And he said, “Do you know? I am the highest Brahmin caste, and I thought that you were a mahatma.”I said, “Just a little difference between a mahatma and a Mohammed. My name is Mohammed.”But he would look at me again and again – pretending to read his newspaper but he would look again and again. He was making sure – I didn’t look like a Mohammedan. Finally he said, “You are joking. You don’t look like a Mohammedan.”I said, “So you have got it!”He jumped again, touched my feet, and said, “I was watching you – you don’t look like a Mohammedan. The very vibe is that of the purest saint.”I said, “If it satisfies you, perfectly good, but if you ask my opinion, now you will have to take two dips. In fact, I am a Mohammedan. I was just trying to help you, to console you; I was not hoping that you would touch my feet again.”The man was angry. He called the conductor immediately and he said, “Change my compartment. I cannot sleep in this compartment – twenty-four hours with this man will be a torture, a hell. I don’t know what kind of man he is. Sometimes he says he is Hindu, sometimes he says he is Mohammedan.”I told him, “The fact is, I am simply crazy.”He said, “That’s right. So you are not Mohammedan? It is better to be crazy than to be a Mohammedan. Just crazy but Hindu?”I said, “Of course. I am a Hindu of the highest Brahmin caste, but a little crazy. Once in a while this idea comes to me that I am Mohammed – but I am not.”A third time he touched my feet!People live by labels. Drop all labels from your being and drop labels from others’ beings. Look at people as they are, don’t bring labels. Then we will have a better humanity, a more human humanity.The last question:Osho,Each day you get more and more crazy. In the daytime when I think of you, I start laughing and think what a crazy, beautiful master I have. Osho, I just love you.Just a crazy joke for you:Karpinsky went to Rabbi Roth for advice. “Rabbi,” he said, “I am ruined. I am a salesman, a respectable married man, but my life is ruined.”“What happened?” asked the Rabbi.“I was in Mobile, Alabama, coming home from dinner in a restaurant, and this big black man dragged me by the neck and said to me, ‘You are gonna suck me off you mocky son-of-a-bitch, or I am gonna bust your head.’ Rabbi, I am ruined!”“No, no,” said the Rabbi. “The Talmud rules that a man can do anything but spit on the Bible to save his life.”“No, Rabbi, I am ruined,” moaned Karpinsky. “I liked it!”Enough for today.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 01 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is beyond enlightenment?Beyond enlightenment is only beyondness. Enlightenment is the last host. Beyond it, all boundaries disappear, all experiences disappear. Experience comes to its utmost in enlightenment; it is the very peak of all that is beautiful, of all that is immortal, of all that is blissful – but it is an experience. Beyond enlightenment there is no experience at all, because the experiencer has disappeared. Enlightenment is not only the peak of experience; it is also the finest definition of your being. Beyond it there is only nothingness; you will not come again to a point which has to be transcended.Experience, the experiencer, enlightenment – all have been left behind. You are part of the tremendous nothingness that is infinite. This is the nothingness out of which the whole existence comes, the womb; and this is the nothingness in which all existence disappears.Science has something parallel – there is bound to be something parallel. The spiritual experience is of the interior world, and science is the exploration of the exterior. But both are wings of the same existence: the inwardness and the outwardness. They always have similar points.Scientists have come to a strange conclusion in this century: that a few stars suddenly disappear – and stars are not small things; they are not so small as they look to you. They look small because they are so far away, millions of light years away, but they are huge. Our sun is a star, but of a mediocre size, medium size. In comparison to the earth it is vast, but in comparison to other stars it is a small, medium-sized star. There are stars which are a thousand times bigger than the sun.And in this century, for the first time we have had the instruments of observation and we have been very much puzzled: suddenly a star disappears, not even leaving behind a trace of where it has gone. Such a huge phenomenon, and not even footprints – in what direction has it gone? It has just moved simply into nothingness. This was happening continually.It took almost twenty years to figure out this new phenomenon: that in existence there are black holes. You cannot see them, but they have tremendous gravitation. Even the biggest star, if it comes within their radius of magnetism, will be pulled in. And once it is pulled into a black hole, it disappears. It is the ultimate death. We can only see the effect; we cannot see the black hole, we only see that one star is disappearing.After the black hole was almost an established theory, scientists started thinking that there must be something like a white hole – there has to be. If it is possible that in a certain gravitation, magnetic force, a big star simply disappears out of existence… We have been aware that every day many stars are born. From where are they coming? – nobody has asked it before.In fact, birth we always take for granted; nobody asks from where the babies are coming. Death we never accept, because we are so much afraid of it. There is not a single philosophy in the whole history of man which thinks about where babies come from, but there are philosophies and philosophies thinking about what death is, where people go on disappearing to, what happens after death.In my whole life I have come across millions of people, and not a single person has asked what happens before birth – and thousands have asked what happens after death. I have always been thinking: why is birth taken without any question? Why is death not taken in the same way?We were aware for centuries, almost three centuries, that stars are being born every day – big stars, huge stars – and nobody raised the question: “From where are these stars coming?” But when we came to know about the black holes and we saw the stars disappearing, then the second question became almost an absolute necessity. If black holes can take stars into nothingness, then there must be something like white holes where stars come out of nothingness.I am reminded…Mulla Nasruddin applied for a post on a ship. He was interviewed. The captain and the high officials of the ship were sitting in a room. Mulla entered. The captain asked, “If the seas are in a turmoil, winds are strong, waves are huge and mountainous, what are you going to do to save the ship? It is tossed from here to there…”Mulla Nasruddin said, “It is not much of a problem. I will just drop a huge anchor to keep the ship stable against the winds, against the waves. It is not much of a problem.”The captain again said, “Suppose another mountainous wave comes and the ship is going to be drowned; what are you going to do?”He said, “Nothing – another huge anchor.”The captain looked at him and asked a third time, “Suppose it is a great typhoon and it is impossible to save the ship. What are you going to do?”He said, “Nothing, the same, a huge anchor.”The captain said, “From where are you getting these huge anchors?”He said, “From the same place. The same place from where you are getting these great, mountainous waves, strong winds. You go on getting them, I will go on getting bigger and bigger anchors.”If there are holes in existence where things simply disappear into non-existence, then there must be holes from where things appear from nothingness – just a little imagination is needed. Scientists have not worked on it yet.My suggestion is that a black hole is like a door: from one side it is a black door, a black hole – things go into it and disappear into nothingness. And from the other side of the tunnel – it is the same door, just from the other side – it is a white hole; things are born again, renewed. It is the same womb.Beyond enlightenment you enter into nothingness. Experience disappears, the experiencer disappears. Just pure nothingness remains, utter silence. Perhaps this is the destiny of every human being, sooner or later to be achieved.We don’t know yet whether there is a white hole or not – there must be. Just as you enter beyond enlightenment into nothingness, there must be a possibility of coming out of nothingness back into form, back into existence – renewed, refreshed, luminous – on a totally different plane. Because nothing is destroyed, things can only go into a dormant state; things can only go into deep sleep. Then in the morning they wake up again. This is how existence goes on.In the West, this idea has never happened in the two thousand years’ history of philosophy. They only think of this creation: “Who created this?” And they get into trouble because whatever the answer is, it is going to create more questions.In the East we have a conception of circles of existence and non-existence, just like day and night. Creation is followed by de-creation; everything goes into nothingness, just as day is followed by night and everything goes into darkness. And the period is going to be the same: as long as the creation is, so is the resting period going to be; and again there will be a creation of a higher order.And this will go on from eternity to eternity – creation, de-creation, creation, again de-creation – but each time the morning is more beautiful. Each dawn is more colorful, more alive; the birds are singing better, the flowers are bigger, with more fragrance. And the East has the tremendous courage of accepting the idea that this will go on forever and forever. There has never been any beginning, and there will be no end.After enlightenment, you have to disappear. The world is left behind, the body is left behind, the mind is left behind; just your consciousness, as individuality, is still there.To go beyond enlightenment is to go beyond individuality and to become universal. This way, each individual will go on moving into nothingness. And one day, the whole existence moves into nothingness and a great peace, a great night, a deep, dark womb, a great waiting for the dawn. And it has been happening always, and each time you are always born on a higher level of consciousness.Enlightenment is the goal of human beings. But those who are enlightened cannot remain static; they will have to move, they will have to change. And now they have only one thing to lose – themselves.They have enjoyed everything. They have enjoyed the purity of individuality; now they have to enjoy the disappearing of individuality. They have seen the beauty of individuality; now they have to see the disappearance and its beauty, and the silence that follows, that abysmal serenity that follows.Osho,The other night when you talked about the ego and how, with awareness, one can see that it does not exist, I realized that I never put much emphasis on awareness. For me, being with you always meant loving you as much as I can, longing for you and trying to be as close to you as possible.Osho, can you please show the way for a female German lover to become more aware?Love is enough unto itself.If your love is not the ordinary, biological instinctive love, if it is not part of your ego, if it is not a power trip to dominate someone; if your love is just a pure joy, rejoicing in the being of the other for no reason at all, a sheer joy, awareness will follow this pure love just like a shadow. You need not worry about awareness.There are only two ways: either you become aware, then love follows as a shadow; or you become so loving that awareness comes on its own accord. They are two sides of the same coin. You need not bother about the other side, just keep one side; the other side cannot escape. The other side is bound to come.And the path of love is easier, rosier, innocent, simple. The path of awareness is a little arduous.Those who cannot love, for them I suggest the path of awareness. There are people who cannot love – their hearts have become stones. Their upbringing, their culture, their society has killed the very capacity to love – because this whole world is not run by love, it is run by cunningness. To succeed in this world you don’t need love, you need a hard heart and a sharp mind. In fact, you don’t need the heart at all.I have heard about one great politician who was in the hospital and who had some great complications with his heart. So they put him on a plastic heart and took out his real heart, because it was going to take hours to clean it. And certainly a politician’s heart… Even if you can clean it in hours, it is too soon. The surgeons were working in the other room – it was a disgusting job – and the politician was lying down.A man came into the room and shook the politician; he opened his eyes and the man said, “What are you doing here? You have been chosen the prime minister of the country.”He jumped out of the bed. The doctors looked from the other room, “What is happening?” The politician was going out. They said, “Wait! Your heart…we are cleaning it.”The politician said, “Now, at least for five years I won’t need it. You can clean it as much as you want. Take your time. What does a prime minister need a heart for? But keep it safe in case something goes wrong; then I will come back. But if things go well, I may perhaps never need it.”In this world the heart is not needed. The people of the heart are crushed, exploited, oppressed. This world is run by the cunning, by the clever, by the heartless and the cruel. So the whole of society is managed in such a way that every child starts losing his heart, and his energy starts moving directly toward the head. The heart is ignored.I have heard an ancient parable from Tibet, that in the beginning of time the heart used to be exactly in the middle part of the body. But because of continuously being pushed aside, out of the way, it is now no longer in the middle of the body. The poor fellow waits by the side of the road: “If some day you need, I am here” – but it gets no nourishment, no encouragement. It gets all kinds of condemnation.If you do something and you say, “I did it because I felt like doing it,” everybody is going to laugh: “Felt? Have you lost your head? Give your reason, logic. Feeling is no logic.” Even if you fall in love, you have to find reasons why you have fallen in love: because the woman’s nose is very beautiful, her eyes have such depth, her body is so proportionate. These are not the reasons. You have never calculated all these reasons on your calculator and then found that this woman seems to be worthy of falling in love with: fall in love with this woman – exactly the right length of nose, the right kind of hair, the right color, the right proportion of the body. What more do you want?But this is not the way that anybody ever falls in love. You fall in love first; then just to satisfy the idiots around you that you are not a fool, that you have calculated everything and only then you have taken the step… It is a reasonable, rational, logical step. Nobody hears the heart.And the mind is so chattering, so continuously chattering – yakkety-yak, yakkety-yak – that even if the heart sometimes says something, it never reaches to you. It cannot reach. The bazaar in your head is buzzing so much that it is impossible, absolutely impossible for the heart. Slowly, slowly, the heart stops saying anything. Not heard again and again, ignored again and again, it falls silent.The head runs the show in the society; otherwise, we would have lived in a totally different world: more loving, less hate, less war, no possibility of nuclear weapons. The heart will never give support for any destructive methods to be evolved. The heart will never be in the service of death. It is life – it throbs for life, it beats for life.Because of the whole conditioning of society, the method of awareness has to be chosen, because awareness appears to be very logical, rational. But if you can love, then there is no need to go on a long, arduous route unnecessarily. Love is the most shortcut way, the most natural – so easy that it is possible even for a small child. It needs no training. You are born with the quality of it, if it is not corrupted by others.But love should be pure. It should not be impure.You will be surprised to know that the English word love comes from a very ugly root in Sanskrit. It comes from lobh. Lobh means greed. And as far as ordinary love is concerned, it is a kind of greed. That’s why there are people who love money, there are people who love houses, there are people who love this, who love that. Even if they love a woman or a man, it is simply their greed; they want to possess everything beautiful.It is a power trip. Hence, you will find lovers continually fighting, fighting about such trivia that they both feel ashamed: “About what things we go on fighting.” In their silent moments when they are alone, they feel, “Do I become possessed by some evil spirit? – such trivia, so meaningless.” But it is not a question of trivia; it is a question of who has power, who is more dominant, whose voice is heard. Love cannot exist in such circumstances.I have heard a story:In the life of one of the great emperors of India, Akbar, there is a small story. He was very much interested in all kinds of talented people, and from all over India he had collected nine people, the most talented geniuses, who were known as the “nine jewels of Akbar’s court.”One day, just gossiping with his vice-councilors, he said, “Last night I was discussing with my wife. She is very insistent that every husband is henpecked. I tried hard, but she says, ‘I know many families, but I have never found any husband who is not henpecked.’ What do you think?” he asked the councilors.One of the councilors, Birbal, said, “Perhaps she is right, because you could not prove it. You yourself are a henpecked husband; otherwise, you could have given her a good beating, then and there proving that: ‘Look, here is a husband!’”He said, “That I cannot do, because I have to live with her. It is easy to advise somebody else to beat his wife. Can you beat your wife?”Birbal said, “No, I cannot. I simply accept that I am a henpecked husband, and your wife is right.”But Akbar said, “It has to be found… In the capital there must be at least one husband who is not henpecked. There is no rule in the world which has no exception, and this is not a rule at all.”So he said to Birbal, “You take my two beautiful Arabian horses” – one was black, one was white – “and go around the capital. And if you can find a man who is not henpecked, you can give him the choice: whichever horse he wants is a present from me.” They were valuable. In those days horses were very valuable, and those were the most beautiful horses.Birbal said, “It is useless, but if you say, I will go.”He went, and everybody was found to be henpecked. It was very ordinary: he would just call the person and call his wife, and ask, “Are you henpecked or not?”The man would look at the wife and say, “You should have asked when I was alone. This is not right. You will create unnecessary trouble. Just for a horse I am not going to destroy my life. Take your horses, I don’t want any.”But one man was sitting in front of his house and two persons were massaging him. He was a wrestler, a champion wrestler, a very strong man. Birbal thought, “Perhaps this man… He can kill anybody without any weapons. If he gets hold of your neck, you are finished!” Birbal said, “Can I ask you a question?”He said, “Question? What question?”Birbal said, “Are you henpecked?”That man said, “First, let us greet each other, a handshake.” And he crushed Birbal’s hand and said, “Unless you start crying and tears start coming from your eyes, I will not leave your hand; your hand is finished. You dared to ask me such a question?”And Birbal was dying – the man was almost a man of steel – and tears started coming, and he said, “Just leave me. You are not henpecked. I have just come to a wrong place. But where is your wife?”He said, “Look, she is there, cooking my breakfast.” A very small woman was cooking his breakfast.The woman was so small and the man was so big that Birbal said, “There is a possibility that perhaps this man is not henpecked. He could kill this woman.”So he said, “Now there is no need to go further into investigation. You can choose either horse from these two, black and white, a reward from the king for the one who is not henpecked.And at that time that small woman said, “Don’t choose the black! Otherwise I will make your life hell.”The man said, “No, no, I will choose the white. Just keep quiet.”Birbal said, “You don’t get either, neither white nor black. It is all finished, you lost the game. You are a henpecked husband.”There is a continuous fight for domination. Love cannot blossom in such an atmosphere. The man is fighting in the world for all kinds of ambitions. The woman is fighting the man because she is afraid – he is out of the house the whole day. Who knows? He may be having affairs with other women. She is jealous, suspicious; she wants to be sure that this man remains controlled. So, in the house he is fighting with the wife, in the outside he is fighting with the world. Where do you think the flower of love can blossom?The flower of love can blossom only when there is no ego, when there is no effort to dominate, when one is humble, when one is trying not to be somebody but is ready to be nobody. Naturally, in the ordinary world it cannot happen, but with a master it is a possibility. The love for the master is not biological. Biology has nothing to do with masters and disciples. The love for the master has nothing to do with domination.The flower can blossom because love is pure, without ego. You are simply rejoicing in the presence, in the fulfillment of the master, in the contentment of the master. You are rejoicing as if it is your contentment, it is your fulfillment. In the radiance of the master you are feeling it is your radiance. You are part of the master; you have become so harmonious with him that his heart and your heart are no longer two.Awareness will come on its own accord, and love is the most beautiful way, the most innocent way: a path full of flowers, a path that passes through beautiful lakes, rivers, groves, greenery. The path of awareness is the path that passes through a desert. It is only for those who cannot manage to get back into their hearts.If you can easily be heartful, forget all about awareness; it will come on its own accord. Each step of love will bring its own awareness. This love will not be falling in love; I call it rising in love.Osho,There are always two parts in me related to you. One part of me has the drive to work, run around, organize, jump up and down, fight, talk to the press and politicians, and just shout from the rooftops. The other part, which has become so much stronger over the last years, just wants to sit at your side and absorb everything: you, your silence and your words.Was it that I had to be so active just to be able to sit silently now?Osho, please can you say something about your outer and your inner work.There is no split in you. If a part fights in the outer world for my message to be spread to all nooks and corners, and the other part simply wants to sit close to me, drinking my silence, my presence, my peace, rejoicing in my blissfulness, being ecstatic just without doing anything… Ordinarily it may seem that these two parts are against each other. They are not. The more you shout from the housetops, the more you will be able to sit silently, close to me; and the more you can sit silently, close to me, the more you will have something to share with the world, something to fight for.Man is both the inner and the outer, and it has been a fallacy, a very ancient fallacy, to condemn one in favor of the other. In the East, people renounce the outer in favor of the inner. They escape from the world into the caves in the Himalayas so that they can devote their whole life and their whole time and their whole energy to the inner journey. But they don’t understand the dialectics of life. In the West, just the opposite has been done. They have renounced the inner so that they can put their whole energy into the outer world and the conquest of the outer world.Both have been wrong, and both have been right. Both have been wrong because both remained halves; one part grew bigger and bigger, and the other part remained retarded. You can see it: in the East there is so much poverty, so much disease, so much sickness, so much death. Still, there is a certain contentment. With all this, there seems to be no revolutionary approach that we should change the whole world. We cannot go on living in this poverty, and we have lived in this poverty for centuries, in slavery for centuries. And we have accepted everything – poverty, slavery, disease, death – without any resistance, because these are outer things. Our whole effort has been inner.In the West they have destroyed poverty, they have destroyed much disease, they have made man’s life longer. They have made man’s body more beautiful, they have made man’s existence more comfortable, but the man himself, for whom all these comforts, all these conquests of science and technology have been done, is missing. They have completely forgotten for whom it was done. The inside is hollow. Everything is there, all around, and in the middle there is a retarded consciousness, almost non-existential.So both have succeeded in what they were doing, and both have failed – because they have chosen only half of man’s life. My attitude is that of accepting man in his totality, in his wholeness. And it has to be understood that once you accept the totality of man, you have to understand the law of dialectics.For example, the whole day you work hard, in the fields, in the garden – you perspire. In the night you will have a beautiful sleep. Don’t think that because you have been working so hard the whole day, how can you sleep in the night? – it is so against your whole day’s work. It is not against. The whole day’s hard work has prepared you to relax; in the night you will be in deep relaxation.Beggars sleep the best. Emperors cannot sleep because the emperor has forgotten the dialectics of life. You need two legs to walk, you need two hands, you need two hemispheres in your brain.It has now become an accepted psychological truth that you can do hard mathematical work – because it is done by one part of the mind – and then you can do the same hard work on your musical instrument, and because it is done by another part of the mind, it is not continuous labor. In fact, when you are working hard on mathematics, the musical part of your mind is resting; and when you are working hard on the musical part, your mathematical mind is resting.In the universities, in the colleges all over the world, we change the class period every forty minutes because it has been found that after each forty minutes, the part that you have been working with gets tired. Just change the subject; that part goes into rest.Sitting with me, fill your cup with as much juice as possible. Feel silence to its uttermost depth, so that you can shout from the housetops. And there is no contradiction: your shouting from the housetops is simply part of a dialectic process. Your silence and your shouting are just like two hands, your two legs, your day and night, your work and rest period. Don’t divide them as antagonistic to each other – that’s how the whole world has suffered.The East has created great geniuses, but we are still living in the bullock cart age because our geniuses simply meditated. Their meditation never came into action. If they had meditated for a few hours and used their silence and peace and meditativeness for scientific research, this country would have been the richest in the world – outer and inner, both.The same is true about the West: they created great geniuses, but they were all involved with things, objects. They forgot themselves completely. Once in a while a genius remembered, but it was too late. Albert Einstein, at the time of death, said his last words – and remember, the last words are the most important a person ever speaks in his life, because they are a conclusion, the essential experience. His last words were, “If there is another life, I would like to be a plumber. I don’t want to be a physicist. I want to be something very simple – a plumber.”A tired brain, a burned brain…and what was his achievement? – Hiroshima and Nagasaki. This man was capable of becoming a Gautam Buddha. If he had looked inward, he had such insight that perhaps he would have gone deeper than any Gautam Buddha, because he looked toward the stars and went further than any astronomer has ever done. It is the same power; it is only a question of direction.But why get fixed? Why not keep yourself available to both dimensions? What is the need of getting fixed? – “I can only see outwardly, I cannot see inwardly,” or vice-versa. One should only learn how to see deeply, and then use that insight in both dimensions. Then one can give better science and better technology to the world and can become better human beings, a better humanity, at the same time. And remember, only in a better human being’s hands is a better technology right; otherwise, it is dangerous.The East is dying with poverty. The West is dying with power. Strange, they have created so much power that they can only kill. They don’t know anything about life because they have never looked in. The East knows everything about life, but without food you cannot meditate. When you are hungry and you close your eyes, you can see only chapatis just floating all around.It has happened in the life of a poet, Heinrich Heine. He was lost in a jungle for three days, hungry, tired, could not sleep out of fear: wild animals were staying in the tops of the trees in the night. And for three days continuously he did not come across a single human being to ask whether he was moving right or wrong, where he was going or if he was moving in a circle. Three days continuously…and then came the full moon night. Hungry, tired, hanging onto a tree, he looked at the full moon. He was a great poet, and he was surprised, he could not believe it. He himself had written about the moon, he had read about the moon. So much is written about the moon – so much poetry, so much painting, so much art is around the moon. But Heinrich Heine had a revelation: before, he used to see his beloved’s face in the moon; today he saw only a chapati floating in the sky. He tried hard, but the beloved’s face did not appear.It is perfectly good to be dialectical. And always remember to see the opposites as complementaries. Use all the opposites as complementaries and your life will be fuller, your life will be whole.To me, this is the only holy life: a whole life is the only holy life.Osho,Today I observed a tightrope walker and how he trained a young girl partner to walk on the rope. He was sometimes hitting her, sometimes persuading her, but it seemed to me that she was mainly encouraged to try it again and again because she felt his trust in her potential to be able to walk the rope alone.Can you please say something about the master's trust in the disciple?The very fact that the master accepts a disciple shows his trust in the potential of the disciple. Otherwise, he would not have been accepted.Every man has the potential, but the right time, the right place, the right experience, make all the difference. Otherwise, every human being is capable of being enlightened, will be enlightened, but when, at what time – whether in this life or in another life – depends on many things: how much is your experience of being frustrated in the world, how much you are in misery.Are you still hoping that tomorrow things will be better, or have you lost all hope? Is your despair ultimate, or only momentary? Have you come to the master because today you have fought with your wife, but after fifteen minutes things will be different – anger will be gone?I used to live on a university campus. The first day, I entered into my bungalow. I was alone, and the attached bungalow was occupied by a Bengali professor. And the walls were so thin that even if you plugged your ears, you would still be able to hear what was going on on the other side of the wall.Because the husband and wife were fighting so badly, I thought that there was going to be some blood. I could not sleep. It was one o’clock in the night and they were fighting and fighting and fighting. And I could not understand what they were saying either, but things must have been serious because finally the professor said, “I am going to commit suicide” – he said that in English.I said, “This is something good; at least I can understand this much.” So I came out of my house to prevent him: “Just wait. In the middle of the night, where will you go to commit suicide? In the morning it will be better.” But by the time I was out he was gone – fast.I asked his wife – who had not come out even to say good-bye – I said, “What am I supposed to do? Should I go to the police station? Somebody has to be informed by phone? What has to be done?”She said, “Nothing has to be done. Do you see his umbrella is here? Without his umbrella he cannot go anywhere. He will be coming soon – the moment he remembers the umbrella. In anger, he has forgotten the umbrella. A Bengali without an umbrella?”I said, “But suicide is such a serious matter, and an umbrella is not needed at all.”She said, “Just wait. Sit here. I will make coffee for you because you have been… I know that you must have heard all this.”And within fifteen minutes he was back.And I said, “What happened?”He said, “What happened? I forgot my umbrella! And now it must be at least two o’clock in the morning.”I said, “That’s the right thing to do. In the morning, take your umbrella and go out, find the right place.” But who goes in the morning?In the morning I reminded him, “You are still here. The sun has risen. You should go now and search for the right place.”He said, “I was thinking to go, but when I opened the umbrella it was not repaired because the rains have not come.”I said, “I see you with that umbrella every day, going to the university.”He said, “That is just habitual. Because there are no rains, nothing, so there is no question of opening it; one just carries it. Now I tried and opened it – it is not repaired. And I have been telling my wife that my umbrella should be kept repaired in case some emergency arises. Now I wanted to commit suicide and the umbrella is not ready.”I thought, “This is really great of you, and every person who intends to commit suicide should learn something from you.”One day, it must have been afternoon, three o’clock or some time, I again heard that he was going to commit suicide. But this time I was not so much excited, because I thought that this is the usual business. Still, I came out to say good-bye.He looked at me with a very strange face. He said, “What do you mean by good-bye?”I said, “You are going to commit suicide, and I don’t think that we will be meeting again, so I am saying good-bye. But what are you carrying?” He was carrying a tiffin.I said, “Where are you taking the tiffin?”He said, “You know these Indian railway trains – sometimes they are ten hours late, twelve hours late. And I cannot tolerate hunger at all, so I will lie down by the line and wait for the train. If it comes, good; otherwise, I am taking my supper with me.”I said, “You are a clever and intelligent person – anybody looking at you would think you are going on some picnic.”And when he had gone, his wife came. She said, “Has he gone?”I said, “He has gone.”She said, “He will be coming soon. This idiot,” she said, “whenever he wants to go for a picnic… But he is such a miser that he will not even take me with him, so he says that he is going to commit suicide. He must be eating just near the railway station; you can go and see right now.”The railway station was not very far away, so I went and I saw him. He was enjoying all Bengali sweets and things.I said, “Chatterji, the train is standing on the platform. Leave your tiffin, run! Just lie down ahead of the train!”He said, “It is too late. First I have to finish everything that I brought, and today I have missed. And the train comes to this station only once in twenty-four hours” – because it was not a big station, it was a small station, and the train used to stop only once for the university because the university was outside the city. So he said, “Today it is finished.”But I said, “You first said, ‘I am going to wait.’ And this is not suppertime; it is only three o’clock.”He said, “When you have such sweets in your hand, you cannot wait. And I am just coming back home with you.”There are people who would like to become sannyasins, who would like to become disciples. It may be just an emotional, sentimental, temporal thing, and within two minutes it has come and it is gone. They had the potential, but it was not the right time.Even if they take sannyas, even if they become disciples – because no master is so unkind as to say no to somebody who wants to become a disciple – they are going to betray. They are going to leave sooner or later because it was not something very deep, coming from their very heart. It was something very superficial, something so superficial that if they had waited for a few minutes more, they would have changed their minds. It was a mind thing, and mind is never stable, it is continuously changing.You cannot stay with one thought in the mind even for a few seconds. Sometimes, try: just one thought, and try to stay with it; you will be surprised that in not more than thirty seconds you have forgotten about it and your mind has moved somewhere else. And then suddenly you remember that you were trying to stay with one thought, and you could remain for only thirty seconds.Gurdjieff used to give this experiment to everyone who came to become a disciple. He would give the person his own pocket watch and tell him, “Keep it in front of you, watch the second hand and choose any word – your name. Keep just that name in your mind, and tell me for how long you can keep it – fifteen seconds, thirty seconds, at the most, forty seconds, not even one whole minute.”Mind is in a flux. So those who want to become disciples because of some mind thing are not going to stay. There is no need to say no to them, they will be going themselves.But the master knows perfectly well when somebody comes with an urge from the heart, with an urge that he can stake his whole life for and he will not turn back. Only these few people attain to fulfillment.Everybody has the potential, but everybody is not ripe at this moment – perhaps at some other time, in some other life, with some other master. But one day is going to come in everybody’s life that is a turning point, a 180 degree turn, and then disciplehood is a beautiful growth.Then the whole energy is moving in one direction with one intention, with no diversions. Then the distance from the goal is less. The more intense is your urge, the smaller is the distance. If your intention is total, then there is no distance at all; then you need not come to the goal, the goal comes to you.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 02 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I have questions, but they are never complete, and I don't know how to ask.No question is ever complete, because the completion of a question will mean it has its answer in itself. A question by its very nature is incomplete. It is a desire, a longing, an inquiry, because something needs to be completed. It is part of human consciousness that it demands completion. Leave anything incomplete and it becomes an obsession; complete it and you are free of it. Completion brings freedom.Hence, it is not only your questions that are incomplete. You are more alert so that you have seen the incompleteness of each question.Secondly, you don’t know what to ask. Nobody knows. All of our questions are out of our ignorance, out of our unconscious, out of our dark soul. Nobody knows exactly what his question is, what is essential to be asked – because the moment you know what your question is, you will immediately find the answer within yourself.To be absolutely confident about the question means the answer is not very far away. It is very close, because confidence comes from the answer, not from the question.But still, man has to ask. Although all questions are incomplete and you do not know what to ask, still man has to ask, because man cannot remain silent. It is possible not to ask – that does not mean you don’t have questions, that simply means you are not bringing them out. Perhaps you are afraid to be exposed, because each question will indicate your ignorance.There are millions of people who never ask, for the simple reason that to be silent at least appears to be wise. To ask the question is to show your wounds, is to show all the dark spots in your being. It needs courage.Secondly, there are questions which are not out of your ignorance but out of your borrowed knowledge – which are the worst questions possible.A question that comes out of ignorance is innocent, has purity. It is unpolluted, uncorrupted; it shows your courage, your trust.But there are questions which come out of your borrowed knowledge. You have heard much, you have read much, you have been informed by the parents, teachers, priests, politicians, all kinds of demagogues, all kinds of pretenders to knowledge – and you have been collecting their whole garbage.Purna has sent me a beautiful present: a very artistic, beautiful wastepaper basket with a note: “Osho, if you feel my questions are just garbage, throw them in this wastepaper basket. You need not answer them.”Questions coming out of knowledge are garbage.You don’t know anything about God, the universe; you don’t know anything about the soul, reincarnation, future lives, past lives. All that you know is simply hearsay. People have been chattering around you and you are collecting all kinds of information that seems to be important to you. Why does it seem important? It seems important because it covers your ignorance. It helps you to feel as if you know. But remember, it is a very big “as if.” You do not know, it is only “as if.”All holy scriptures, all books on philosophy, theology, should be categorized into one category: as if. They are talking about every possible impossible thing they know nothing of, but they are articulate, imaginative intellectuals who can create systems out of nothing.That’s why no philosopher agrees with any other philosopher. And every philosopher thinks that he has found the whole system that explains everything in the world. And all other philosophers laugh at him; they find thousands of loopholes in his system. But as far as they themselves are concerned, they commit the same mistake: they claim that their system is complete and now there is no question of further inquiry.And the strangest thing is that these are the people who are very insightful in seeing the loopholes of others, but they cannot see the loopholes of their own system. Perhaps they don’t want to see. Loopholes are there, everybody else can see them; it is impossible that they themselves do not see them. They ignore them, hoping that nobody sees them.Every philosophy has failed. Every religion has failed.And you are carrying the ruins of all the philosophies and all the religions in your mind, and out of those ruins, questions arise. Those questions are meaningless; you should not ask them. They really show your stupidity.But questions arising out of your ignorance – just like a child asking – those questions are incomplete, not very great questions, but tremendously important.One day a small child was walking with D.H. Lawrence in a garden, and was continuously asking questions of all kinds. And D.H. Lawrence was one of the most sincere men of this century, condemned by governments, by priests because of his sincerity, because he would say only the truth, because he was not ready to be diplomatic, a hypocrite, because he would not compromise. Even before this small child he showed such authentic sincerity, which even your great saints have not shown.The child asked, “Why are the trees green?” – a very simple question, but very profound. All the trees are green – why? What is the matter with the trees? When there are so many colors, when the whole rainbow of colors is available: some tree can be yellow, some tree can be red, some tree can be blue. Why have all the trees chosen to be green?In D.H. Lawrence’s place, any parent, any teacher, any priest, anybody – x, y, z – would have told some lie: that God made them green because green is very soothing to the eyes. But this would have been deceptive, a lie, because D.H. Lawrence does not know anything about God, does not know why the trees are green.In fact, no scientist who has been working with trees knows, although he can show that it is because of a certain element, chlorophyll, that trees are green. But that is not the answer for the child. He will simply ask, “Why have they chosen chlorophyll – all the trees?” It is not a satisfactory answer.D.H. Lawrence closed his eyes, waited for a moment in silence…what to say to this child? He did not want to be a deceiving person to an innocent child – although the question is ordinary, any answer would do. But the question has come from innocence; hence it is very profound.And D.H. Lawrence opened his eyes, looked at the trees and said to the child, “The trees are green because they are green.”The child said, “Right. I was also thinking that.”But D.H. Lawrence remembered it in his memoirs: “To me it was a great experience – the love and the trust the child showed toward me because of sheer sincerity. My answer was not an answer; according to logicians, it was a tautology. ‘The trees are green because they are green’ – is this an answer?”In fact, D.H. Lawrence is accepting that: “My child, I am as much ignorant as you are. Just because there is a difference of age does not mean that I know and you do not know.” The difference of age is not the difference between ignorance and knowledge.The trees being green is part of the mystery of the whole existence.Things are what they are. A woman is a woman, a man is a man. A rose is a rose; call it by any name, it still remains the rose.That morning, in that small incident, something tremendously beautiful is hidden.Ask questions – not out of knowledge, because all that knowledge is borrowed, unfounded, pure rubbish. But ask out of your ignorance. Remember, the ignorance is yours – be proud of it. The knowledge is not yours. How can you be proud of it?And the question is not to cover the ignorance. The question is to bring some light, so that the ignorance, the darkness, disappears.I cannot give you any better answer than D.H. Lawrence, but I can give you something else which Lawrence has no insight about. I can give you a space, a silence in which you can realize the mystery on your own.You ask the question, whatever the question is. Just remember, don’t ask out of knowledge; ask out of your own authentic ignorance.And my answers are not answers, in fact. My answers are killers – they simply kill the question, they take away the question, they don’t give you any answer to hold on to.And that is the difference between a teacher and a master: the teacher gives you answers so that you can hold those answers and remain ignorant – on the surface beautifully decorated, libraries full of answers, but underneath, below the surface, an abysmal ignorance.The master simply kills your questions. He does not give you an answer, he takes away the question.If all your questions can be taken away – listen carefully to what I am saying – if all your questions can be taken away, your ignorance is bound to disappear, and what remains is innocence.And innocence is a light unto itself.In that innocence you don’t know any question, any answer, because the whole realm of questions and answers is left behind. It has become irrelevant, you have transcended it. You are pure of questions and pure of answers.This state is enlightenment. And if you are courageous enough, you even can go beyond it. This will give you all the beautiful experiences described by the mystics down the ages: your heart will dance with ecstasy, your whole being will become a beautiful sunrise…thousands of lotuses blossoming in you.If you want, you can make your home here. In the past, people have stopped here, because where can you find a better place? Gautam Buddha has called this place the “Lotus Paradise.”But if you are a born seeker… I will suggest: have a little rest, enjoy all the beauties of enlightenment but don’t make it a full-stop. Go beyond, because life, its journey, is unending and much more is going to happen which is absolutely indescribable.The experience of enlightenment is also beyond description, but it has been described by all who have experienced it. They all say it is beyond description and still they describe it: that it is full of light, that it is full of joy, that it is the ultimate in blissfulness. If this is not description then what is description?I am saying it for the first time: for thousands of years the people who have become enlightened have been saying that it cannot be described, and at the same time have been describing it, have been their whole lives singing it. But beyond enlightenment you certainly enter into a world which is indescribable.Because in enlightenment you still are; otherwise who is feeling the blissfulness, who is seeing the light? Kabir says, “…as if thousands of suns have risen.” Who is seeing it? Enlightenment is the ultimate experience – but still it is experience, and the experiencer is there.Going beyond it, there is no experiencer. You dissolve.First you were trying to dissolve your problems; now you dissolve – because existentially you are the problem. Your separation from existence is the only question which has to be solved. You lose your boundaries, you are no more. Who is there to experience?You need tremendous courage to drop the ego to achieve enlightenment. You will need a million times more courage to drop yourself to attain the beyond – and the beyond is the real.Osho,I am familiar with the master-disciple relationship after years of being around you.Could you please comment on the disciple-disciple relationship?There is no such thing. Disciples in the past have created organizations. That was their relationship, that “we are Christians,” that “we are Mohammedans,” that “we belong to one religion, to one faith and because we belong to one faith, we are brothers and sisters. We will live for the faith and we will die for the faith.”All organizations have arisen out of the relationships between disciples. In fact, two disciples are not connected with each other at all. Each disciple is connected with the master in his individual capacity. A master can be connected with millions of disciples, but the connection is personal, not organizational.Disciples don’t have any relationship. Yes, they have a certain friendliness, a certain lovingness. I am avoiding the word relationship because that is binding. I am not even calling it “friendship” but “friendliness” – because they are all fellow travelers walking on the same path, in love with the same master, but they are related to each other through the master. They are not related to each other directly.This has been the most unfortunate thing in the past: that disciples became organized, related among themselves, and they were all ignorant. And ignorant people can only create more nuisance in the world than anything else. All the religions have done exactly that.My people are related to me individually. And because they are on the same path, certainly they become acquainted with each other. A friendliness arises, a loving atmosphere, but I don’t want to call it any kind of relationship.We have suffered too much because of disciples getting directly related to each other, creating religions, sects, cults, and then fighting. They cannot do anything else. At least with me, remember it, you are not related to each other in any way at all. Just a liquid friendliness, not a solid friendship, is enough – and far more beautiful, and without any possibility of harming humanity in the future.Osho,Since I have been here, I have been torn apart between wanting to ask you a question – wanting to expose myself – and trying everything to avoid that. It feels as if I have been stuck in this position for years.Osho, what is this fear?There is only one basic fear. All other small fears are byproducts of the one main fear that every human being carries with himself: the fear is of losing yourself. It may be in death, it may be in love, but the fear is the same: you are afraid of losing yourself.And the strangest thing is that only those people are afraid of losing themselves who don’t have themselves. Those who have themselves are not afraid. So it is really a question of exposure You don’t have anything to lose; you just believe that you have something to lose.I was traveling with Mulla Nasruddin and the ticket checker came. I showed him my ticket, and Mulla started searching for his ticket. He opened one of his suitcases, then another suitcase, and went through all his pockets – coat, pants, shirt – but I saw that he was avoiding one pocket.Watching him, even the ticket checker said, “Don’t be worried. You are a well-known person. You can’t travel without a ticket; it must be somewhere. You have so much luggage.” He said, “I will be coming back in the second round. By that time you may have found it.”He went away, and Mulla was still perspiring and searching for the ticket.I said, “Mulla, I can see only one thing – that you are looking into everything but you are not looking into one pocket.”He said, “Just don’t raise that question, because I am already in such trouble.”But I said, “What has that pocket to do with trouble?”He said, “It has everything to do with it. That is the only place I am hoping that the ticket may be, and I don’t want to lose that hope. First let me look in everything else. That is my last resort; I also know that I am avoiding it. The ticket checker was looking at that pocket, you are also looking at that pocket. It is not that I am not aware. With full consciousness I am avoiding it, because if it is not there then the ticket is nowhere.”The fear of coming close is the fear of exposure.Who knows? – as you come close to the master, in his presence, in his light you may find that you don’t exist. And that will be almost a death…bigger than death. So people keep at a certain distance.Watching wild animals in the jungles, in the mountains, scientists have come to discover a certain idea: that they have a territorial imperative, that each animal has his own territory. If you don’t enter his territory, he will not bother you, but if you enter his territory you are in danger, he can attack you. In fact, he feels the danger: you are in his territory, coming too close, and who knows if you are a friend or a foe?And they have a very strange way of creating the demarcation line of their territory. You see dogs pissing – they are creating their territory. Each dog has his own territory; he creates it not by visible walls and fences but by the smell. Other dogs immediately smell it: this territory belongs to some dog – be careful.And even lions do the same; they will go pissing around a large territory. And their urine has a very strong smell; no animal is so insensitive that he will not sense it. And once he senses the smell, he will avoid that place – that is a prohibited area.Scientists studying the whole thing came to a conclusion: why are these animals so interested in keeping a certain space of their own and do not allow anybody else to enter? They found that it is because of fear. The other animal can mean death. It is better to warn him, and before he attacks the best way to defend yourself is to attack. So if anybody enters your territory, you attack him before he attacks you, and whoever attacks first has more chances to be victorious.In zoos, where man has kept animals in small spaces… Psychologists have been shocked to learn that in the wild, animals never go mad, never commit suicide, never become homosexuals, never attack their own species. But in a zoo they start doing strange things: they become homosexuals, they start attacking their own species. Otherwise, except man, no animal attacks his own species. It is a prerogative of humanity: only a man kills another man. No lion kills another lion.But in a zoo it happens that they lose all their natural instinctive intelligence; they start going crazy, mad. And strangely enough, they even start committing suicide, and the reason is that their territory has been taken away and they are living in constant fear. So many animals so close – they cannot sleep, they cannot relax, the other animal may attack. They have lost their freedom, they have lost their sleep, they have lost their sanity. And to live in such conditions, a point comes when it is better to commit suicide rather than live in such torture. You don’t see the torture because you don’t know that they are suffering from a special cause: they need space.And as humanity has grown in population, murders have grown, crimes have grown, homosexuality has grown, lesbianism has grown. People are committing suicide like anything. War seems to be the only thing we are preparing for; it seems war is the only thing we are born for.Perhaps it is the territorial imperative. Perhaps man has lost his feeling of space.Just see what territorial imperative is possible in a local train. Look at what territorial imperative is possible on the road. Still, if you watch carefully, even in a local train people are standing in such a way that nobody touches them, still making their last effort to keep a certain distance. It may be just inches, but just a little distance will give them breathing space.Psychologically, man is afraid to come close to anybody whose presence can become an exposure, whose eyes can be so penetrative like x-rays, who can see you through and through. And you are afraid that perhaps nothing will be found – there is nobody, the house is empty.The same is true about questions: you are afraid to ask authentic questions coming out of your ignorance because you will be allowing yourself to be exposed as an ignorant person. Everybody is pretending to be knowledgeable.In my village there was a certain man…a little loose in the head, so I was very much interested in him. I am always interested in people who are a little loose; they are special people.His name was Sunderlal, but I used to call him Doctor Sunderlal. At first he could not believe it: why am I calling him doctor? He asked me, “You said doctor?”I said, “You are ‘doctor.’ In this village, nobody is more knowledgeable than you are.”He said, “That’s true.”I said, “In this village, you are a DLitt, a doctor.”He said, “Are you joking?”I said, “Why should I joke? A fact is a fact. If you want, I can bring a few people as witnesses.”He said, “No, no, there is no need. I trust in you, if you are saying it then it must be so.”The next day I saw that he had hung a board on his house: Doctor Sunderlal, DLitt.The whole town was agog: “Suddenly this crazy man… Which university has given him a DLitt ?”I reached his home and I said, “You have done the right thing. It is not a question of any university – what rights do they have to give you a DLitt? – it is your declaration.”He said, “That’s right. Because my father was saying, ‘You idiot, you are writing Doctor Sunderlal, DLitt – the police will come! You will be caught in some trouble; don’t listen to that man.’”I said, “There is no question; it is your declaration that ‘In this village I am the most knowledgeable person.’ If anybody has any doubts…open challenge!”He said, “Should it be written underneath the board?”I said, “It should be written underneath the board.”So a certain board was made on which he wrote, “This is a declaration that in this village I am the most knowledgeable person. And if somebody has any doubts, that means an open challenge for a discussion.”Now, who wanted to discuss with that fellow? He was so crazy; nobody turned up. And he was sitting in a chair just by the side of the board waiting for somebody to come.I inquired two or three times, “Has anybody turned up?”He said, “Nobody People come, they read and they go again. Even my father said that there seems to be something in it, because nobody is making any objection. Even the police inspector came, read the whole thing and went away: ‘If it is a declaration…’”Just a few years ago the man died, and he died as “Doctor Sunderlal, DLitt.” In the newspapers it was printed, “Doctor Sunderlal, DLitt has died.” And nobody ever asked or bothered, because nobody was ready to accept the challenge. Everybody was afraid, because to discuss with that crazy fellow…he could say anything. He could raise questions that you could not answer; he could criticize anything.And they all knew that I was supporting him. I had told him, “Don’t be worried. If somebody accepts the challenge, I will be there by your side to help you.”He said, “I am not worried. I have defeated my wife, my cousin, my brother. I have completely defeated my family, and I know that in this village they are the average people, so I have defeated the village. Should I try to make the territory a little bigger?”I said, “No, you should keep the territory just as the village. It is enough that you have the DLitt; you have declared it. Now, there is no need to make the territory bigger, because that may create trouble. In this village you are the only one whose head is loose. In other villages there may be somebody who has the same kind of loose head – unnecessary trouble will arise. Just remain silent.”And people started calling him “Doctor Sunderlal.” And by and by, people forgot all about…he was accepted as Doctor Sunderlal, DLitt. That almost became his name.Your knowledge…whether you have declared it or not, deep down you believe that you know so much. And all that you know is not yours. Coming closer to a person in whose light your knowledge will start melting, disappearing, evaporating, leaving you naked in your ignorance, you are afraid even to ask a question.I have seen people, thousands of people in my life, asking me questions and saying, “This is a question from one of my friends.” And when I used to see people personally, I would tell them, “The best way will be that you send your friend. And he can say the same thing: ‘This is a question from one of my friends.’”Someone would say, “What do you mean?”I would tell him, “You have understood… This is your question. But you don’t even have guts to say ‘This is my question.’ Knowledge, which you claim as yours, is all from others. And the question – which you are saying is some friend’s question – is yours.” I said, “Bring your friend. Tomorrow, come with your friend. I would like to see the friend, because the question is very important.”He said, “The question is important?”I said, “It is a very important question, and I would like to see the person.”He said, “Forgive me, really it is my question.”People are afraid to expose themselves. But to be with a master, one of the basic rules is that you will drop your fears and you will stand naked in your ignorance, because from that ignorance your innocence can be achieved.From your knowledge, no route goes to innocence. Only from your ignorance is there a pathway to innocence.Hence I repeat again: a vast knowledge which is borrowed is of no meaning. But a small ignorance that is yours is a treasure, because from that ignorance opens the door to your innocence.And it is innocence that becomes the light, becomes the incense and the fragrance.Osho,Once you told me that the spring had come, but my anxiety is that I have lost everything, that the garbage has taken over completely, and that I cannot keep myself open to you as a disciple unless I am continually in your presence.Can you say something about the seed of spiritual growth which you plant in us and whether it can die?The seed is immortal, it cannot die. But it can remain dormant, it can remain dormant for lives.If the right soil is not provided, if the right water is not provided, if the right exposure to the sunlight is not provided, it will remain dormant, a potentiality, a waiting – but it cannot die. You may die many times, but the seed, once planted in you, will go on following your consciousness wherever you are.Unless you give it your attention, nourishment, your care, your love, it cannot become a living sprout. Small, fresh green leaves cannot come out of it. Only your love and your consciousness can create the miracle. And the day will not be far away when there will be flowers.There are people here who have been carrying seeds from other masters. I do not need to sow new seeds in them; all that I need is to help their dormant seeds to open up. You are not here for the first time. You have been here always – perhaps with Zarathustra, perhaps with Pythagoras, perhaps with Heraclitus, perhaps with Gautam Buddha.It is very rare that a person comes to me who needs a new seed – because you are all ancient people. It is almost impossible not to have come in contact with one of the magicians of the soul; those people are magnets. So in some life, somewhere, you may have met al-Hillaj Mansoor, Jalaluddin Rumi, Kabir or Nanak.Very rarely do I find a person who is not already pregnant – but the seed has remained the seed, you have not been a gardener to it. Somebody, with great compassion, must have sown the seed, but you have not been kind enough to yourself.The seed never dies.And Pankaja, you understand perfectly well that your mind is full of garbage. This very understanding is enough to get rid of it. But it seems the problem is that this garbage is paying you; in some way it is fulfilling your ego.Pankaja is a novelist, is well known as a novelist. I have worked with many kinds of celebrities; they are the most third-rate people to work with for the simple reason that their celebrity has become part of their ego. They cannot drop the ego, because if they drop the ego the celebrity disappears. And the celebrity, the famousness, their name, has become so important to them; it has become their identity in the world. Whereas millions of people are without any identity, they have an identity. For them, to drop the ego is very difficult – and understandably; it is arduous.A person who is not a celebrity has a small ego. In fact, to have it or not to have it does not make much difference; he is already nobody. He can drop it, and by dropping it he can gain the whole beautiful existence and all its benediction. By becoming nobody, he can open the doors to the universe and its blessings.But all the celebrities that have come to me from different fields, have all proved to be failures. They take the most time, but they have a problem because their ego is involved with their name and fame. Even if they understand that it is garbage, the garbage is paying them so much that they want to cling to it a little more – perhaps tomorrow or the day after tomorrow they will drop it. They have understood the point, but just to drop it right now seems too much.I am reminded of a very great thinker, Voltaire. He was famous in his country, and it was a convention in the country that if you could get a small piece of cloth from a famous man like Voltaire, you could make a beautiful locket out of it. It was a great security, safety against dangers, disease, sickness, death.When Voltaire used to go out of his house, he would come home almost naked, because crowds would follow him, tearing his clothes – and not only his clothes, he would get scratched on the body. He had to ask for police protection if he wanted to go to the railway station or to go to some other place. Without police protection it was impossible, because to reach the railway station naked, scratched all over, blood all over, would not look right – although he deeply enjoyed it, because he was the only man in the whole country who was so much respected. This was a respect given by people.But in the world, everything goes on changing. The name and the fame is just a soap bubble. It may become very big – the bigger it becomes, the more dangerous, because it is going to burst soon.And the day came when Voltaire was forgotten; somebody else had become the celebrity. Now there was no need for police protection. People even forgot that he was alive. In his notebooks he has written, “I enjoyed those days. But at that time I used to think that it would be better not to be known at all, just to be a nobody, to live silently, because life had become a nightmare. But when I became nobody, then I started feeling great despair that I had lost my respect, my name, my fame.”And he does not say in his notes that this was what he wanted: to be nobody. He had become nobody now, but it was not a joy, it was a defeat.He wrote, “I’m dying a defeated man.” And the day he died, only four persons carried his body to the graveyard. Of the four persons, one was his dog and three were his neighbors – and those three had to carry the body because otherwise it would start rotting and the neighborhood would become a hell to live in. Somehow he had to be thrown into a grave. So in fact the only person who lovingly followed was the dog. And this was the man who was followed by thousands of people wherever he went.Your garbage is paying you. You can choose it; there is no problem. But choose consciously, that you choose garbage because it is paying you. Consciously chosen, it won’t last long. Don’t fight with it; fighting will not help.Or if you are courageous enough, see a simple point: even if you write hundreds of novels and inside you remain just a wound which is hurting twenty-four hours a day, your whole life is wasted in misery just to fulfill a non-existential ego. Tomorrow you will die, and the day after tomorrow nobody will remember you. How many novelists have there been in this world? And who cares about them today? And they must all have suffered in the same way, because what they were doing was garbage.You may be a big garbage truck. It does not matter – big or small – if you can have a little courage and throw away all this garbage and clean yourself, perhaps something beautiful may come out of you which may be helpful to humanity, which may be remembered for centuries, not only remembered, but may have a certain transforming effect on people.But the garbage that you are writing is just journalistic. Nobody bothers tomorrow about today’s newspaper.I used to live in a place where a retired man, who was a little eccentric… Retired people become eccentric, having nothing to do. And nobody wants to become useless – it hurts. Nobody wants to be just a burden.And in the family, nobody cares about an old man. In fact, they want to get rid of these people because they are unnecessarily a nuisance. Young people have their own life, their own enjoyment, their own entertainment, and these old fellows are continually interrupting, condemning, making them feel guilty or constantly irritable. And they have nothing to do; twenty-four hours a day they are sitting there. Naturally, they need some work; they become great critics about everything.He used to come to me. I was in the university – for just one or two hours I was teaching in the university and then I was back. He used to come to me, and I loved to listen to him. He was very happy with me, because he said “You are the only man who has patience to listen; otherwise, nobody bothers. I am saying such significant things and nobody cares.” But how long could I tolerate him?So I used to give him the newspapers and magazines, so he would read them and would get into them and leave me alone. Sometimes it would happen that I would give him an old newspaper just by mistake. He would start reading it – so deeply engrossed – and then I would look at the date. I would think, “My God, I have given him an old newspaper.” And I would tell him, “This is an old newspaper. I will give you the new, the fresh.”He said, “It doesn’t matter – almost ninety percent of it is the same news. Just for ten percent, who cares? To me, it is all the same. When you are not in the house, I come and ask the gardener. He does not allow me into your study, but he brings newspapers and I sit in the garden. And sometimes he brings one-year-old newspapers. But I say it does not matter; the same things go on happening, so I read. Even your gardener says to me, ‘My God, this is one year old. You wait, my master will be coming soon; then I will bring the fresh newspapers.’ And I say, ‘Don’t be worried, I just enjoy reading.’ And it is the same: somebody has been killed, somebody has been murdered, somebody has committed suicide, somebody has been assassinated, somewhere some government is changed. It does not matter to me who rules in Brazil – what does it matter?”My gardener told me, “That old fellow is a philosopher.”I said, “How have you discovered that he is a philosopher?”He said, “He has a very philosophical attitude; he reads a year-old newspaper and he reads it with such concentration. And when I ask, he says, ‘What does it matter? Time passes on. Just one year ago this was new, and what is new today will be old one year afterward. And as far as I am concerned, it is only a question of passing time, so what I am reading does not matter.’”I would like you first to be clean, innocent, silent. And then if out of that silence something is born, that will be a contribution to the universe. Otherwise, out of the garbage you can go on writing novels, and they will sell, because people need something to read and throw away. But they don’t know that somebody has put his life…wasted his life in writing these novels. Somebody has missed his buddhahood.It is up to you to choose. It cannot be forced upon anybody. I can just give you a hint – that it is time. And you are mature enough: you have written your novels, and you know all that is garbage.It shows, because people love to read anything. Railway bookstalls need garbage, airport bookstalls need garbage; everywhere garbage is needed because people need garbage. But why should you waste your life?And you have the possibility to give birth to something really significant – but a breakthrough is needed. You need a discontinuity. Forget what you have been doing, forget the name and the fame and anything that it brings to you.Just be a nobody, enjoy being nobody. And I tell you that in being nobody there is freedom.And then one day you will find that the seed within you has started growing. And then if something out of your own experience comes to be written by you, it will be significant for you, it will be significant for others. Anything that can really make life a little more beautiful, a little more musical, a little more poetic, is going to help you too. It is possible only because of your growth.You can collect all kinds of information – read ten novels, and the eleventh is born – that is one way that is being followed by all writers, poets, painters. But they are third-rate, and they will be forgotten.Something meaningful only comes from your very innermost being.But before that, you have to throw all the rubbish off; otherwise, the rubbish is so much and the seed is so small, it is lost in the rubbish. I hope that you will be able to do what I am saying; otherwise, I would not have said it.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 03 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,How come everything is going so well?The question is not a laughing matter. It touches something of tremendous value in human misery, in human anguish, in human reality. It creates laughter because it looks absurd to ask why things are going so well.We have become accustomed to things never going so well. We are well acquainted with the misery, the pain, the darkness, the meaninglessness, the whole tragedy of human existence. It has gone to our very bones, blood and marrow; we accept it as if it is our nature.If things are going wrong, it seems natural.If things are not going wrong, then something must be wrong – how come things are going so well? We have forgotten the language of well-being, we have forgotten the taste of blissfulness.We have forgotten our own nature. The natural thing is that things should go well; for their going well, no reason is needed.You are healthy – you don’t go to the doctor to ask him, “What is the matter with me? I am healthy.” You go to the doctor when you are not healthy, when you are sick.When people are young, they don’t ask, “What is the meaning of life?” Their youth, their overflowing energy, is enough meaning, is enough significance. They are still capable of love. They are still capable of a dance, a song, a celebration. Death has not overshadowed their lives yet.The moment a person starts asking, “What is the meaning of life?” it means he has become old – it does not matter at what age. His question emphatically shows that he has lost touch with life, lost touch with love, lost touch with vitality, and wherever he looks it is all emptiness. The question has become significant to him. Why is he living? In fact, he has died; his life is posthumous.The moment a person asks, “What is the meaning of life?” it is the question of a dead man – who still breathes, whose heart still beats, but it is all like a robot. All poetry, all rainbows have disappeared…no sunrises at all. It seems the night is eternal. It seems that he must have dreamt about the days when he had seen the light; they were not real.Old age, when death is just standing close to you, creates the question, “What is the meaning of life?” But when you are alive, when death is far away beyond the horizon of your vision, who cares about the meaning of life? You live it, you have it, you sing it, you dance it. It is in every breath, it is in every beat of your heart.One thing has to be understood clearly: that the people who have asked so-called great questions about the meaning of life, about the meaning of the very existence, about the meaning of love, about the meaning of beauty, are thought to be great philosophers but they have one foot in the grave. Just before slipping into their graves, they are raising all these questions.One of the great aestheticians, a great philosopher of aesthetics, Croce, devoted his whole life to a single question: what is beauty? In this century he stands alone as a high peak, incomparable to anybody else. His dedication to the question of beauty is total. He wrote about it, he talked about it, he taught about it, he dreamt about it; his whole life was woven around the question: what is beauty?I have gone through his writings, and on each step I have felt that this man must have been blind – only a blind person can ask, “What is beauty?” And for almost one century, nobody has raised the question of whether Croce was blind or not. I say he was definitely blind. He may have had eyes, just as you have, but he had no perception, no sensitivity. He was asking the question what is beauty? And went on inquiring about it – and the whole existence is full of beauty.Even the smallest blade of grass is beautiful. All around there are flowers and stars, birds and trees and rivers and mountains, and beautiful human beings. Why could a man of the intelligence of Croce not see a simple thing – that beauty has to be felt, not thought about? You have to see it; you have to experience it. You are capable of creating it, but it is such a mystery that it is beyond explanation. You cannot confine it in a definition.But his whole lifelong effort shows only one thing: the poor man never experienced even a single moment of beauty; otherwise, his whole questioning would have changed. Instead he would have devoted his life to creating beauty, to experiencing beauty, to rejoicing with the stars and with the moon and with the flowers and with the birds. But he wasted his whole life.And to what conclusion did he come in the end? – that beauty is indefinable. This could have been told to him by anybody in the very beginning. There was no need to waste a beautiful life, a precious gift of existence.And one cannot be certain that it will be given to you again; you cannot even be certain why it has been given to you this time. Do you deserve it? Have you earned it? Does existence owe it to you? It seems to be a sheer gift, a gift of an abundant existence, not bothering about whether you deserve it or not. Not asking for your qualifications, not inquiring about your character, your morality, making no demands on you, just giving it without any conditions attached to it. Giving it not as a business, but without any expectations from you in return, giving it and allowing you total freedom to do whatever you want to do with it.Everything should go beautifully, easily, with wellbeing. It is natural. If something is not going well that means something is sick, something is ill.But all the great moralists of the world, all the theologians, all the prophets and messengers of God have really messed you up. They have made such demands on you. They have taken away all your freedom. They have asked you to do impossible things, and naturally you have failed in doing them. It has left wounds in you – wounds of failure, inferiority, wounds of unworthiness – and you are living with all those wounds. Naturally, everything goes wrong.It is not nature; it is your great benefactors: the people who have been promising you “We are the saviors.” In fact, they are the people who have created a sick humanity, a diseased human mind, a psychology that is not sane.Demanding anything unnatural is bound to create guilt. If you do not do it, you feel guilty that you are not really a human being; that you are behaving like subhuman beings, animals, that you are a sinner, that you are doing things against the prophets and the messengers who represent God. And if you try to follow them, you get into a trap. If you follow them you have to go against nature, and nature is all that you are.You cannot go against yourself, so on each step there is failure. On each step you become more and more schizophrenic: a small part becomes the priest, condemning your whole nature. Whatever you do is wrong.Life becomes a nightmare. And that’s how man has lived for thousands of years: a life which could have been a beautiful experience, has been turned into an unbearable torture, a nightmare. Even if you want to wake up you cannot. The nightmare is heavy and long – it is not only yours, it is coming from your forefathers; generation after generation has cultivated it. It has roots as ancient as man; you cannot fight with it. You are torn apart. You cannot fight with your nature, you cannot fight with your sick heritage.And I say that on the whole earth every man is living under the burden of a sick heritage. It does not matter whether he is Christian or Hindu or Mohammedan – these are different names for the same sickness.If you follow your nature, you condemn yourself. The whole society condemns you. The whole world is against you, and you are also against yourself.But you have to live your nature.Friedrich Nietzsche has a beautiful insight. He says that all the religions of the world have been against sex, but they have not been successful in destroying sex; otherwise, from where do these people go on coming? This whole population explosion… If your priests had succeeded, churches would be empty. But there are seven hundred million Catholics – certainly the Catholic priests have failed utterly.Nietzsche is right. The religions have not succeeded in destroying sex. But they have succeeded in one thing: they have made sex poison, poisonous. It is no more a joy, it is no more a thing of beauty; it is no more sacred. They have been able to create great guilt out of it. And what is right about sex is right about all your natural instincts, but everything has been poisoned.So when things are not going right, you are perfectly at ease. When things are going right, you start feeling uneasy: “What is the matter?”If there are wars, it is perfectly right. If there are riots between Hindus and Mohammedans, if Mohammedans and Jews are killing each other, it is perfectly right. But if suddenly Jews and Mohammedans start dancing and singing and rejoicing together, the whole world will be shocked: “What is going on? Have these people gone mad?”We are suffering a wrong heritage, and unless we get ourselves free from the past we cannot live peacefully. The people who are gathered here with me and the people around the earth who are with me have dropped the past. They are no longer Hindus, no longer Christians, no longer Buddhists; they are simply human beings. And they are trying to live their nature fully, authentically, without any guilt and without any feeling of sin.Things are going beautifully well. They are living in freedom.The past is our slavery, and if the past is too much, then it is going to create our future. We are crushed between past and future, and the future is nothing but a reproduction of the past. And a small moment of present is almost powerless against two eternities pressing it from both sides.Once you are free of the past a tremendous realization happens: you are free of the future also. And your being free of the future means that now you are free to make your future. It will not be made by the past; it will be made by your nature, by your intelligence, by your meditation, by your silence, by your love.Around my sannyasins things are bound to go easy, because there is no sin, no guilt, no imposed morality. I corrupt people so much that they become innocent.People are living innocently. They don’t have any moral codes, any ten commandments, any holy Bibles. They have only their own insight and freedom to create their future, to live according to their nature without any fear: there is no hell, and there is no God to decide whether you are right or wrong.If you are right, your life will be a life of joy; if you are wrong, your life will be a life of misery. There is no need for any God. Each act is intrinsically decisive.So you can feel your way: if you are moving rightly, your life will go on growing more and more flowers, will go on growing bigger and bigger wings. Your reach toward the stars will become easier. And if you are doing something wrong, your very nature will say it is wrong because you will be suffering the consequences of your wrong acts here and now. You will not have to wait for the last judgment day.What a stupid kind of hypothesis, “the last judgment day” – one day everybody will be awakened from his grave. Just visualize what will happen: all skeletons, and there is going to be such a crowd. At the place where you are sitting there are at least ten skeletons underneath you. When all the skeletons stand up there is not going to be elbow room, and there is going to be such shrieking, shouting, moaning. Even for poor God, it is going to be very difficult to recognize who is who – because there will only be skeletons.Then to judge who is going to heaven and who is going to hell… And do you think in just one day? Each person has millions of acts, good and bad, which have to be balanced, and there is only one God – and not a very intelligent one either.George Bernard Shaw used to say, “Just the very crowd makes me feel that it will be difficult to make judgments. Moreover, half of the crowd will be women –who will make it almost impossible!”Perhaps that’s why the last judgment day has not happened and is not going to happen. Because Jesus used to say to his disciples, “Soon, in your life, you will see the last judgment day happen” – in his disciples’ lifetime. That means, at the most, seventy years.Two thousand years have passed, and as the days go by the skeletons go on growing. I think God has changed his mind. Judgment is not possible any longer.As far as I am concerned each act brings its own judgment, and that is more scientific. Why go on collecting acts for a certain day and then deciding? And why decide from outside, when there is a possibility to decide from inside? Each act has its intrinsic consequence.You can figure it out; if your life is miserable then you are doing something wrong, and if your life is a merry-go-round then you are doing everything that should be done perfectly. So it is up to you whether you make your life a merry-go-round or a sorry-go-round. There is nobody to decide it, you are the act and you are the judge. And this seems to be more scientific, simple.If everything is going well, be happy. And remember why things are going well so they can continue to go better and better, because wellness also has depth. Just find out what it is that is making your life blissful, peaceful, silent, happy – simple arithmetic – and your life can become a holy life.According to me, if you are living joyously, you are a holy man. Only one thing you have to do: die to the past so that you can be reborn in a fresh present and a free future.Osho,Is there another way without death and insecurity?There is no death in the first place. Death is an illusion. It is always somebody else who dies; you never die. It means death has always been seen from the outside, it is the outsider’s view. Those who have seen their inner world are unanimous in saying that there is no death.You don’t know what constitutes your consciousness; it is not constituted of breathing, it is not constituted of heartbeats, it is not constituted of blood circulation. So when the doctor says that a man is dead, it is an outsider’s conclusion; all that he is saying is, “This man is no longer breathing, his pulse has stopped, his heart is not beating.” Are these three things equivalent to death? They are not!Consciousness is not your body, nor your mind, nor your heart. So when a person dies, he dies for you, not for himself. For himself he simply changes the house, perhaps moves into a better apartment. But because the old apartment is left, and you are searching for him in the old apartment and you don’t find him there, you think the poor guy is dead. All that you should say is, “The poor guy escaped. Now, we don’t know where he has gone.”In fact, medical science is going beyond its limits when it says that some person is dead. Medical science has no right yet, because it has no definition yet of what constitutes death. It can simply say, “This man is no longer breathing. His heart has stopped. His pulse is no longer functioning.” To conclude that he is dead is going beyond what you are seeing. But because science does not have any idea of consciousness, the death of the body becomes the death of the being.Those who have known the being say it is not necessary that you should die and then you know; you can just go inside. That’s what I call meditation. Just go inside and find out what is your center, and at your center there is no breathing, there is no heartbeat, there is no thought, no mind, no heart, no body, and still you are.Once a person has experienced himself – that he is not the body, not the mind, not the heart, but pure awareness – he knows there is no death for him, because he does not depend on the body. Awareness has no dependence on blood circulation. It does not depend on whether the heart beats or not, it does not depend on whether the mind functions or not. It is a totally different world; it is not constituted of any material thing, it is immaterial.So the first thing to understand is that there is no death – it has never been found. And if there is no death, what insecurity can there be? For an immortal life there can be no insecurity. Your immortality is not dependent on your bank balance; the beggar is as immortal as the emperor.As far as people’s consciousnesses are concerned, that is the only world where true communism exists: they all have equal qualities, and they don’t have anything that can be lost or taken away. They don’t have anything that can be destroyed, burned.There is no insecurity. All insecurity is a shadow of death.If you look deeply, then every insecure feeling is rooted in the fear of death. But I am saying to you that there is no death; hence there cannot be any insecurity. You are immortal beings, amritasya putrah.That’s what the seers in the ancient East have said: You are the sons of immortality. And they were not misers like Jesus Christ: that “I am the only begotten son of God.” A strange idea, even to say it one should feel ashamed. “I am the only begotten son of God.” What about others? Are they all bastards? Jesus is condemning the whole world. He is the son of God, and whose sons and daughters are all these people? And it is strange, why should God stop by giving birth to only one child? Is he spent with just one child? Or was he a believer of birth control?I have been asking the pope and Mother Teresa, “Your God must be a believer of birth control, must be using things which you are prohibiting to people, condoms and all; otherwise, how is it possible? Once he created a son, then at least one daughter – that’s a natural tendency.”And in the whole eternity having no fun. The psychologists say that poor people create more children for the simple reason that they don’t have any other fun. To go to the cinema you need money, to go to the circus you need money, to go to Chowpatty Beach you need money. Wherever there is fun, you need money. So just go to bed – that is the only fun without money, nobody asks for money.What is God doing? He can neither go to Chowpatty nor can he go to a circus, nor to a cinema hall. Sitting eternally bored. Just created one son. It has many implications: perhaps he was so frustrated with this one son that he became a celibate – “I am not going to create any more idiots.”Jesus was teaching on the earth for just three years. His age was only thirty-three, and he was crucified – a great savior who could not save himself. God must have felt tremendously let down: “Be finished! No more sons, no more daughters.”But the reality is that there is a certain element of egoism in being the only one, with no competitors. Krishna may be the incarnation of God but he is not the son – just a photocopy. Mohammed may be a messenger – just a postman. But Jesus is special; he is the only begotten son of God. There is a certain egoism in it.The ancient seers were not so egoistic. They called the whole humanity – past, present, future – amritasya putrah: You are all sons of immortality. They were not putting themselves higher than you, they were not pretending to be holier than you. They were making every human being, as far as consciousness is concerned, absolutely equal, eternal.There is no insecurity. There is no need for any other path – and anyway, there is no other path. Life is the path, which passes through the illusory gate of death.You can pass the gate consciously. If you are meditative enough, then you can go through death knowing perfectly that you are changing the house; you can enter another womb knowing perfectly that you are entering the new apartment – and it is always better, because life is always evolving. And if you can die consciously, then certainly your new life will be on a very high level from the very beginning.And I don’t see any insecurity. You come into the world without anything, so one thing is certain: nothing belongs to you.You come absolutely naked, but with illusions. That’s why every child is born with closed hands, fists – believing that he is bringing treasures – and those fists are just empty. And everybody dies with open hands. Try to die with fists; nobody has been successful up to now. Or try to be born with open hands; nobody has been successful in that either.The child is born with fists, with illusions that he is bringing treasures into the world, but there is nothing in the fist. Nothing belongs to you, so what insecurity? Nothing can be stolen, nothing can be taken away from you.Everything that you are using belongs to the world. And one day, you have to leave everything here. You will not be able to take anything with you.I have heard about a rich man in a village who was such a miser that he had never given anything to any beggar. The whole community of beggars knew about it, so whenever they saw some beggar standing before his house they knew: “This man seems to be new, from some other village. Tell him, ‘You won’t get anything from there.’”The man’s wife was dying, but he wouldn’t call the doctor. He only had one friend, because to have many friends means unnecessary insecurity – somebody may ask for money, somebody may ask for something. He had only one friend, and that one was also such a miser that there was no problem between them. They both understood each other’s psychology – no conflict, no asking, no question of creating any embarrassment.The friend said, “But this is the time that the doctor should be called – your wife is dying.”The man said, “It is all in the hands of God. What can a doctor do? If she is going to die, she is going to die. You will unnecessarily put me in trouble: paying the fee to the doctor for the medicine, this and that. I am a religious man, and if she is not going to die she will recover without any doctor. The real doctor is God, nobody else. And I believe in God because he never asks for a fee or anything.”The wife died.His friend said, “Look, just for a little money you didn’t call a doctor.”He said, “Little money? Money is money; it is never a question of a little. And death comes to everybody.”The friend was a little angry. He said, “This is too much. I am also a miser, but if my wife is dying at least I will call a compounder, a pharmacist – but I will call somebody. But you are really hard. What are you going to do with all this money?”He said, “I am going to take it with me.”The friend said, “Nobody has ever heard of it.”He said, “But nobody has ever tried.” That too was true. He said, “Just see. I have my own plan – I will take everything with me.”The friend said, “Just tell me your secret, because some day I will have to die also, and you are such a friend.”He said, “Friendship is one thing, but this secret I cannot tell. And the secret is such that you cannot use it when you are dying – it has to be done before, because you have to carry all your money and all your gold and diamonds and everything to the river.”He said, “What do you mean?”He said, “Yes, and go into a small boat in the middle of the river and jump with all your money and be drowned – so you have taken it. Try! Nobody has tried. If you don’t succeed there is no harm, because everybody goes without it. If you succeed, then you will be the pioneer, the first one who reaches paradise with his whole bag of money. And all those saints will be looking with wide-open eyes: ‘This man has done something!’”But the friend said, “That means you have to die.”He said, “Naturally, and you have to be in good health. When you are dying, it will then be very difficult to carry that heavy load. I am going to do it soon, because my wife is gone, now nobody is there.”But even if you jump into the ocean with all your money, the money will remain in the ocean, your body will remain in the ocean.You will have to go alone, alone just as consciousness. Nothing belongs to you, because you bring nothing here and you can take nothing from here.Life is the only way. Death is the only illusion to be understood.If you can live fully, totally, understanding death as an illusion – not because I am saying it, but by your own experience in deep meditation – then live life fully, as totally as possible, without any fear. There is no insecurity, because even death is illusory.Only the living being in you is real.Clean it, sharpen it, make it fully aware so that not even a small part of it is drowned in darkness, so that you are luminous all over, you become aflame. This is the only way; there is no other alternative. And there is no need.Osho,To be open and to be witnessing are two different things. Is it so, or is this a duality created by my mind?Mind always creates duality; otherwise, to be open or to be witnessing are not two things. If you are open, you will be witnessing. Without being a witness, you cannot be open; or if you are a witness, you will be open – because being a witness and yet remaining closed is impossible. So those are only two words.You can either start with witnessing – then opening will come on its own accord; or you can start by opening your heart – all windows, all doors – then witnessing will be found, coming on its own. But if you are simply thinking, without doing anything, then they look separate.Mind cannot think without duality. Duality is the way of thinking.In silence, all dualities disappear. Oneness is the experience of silence.For example, day and night are very clear dualities, but they are not two. There are animals that see in the night. Their eyes are more sensitive, capable of seeing in darkness. For them, there is no darkness. Those animals cannot open their eyes in the day because their eyes are so delicate that the sun hurts. So while it is day for you, for those animals it is night; the eyes are closed, all is darkness. When it is night for you, it is day for them. The whole day they sleep, the whole night they are awake.And if you ask a scientist and a logician, you will see the difference. If you ask the logician, “What is day?” he will say, “That which is not night.” And what is not night? It is a circular game. If you ask, “What is night?” the logician is going to say, “That which is not day.”You need day to define night, you need night to define day. Strange duality, strange opposition… If there is no day, can you think of night? If there is no night, can you think of day? It is impossible.Ask the scientist, who is closer to reality than the logician. For the scientist darkness is less light, light is less darkness. Now it is one phenomenon, just like a thermometer. Somebody has a temperature of 110 degrees, just ready to move out of the house. Somebody has a temperature of 98 degrees, the normal temperature for human beings, but somebody falls below 96 degrees, again ready for a move. Your existence is not very big, just between 96 and 110 degrees. Sixteen degrees below is death, above is death; just a small slit in between, a small window of life.If we could have a thermometer for light and darkness, the situation would be the same, just as it is between heat and cold – the same thermometer will do for both. The cold is less hot and the hot is less cold, but it is one phenomenon; there is no duality. It is the same with darkness and light.And the same is true about all oppositions that mind creates. Openness, witnessing… If you think intellectually, they look very different. They seem to be unrelated, how can they be one? But in experience they are one.Osho,I have been your disciple for two and a half years now, and all the time I have longed to be in your presence. Now I have met you for the first time, and everything has changed. I want to run away from you. I am totally confused.Please comment.It is almost normal. You fall in love with me; just hearing my words, it appeals to your intellect. Your reason feels satisfied, and then a desire arises to be, at least for some time, with me.And then a great shock…because I am not a man of words. Although I have spoken more words than anybody else in the whole world, but still I say I am not a man of words. My words are just like nets thrown to catch fish.My message is wordless.When you come close to me, then you see the point: that I am not a reasonable, rational, logical person; that you have come to an irrational mystic. You had come with a certain rational conviction, and here you find that reason has to be abandoned. You have to take a jump into the unknown, for which I cannot provide any logic, any evidence, except my own presence.Anybody who has come here, caught by my words, will feel like escaping. Because he had come for a different reason, and here he finds a totally different situation – not only different, but diametrically opposite.I am not a teacher. I am not a philosopher. I am not interested in creating systems and hypotheses.My interest is in destroying you as you are, so that you can be reborn in your existential potential. I am here to destroy your personality, to give birth to your individuality.It is a natural reaction, it happens to everybody. But you cannot escape either. At the most, you may go up to Dadar Station and come back again. You can try, and exactly from Dadar you will come back; that is the radius.Once you are caught up with me, you cannot escape.But I will not prevent you; trying to escape will be helpful. If you try to escape and then you have to come back, the next time the desire will arise but it will not have any effect on you. You will simply drop it, because it does not work. Now you have to go the whole way, whatever it means. It may mean the death of the ego, of the personality; then you have to take the risk.If you had not come to me you would have continued to enjoy my words, because it was just borrowed knowledge for you. And here I want you to drop all borrowed knowledge, including that which you have gathered from me.I want you to become a knower, a seer.Certainly, you have to pass through fire. But the fire only looks like fire from afar. The closer you come, the cooler you will find it. And the moment you pass through the fire you will be surprised that fire can also be so cool, so refreshing.There is a story in Moses’ life that Jews have not been able to explain in four thousand years.On Mount Sinai, Moses encountered a strange phenomenon that he thought was God. Certainly, it was very mysterious: a bush was afire but it was not burning; it was as green as any bush. Its flowers were as juicy and young as any flowers, and yet there was fire in the bush. Naturally attracted, curious, he wanted to look from close quarters at what was happening. He had never thought that fire could be there; flames were rising above the bush – and the bush was green!He came close, and just as he was coming very close a voice shouted, “Leave your shoes behind, Moses! You are entering into holy land, into a sacred place.” Trembling, he left his shoes. He could not see anybody, but it was certainly a miraculous experience. He thought it was God’s voice.My own explanation of the story is that everybody who goes through a transformation comes to the same bush, which is afire, but the fire is cool. It is nourishing the bush, not destroying it. It only looks like fire; it is cool flames of life. For life, Moses’ word is God – that’s the only difference. That is a difference of language, nothing much.You have come here; you have seen the flames. And the first idea will be “Escape as quickly as possible; otherwise you will be burned.”Don’t be worried. If I am not burned, if all these people here are not burned, you also are not going to be burned.The fire is cool; it transforms.It takes away your mask and helps you to discover your original face. But still, freedom is available to you up to Dadar Station.Osho,I heard you talking about the Sri Lankan mystic asking his followers to stand up if they wanted to go the shortcut toward enlightenment.I want you to know that I'm waiting for the chance to stand up as soon as I hear you asking – knowing that my legs will most likely be trembling, my body perspiring, and my heart beating like mad.It is necessary that I should repeat the story first:A mystic in Sri Lanka is dying. He has thousands of followers; they have all gathered. Just before closing his eyes he says, “If anybody wants to come with me, I can take him with me – and this is the most shortcut way. You will not have to do anything. I don’t have much time. Anybody wanting to go the most shortcut way… Otherwise, it takes so many lives to achieve enlightenment. I can take you with me from the back door. Just stand up!”There was absolute silence, pin-drop silence. People looked at each other thinking, “This man has been listening to him for forty years, perhaps he may be ready.” But he was looking at somebody else, because he had so many problems still to solve: “Business is not good.”Everybody has problems: somebody has a girl to marry, somebody has a boy who is a troublemaker; somebody has a case in the court and this is not the time to become enlightened, first the court case has to be finished, and so on, so forth.But one man raised one hand. He said, “I cannot stand up because I am not ready to go yet, but I cannot resist the temptation to know where the back door is, because if sometime I am ready, I can follow the shortcut. Right now, I am not ready – let it be completely clear to you that I am not coming with you – but just tell us where the back door is.”The old man said, “The back door is such that you can enter only with your master, not alone. It is a very narrow gate; only one can enter at a time. If you are ready to dissolve yourself in the being of the master, then there is no problem – one or one thousand, they will all enter through the door as one being. Alone, you will not be able to find it.”Now, Deva Prem wants me to ask him some day to come along from the back door. And he thinks he is ready and he will stand up – although even thinking, he perspires and his legs tremble and his heart beats faster.My feeling is, Deva Prem, you are the man who had raised his hand.And one day I will ask, and I know that this time also you will only raise your hand, or perhaps you may not even raise your hand. Because I am a different type of man. That old man was very compassionate.I would have taken even this man – at least he had raised his hand. That is enough – what is the need of making him stand up? Just raising the hand is enough.So when I ask, remember I will ask you to simply raise the hand. This time be alert, and get prepared – because with trembling legs and perspiring it will be difficult to enter that back door.That back door needs people who can disappear into nothingness, dancing, singing, celebrating.So learn to sing, learn to dance, learn to celebrate. Any day, I can ask.And I hate perspiration. I am very allergic –you will have to stop perspiring.And trembling… That gate won’t allow you in; it will immediately see that there are two persons. You have to be absolutely still, and one with me – no trembling.And this time I will not ask you to stand up. The last time, it was my fault.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 04 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Sitting before you, feeling your words flowing toward me from your great heart, I found my own heart bursting open and receiving the sun and moon of your being. Soon a great peace fell over me, followed by a never-known calmness so that I feel that I am resting in the arms of existence itself.I bow down before you in gratefulness to kiss the earth that gave you life. I lift my arms to the stars and sing hallelujah, hallelujah, hallelujah. Osho, because of you I am alive to realize the beauty, the joy, the purity of love that is the very expanse of existence. These words seem unable to express the truest feelings that arise from the depth of my being. But I bow down before you now, and again and again and again to dance, to sing, to shout: thank you, Osho, thank you, thank you, thank you. Hallelujah! Hallelujah! Hallelujah!There is much more yet to happen. What has happened to you is immense. What will happen to you will be greater, but remember one thing: it is never enough.Existence is such an abundance – we cannot exhaust it. It is inexhaustible in its beauty, in its blissfulness, in its benediction.You are feeling difficulty in expressing what is happening to you. And this is only the beginning – just think of the difficulties of those who have gone far ahead of you. There comes a moment when even to say that this cannot be said is not possible – because to say that this cannot be said is still saying something about it. It is still defining it in a very negative way.There comes a moment when only silence, utter silence, remains your expression.That is your thankfulness, that is your gratitude, that is your hallelujah – a dance which is invisible, a song which is not heard, a beauty which cannot be painted, described. And only when we have come to the point where words are to be left behind does what I call religiousness begin. I do not say renounce the world, but I certainly say move toward the moment when you will have to renounce the word.The Bible says, “In the beginning was the word.” Nobody knows about the beginning. Nobody can know about the beginning, because nobody can be a witness about the beginning. If somebody had been witnessing the beginning then it would not have been the beginning, because somebody was already there.The Bible may be right, may be wrong, about the beginning, but I say unto you: In the end there is no word. And that has been witnessed by thousands of mystics in thousands of years past.And the moment you come to realize that words are slipping out of your hands, that the boundary line of language is crossed…a tremendous innocence, a new childhood. For the first time you can understand that which cannot be spoken. You can understand the message of the wind blowing through the pine trees, you can understand the poetry of the sound of running water.To be freed from language is to be freed from all human limitations. Language is the greatest imprisonment.I am happy that you are feeling great difficulty in expressing something that you are experiencing. Slowly, it will become more and more clear that there is no word, no language; no concept to explain it, to express it. Just silence is the only answer to all your questions, the only meeting with existence without any barrier, any wall.As the language disappears, the mind is no longer of any use. For the first time you contact existence directly, without the mediation of the mind – and that experience is enlightenment. And nobody is far away from it; it is within everybody’s reach.But people are searching for their happiness where it does not exist. They are looking for living waters in deserts. And when frustration comes, failure comes, despair comes, they are angry with life, not angry with themselves.What can life do? It is available, but somehow you manage to search in the wrong direction. Perhaps you are afraid, deep down, that life may be too much, love may be too much, existence may drown you.And in a way, your fear is right: the closer you come to reality, the less you will be. The moment you encounter reality face to face, you will not be at all.I have said many times that nobody has seen God – neither Moses nor Jesus nor Krishna. And naturally, people have misunderstood me. Whenever I have said that nobody has seen God, I was not saying there is no God; I was simply saying the moment you come close enough to God to see, you are no more. Who is going to see God? As long as you are – to see, to feel, to say, to question, to inquire – God is not.And God is another name of reality. It is not a person, it is only a quality, a fragrance, a sweetness, a music.One day will come when you will be in the state of hallelujah but you will not be able to say the word, because the word will fall short of the experience.Osho,In these five years of relationship with you, I have never felt things going as fast as now! When I finish writing a letter or a question to you, I immediately keep it, feeling it to be ridiculous.Sometimes I accept the challenge and deliver it, and then I feel as if I have an idiotic face: worry, repentance, shyness…I feel that it is not worth coming to you being “dressed up” with intelligence, humbleness, meditativeness, or whatsoever I could dress in to show to you. In spite of all my efforts, I still have the feeling of dressing up, of using a kind of mask.Please tell me, master, how to be totally sincere to you and “undressed”?The problem is not only of one person; everybody is dressed up. Everybody is showing his best side to the world. The heart may be full of tears, but people are smiling.This is how we have been brought up by a hypocritical society. We are children of a hypocritical society. Rather than teaching every child to be just himself – sincere, honest, naked – we are helping every child to be exactly the opposite.Just two days ago, one of my old friends came to see me. He has a son who is thought by everybody to be crazy, insane – except by me. So the first thing I inquired about was his son, and he said, “Leave that subject. It makes me so sad, because now he is eighteen years old and he still goes naked all over the town. He is such a shame to the family.”I said, “In what way is he hurting anybody? He is not violent. He simply enjoys being naked.”They force clothes on him, and he throws them away on the street and goes toward the market. And they are running after him – “Please, at least take the underwear.”And he says, “No underwear. The breeze is so cool.”And the boy is very intelligent. Of course, he is in a crowd which cannot accept him. He never lies; he is always utterly honest. Whatever he does, he does with totality. He has never gone to school because he asks those who have gone what they have gained. His father is a post-graduate; he asks him, “What have you gained? Just a certificate.” He says, “I want to live my life. I don’t want to be dictated to by anybody, wrong or right. I simply want to be myself.”He is a hard worker. He will be working in the garden, and you can see how hard he works, but he works at only what he feels like working at. He plays beautiful flute, but the whole town thinks that he is mad.And I have tried my best to find where his madness is. I have not been able to find his madness anywhere. He is just not willing to be part of the mob psychology. The crowd cannot accept that he is sane, because if he is sane, then what about the whole crowd?Even his parents, my friend his father, cannot accept him. He said, “Except for you, nobody accepts that he is sane.”I said, “You are his father, you love him. Have you seen any madness in him?”He said, “What more do you want? You want more madness? – going naked in the streets. And he is now eighteen years old, and he will approach a woman and he will say ‘You are so beautiful. Can I kiss you?’”Naturally, the society cannot accept such a person – although he is absolutely honest. And he has honored the woman, he has praised her beauty, he has asked her permission. Otherwise he is very strong – living naked, doing hard work, never going to school; he is really strong – he could have kissed any woman without any permission.But a crowd gathers, and the woman starts shouting that he is being nasty to her, misbehaving with her.Many times when I was there, I had to go inside the crowd and tell them, “You are making unnecessary fuss. The boy is alone, that’s true, but he is not insane. He is a minority of one, and you are the majority of many – but just because you are many, do you think you are right?”Nobody has been ever able to point out to me that something is wrong with him. And he is being dragged to this doctor and to that doctor.And he says, “What is wrong with me? I am not sick. The doctor cannot make any difference to me.”The truth is, the doctor is sick. The doctor is not honest.The boy is very intelligent in seeing things. He has a strange clarity. He says, “I have been watching this doctor” – because the doctor lives just in front of his house; his dispensary is there – “and seeing that poor people get well quickly, and rich people linger on for months. And I am sitting there outside and enjoying the whole scene – what kind of society is this? The poor man gets well because the doctor wants to get rid of him; you cannot get much money out of him. Instead the poor man starts asking, ‘Give me some money; I will return later on for the medicine. You are suggesting fruits and milk, but you will have to give me some money.’“But the rich man, once he falls sick, is kept sick; he is sent to this expert for x-rays, to that expert for something else. It seems to be almost a conspiracy of experts exploiting the rich sick man.”I asked him how the boy was doing. He said, “Because of him, I feel so ashamed to go out of the house. And I always wanted you to help me, but you think he is right and we are wrong. You want me also to go naked? – so I cannot raise the question, ‘What should be done with him?’”I said, “He needs nothing to be done, he is no harm to anybody. Give him work; he is always ready to work, he enjoys working. But he is not ready to have a mask. He is not ready to be continuously an actor, dressed up.”But the whole society that we have created is almost a drama. Here, everybody is repeating dialogues from books, from films, from stories. Nobody is opening his own heart.I can understand your problem. You are afraid to ask authentic questions because they will expose you.People ask questions which make them feel very knowledgeable. They want to ask questions not to get the answer, but just to show their knowledge. Whenever you ask a knowledgeable question, you don’t feel guilty, you feel great.But I am a crazy person. I never answer those questions which come out of your knowledge. I simply throw them away.I only answer questions which open up your wounds, because once your wounds are open there is a possibility of healing. Once you expose yourself, you are on the way to transformation.Once you are sincere in asking a question, you will listen to the answer because it is your need, it is your food. Your question was your thirst, and the answer can quench it.So, always remember, this is not a philosophical association, not a theosophical society where everybody is trying to prove that he knows more than you know. This is a place of transformation, of going through a revolution. And unless you show your real face, it is impossible to make any changes in your life, any transformations in your consciousness.At the most, I can paint your mask, but I cannot change your real face by painting the mask. The mask has to be put aside. Hence, love and trust are needed – that you can be utterly nude, without any fear.You are not going to be condemned here. You will be accepted as you are, and we will begin from that acceptance to reach for a higher stage, for growth. But that growth is not a condemnation of your present state. That growth is based on your present state of being; it has to be accepted.But the religions of the world have really poisoned people’s minds. Nobody is ready to open up and show who he is, because for centuries things have been condemned, you have to hide them. Nobody wants to be condemned. And there are things which have been praised, so you have to show them – whether you have them or not does not matter.It is very human and very natural; you want to be loved and to be accepted.And the society has made the rules of the game, that these are the things to be condemned, so if you have those things hide them, repress them so deeply that even you become unaware of them. And if you don’t have those things which society praises, honors, then pretend, and pretend so cleverly that it seems almost real.Sometimes it is possible that the pretender may look more real than the real person, because the real person never goes through rehearsals. The pretender practices, disciplines himself.I have always liked a beautiful incident in the life of Charlie Chaplin. It was his birthday, perhaps the fiftieth birthday, and all his fans and friends wanted to celebrate it in a special way. And they found a special way: all over England, in every place, there were competitions, and people were invited to play the part of Charlie Chaplin. And in those competitions there were selections, and then there were other competitions from district to district. Then the semi-finals were in London and there was a final decision about who would get the first prize.Just to give his friends a great surprise, Charlie Chaplin himself entered into the competition from a nearby district. He came to the semi-finals, but rather than surprising his friends he was surprised himself: he got second prize. Somebody played his act better than him; he had never thought about the possibility. But it happened because the other person was practicing it, rehearsing it, and Charlie Chaplin simply appeared as he was. There was no need for him to rehearse – he was Charlie Chaplin. But getting the second prize…And when people came to know that he had got the second prize, he was so ashamed of himself. He said, “I have been such an idiot to enter into it in the first place. I entered because I thought that I was going to be the first, without question.”So you have the possibility of pretenders posing qualities, values, characters, which are not real. Inside they are just the opposite kind of people. Criminals become saints – it is easy; you just have to practice certain values, certain disciplines which are expected from a saint. Who cares that you are carrying a thousand and one criminal tendencies within you? People only see your face; nobody dives deep into you.So the whole society has become a very strange phenomenon, almost weird, and everybody is suffering. The person who is pretending to be a saint cannot enjoy it because his whole being is against it, his whole nature is against it. He is continuously fighting a battle with himself, and there is no greater misery than to be continuously in a fight with yourself. So those who are honored, respected citizens – you will never see them joyful, cheerful, rejoicing. They are always sad, and to hide the fact of sadness they call it seriousness: that they take life very seriously.And the other part of humanity, which has decided to go with its natural feelings, is condemned; they become criminals. In the eyes of the religions they are sinners; they will fill the space in hell reserved for them. In life nobody will respect them, and after life also. Even their God is not capable of accepting his own creation.If anybody is responsible, God is responsible. Only one person is responsible for all the sinners. There is no need to send everybody into hell – just throw God into hell and that will do, because he is the sole cause.And these hypocrites, these phony people who are showing something but are not what they are showing, can they also cheat existence? Can they also cheat God? Here they are respectable, but will they also be in paradise after life, enjoying all the pleasures? We have put such tremendous pressure on poor human beings to destroy their integrity, to create a split in them.My approach is totally different.First, I want you to accept yourself as you are. That’s how existence wanted you to be. You have not created yourself; naturally the whole responsibility goes to existence. And there must be a need for a person like you; otherwise, you would not exist. Existence needs you as you are.The first principle of an authentic religious man is to accept himself as he is, without any judgment – and only from there does your authentic pilgrimage begin.Ask me questions without any fear, because I have never condemned anybody. My whole love and respect is for the person who accepts himself totally, as he is. He has courage. He has courage to face the whole pressure of the society which is bent upon splitting him into divisions – into good and bad, into saint and sinner. He is really a brave, courageous being who stands against the whole history of man, of morality, and declares to the skies his reality, whatever it is.And at least with the master, the disciple has to be absolutely clean and clear so the master can start working with your reality, not with your phoniness – because everything done with your phoniness is a sheer wastage.Only the real you is capable of growing, of coming to a flowering.Osho,I always want a total change in my life because I feel so discontented, so limited, so frustrated.When I heard you saying, “Come closer,” it touched my heart deeply. I saw that I am always managing my life reasonably and out of my mind, that I live a life full of lies and go on postponing being really alive.I decided to stay here with you longer than I intended to, in spite of all reasons and problems that may come. But I don't feel at ease, and I don't know if it is not again something coming from my mind.Will you please say something about the miracle of transformation and how to live more out of the heart?The first thing to remember is, never ask for the impossible. Begin slowly, bit by bit, step by step.Just by walking step by step, you can cover ten thousand miles easily. But if you start thinking from the very beginning that “I want to cross ten thousand miles,” your legs may start wavering, your heart may start feeling tremendously afraid.Your mind will say, “You are asking too much; it is unreasonable.” You are a small human being. Ten thousand miles…just walking one step each time – because nobody can walk two steps at one time. Ten thousand miles looks too big. Make small goals.You are asking for total change. You don’t see the impossibility of it at this point. At some other point it will not be impossible, but at this point it will be impossible to ask for a total change, because there will be so many implications in it.Why not go a little slowly? Why not take one part of your being and clean it? Put your total energy into cleaning one part of your being, then move to the second part. And of course, finally you will be able to have a total change.But mind is very cunning: whatever it wants to avoid, from the very beginning it creates such a situation – it asks for the impossible. So you remain where you are, more frustrated, more in despair because the total change is not happening. The mind has given you a goal and deceived you. Total change certainly is the goal, but don’t try to have it in a single step. Go in a more human way, changing small parts.I used to live with a man for many years. He was a rich man, and he loved me very much. I had a bungalow in the university but he wouldn’t allow me to live there. He had a beautiful mansion in the city. He said, “If you want, you can have the whole mansion. I will move to another house.” He had many houses.I said, “No, there is no need. What will I do? I need only one room. You can live and take care of the whole mansion and the garden and my room, because I am a lazy man. This big mansion…who is going to clean it?”In my university days I used to keep my bed just near the door and all my books around my bed, so I didn’t have to enter into the room, because there was such thick dust gathering. For two years I had never entered – why unnecessarily disturb settled things? So from the door I would directly jump into my bed, and all my books were around my bed so I could find them. This was a perfect arrangement: neither did the dust disturb me nor did I disturb the dust.So I told him, “I don’t need the whole mansion. Just one room is enough for me.”So he lived with me. He was very rich but very miserly. Perhaps the word miserly is not enough to describe it. He used to go for a walk in the morning with me, and anything he would find by the side of the road here and there, he would grab it.I said, “What will you do with it? – just a handle of a bicycle; somebody had thrown it away.He said, “You don’t know. Just come with me, I will show you.”So I went into his house, in his part of the mansion, and he showed me. And I was really amazed! He said, “All these parts of the cycle I have found on the street. Just a few things are missing…and I hope I have enough life left; I have not yet found a chain. Two wheels are there, the seat is there, today I have found the handlebars. Mud guards are not necessary, just a chain. And I am not asking for too much. What do you think I go walking with you for?”I said, “I never thought that you were going in search of a chain.”He said, “A chain, or anything…”His house was full of strange things…just one shoe. I said, “Where is the other?”He said, “Some day I will find it, because the other one must be somewhere.”And he himself was so clever that he would go to the temple and he would put one shoe in one corner, the other shoe in another corner so nobody could steal them – because who will steal one shoe? And in a crowd of shoes who is going to search for the other? Where is the other? – because a thief is in a hurry.He said, “I am perhaps the only person who, when he is worshipping never looks back. Otherwise, everybody is looking back: what is happening to the shoes? Their worship is false! Are they bowing down to God or to their shoes? I am the only person who does not look back at all. I have figured it out that this way nobody can and nobody has ever been able… And I go every day to the temple because I am looking for the other shoe. This shoe…the other must be somewhere.”And there were many things that he had found; people had thrown them and he would collect them. But when I saw his bicycle, I was really amazed that he had managed, almost managed; just a chain was missing. That could even be purchased. But he was such a miser, he was not going to purchase it; he was waiting.He said, “Just as you say…trust! I trust that the chain will be found one day.”Jabalpur had the largest number of cycles in India. So he said, “This is the place where it is impossible to miss a chain. I will find it.” And one day he found it.In the middle of the night he woke me. I said, “What is the matter? Has something gone wrong?”He said, “No, I have found the chain.”“In the middle of the night? Where have you been?”He said, “I was just not feeling sleepy, so I thought why not have a look for the chain around the park? And it is a miracle – I found it. Perhaps that’s why I was not feeling sleepy. Now I can sleep with ease. One tension was always there on my mind, that death might come before the chain comes.”And I saw him within three days sitting on the bicycle without mud guards, without any carrier, going to his shop. I said, “I have been telling people to trust – but it seems that trust works! You have proved me right.”And he said, “One more thing is good about this: there are no brakes on it. And it makes so much noise that you can hear it from almost half a mile away. So when I am coming home my wife knows that I am coming, so she starts preparing things for me. By the time I reach the house everything is ready; no need for wasting time in waiting. And nobody else can sit on my bicycle.”I said, “Why?”He said, “Its seat is such – it hurts so much. So there is no question of its ever being stolen. I leave it anywhere, and I go and do my work and I always find it in its place. People have tried – I have come to know that people have tried to steal it – but they come back and put it in its place, because it is unnecessary trouble. First, it makes so much noise that everybody will know who has stolen it. Secondly, it hurts so much, and thirdly, it has no brakes, so any time, any accident…”I said, “But how do you manage?”He said, “There is no problem. Just in front of my shop there is a big mango tree. I just go there; it needs a tree to stop.”And in the mansion where I was living with him there were very big trees, ancient trees all around, so there was no question, no need. He said, “There is no need – I go to my shop, there is a tree; I go to my home, there is a tree. Unless you have a very ancient tree, you cannot have my bicycle.”Just go slowly, part by part, and trust. Total change will also happen, but don’t ask too much from the very beginning. Always be alert that mind is cunning and gives you impossible goals, so you go on running after them.Nothing is impossible if you go slowly, if you make many stopovers and you are not in a hurry. Whether the total change happens or not is not important. Even small changes in life are precious, because the total change will be simply the accumulated effect of all the small changes. Total change is not one whole; it is simply the effect of all the small changes, the accumulated revolution that happens in you.So always remain human.The past of man has been concentrated on giving you goals which are impossible. That is just to make you humiliated, because you cannot fulfill them – you feel too tiny, too small, too fragile, with so many weaknesses.I don’t want you to think about impossible things. I want you to go very slowly, changing small parts of your life – which is not difficult. One day, you will suddenly find that total change has happened.Osho,I used to be so scared of being hit or exposed. Since I have been here with you and melting into you, I'm longing for it with an unknown impatience. I long to get the obstacles out of the way, to be over and done with ‘this one' so that I can move on the journey to the next rock on my path. Fear seems to be just a quite unimportant, old habit.I am experiencing you as a boundless invitation. No barriers are there which I can use to rationalize a lack of courage. I feel thankful about the lack of organization around you; there is no more fear that getting a hit from you may be used by people who are in power to feed their own judgments, to put me down or to make me feel guilty.Osho,I am so tired of me and me and me.Is this a healthy or unhealthy impatience?It is the case with most of the sannyasins: if they get a hit they feel bad about it, their ego feels hurt. Rather than understanding the hit, they become resentful, angry.If they are not hit, then they start feeling that I am not taking care of them, that I am not paying attention to them, that while others are being hit, they are being left out. They feel as if they are not important enough.This is how the human mind creates misery out of every situation. If you get the hit, you are hurt; if you don’t get the hit, you are hurt all the same.But as far as I am concerned, I am not interested in hitting you or hurting you or ignoring anybody. To me, all are equally important. The same longing has brought them to me, the same thirst has brought them to me.It will be very kind of you all to leave it to me that whenever a hit is necessary you will get it – because a hit is medicinal, it is a kind of surgery. But don’t feel that because surgery is not being done on you, you are being ignored. If somebody else is hospitalized and nobody is taking care of you… No, whenever you need to be hospitalized you will be hospitalized, each according to his need.Whenever a hit is necessary to help your growth, you will not miss it. And whenever it is not necessary, then unnecessarily hitting you will only make your skull thick. Then when the time comes to hit you, you will have already been so disciplined in getting hits…In my high school days, I was almost always late because I was interested in so many things on the way. I always started from home to reach the school at the right time, but I never reached because so much was going on along the way – some magician was doing his tricks, and it was irresistible. Just to leave that magician and go to study – some stupid teacher talking about geography…So I was punished continually, but soon my teachers realized that it was useless to punish me. Their first punishment was to tell me to go around the high school building seven times. I would ask, “If I go eleven times will it do?”They would say, “Are you mad? This is a punishment.”I said, “I know this is a punishment, but I have missed my morning exercise. So if I make it my morning exercise, you are not losing anything. Your punishment is covered, my morning exercise is complete; nobody is losing anything, both are gaining.”So they stopped that, because this wouldn’t do. They would tell me to stand outside the class. I said, “That’s good, because I love the open air. The class is dark and dirty, and outside it is so beautiful. And in fact, sitting inside I am always looking outside. Who cares what you are teaching? The birds are singing, the trees are blossoming – it is so beautiful outside.”The headmaster would come on his round, and every day he would find me standing outside. And he would say, “What is the matter?”I said, “Nothing is the matter. I love to stand outside; it is healthier, hygienic. And you can see how beautiful it is.”But he said, “I will see your teacher. How is it that he allows you to stand outside?”I said, “I don’t know, but he tells me himself, every day, ‘Stand outside.’ So now I don’t even ask him. It has become a routine, so I simply come and stand here.”He asked the teacher. The teacher said, “It must have been thirty days ago! I told him only once to stand outside – since then he has not entered the class. I was thinking it was a punishment, and he is enjoying it. Not only that, he is spreading the rumor among the students that it is hygienic, it is healthy. And they are asking me, ‘Sir, can we also stand outside?’ Then what am I to do here? Then I will also go and stand outside.”It is a question of how you take things. So first, don’t be worried. If you are not getting a hit, perhaps you don’t need it, or perhaps it is not the right time. Or if you are getting the hit then don’t feel hurt, because I am not hitting you, I am always hitting your ego – something that is your disease, something that has to be dropped.But leave it to me. I will not follow your expectations that because you want a hit – the biggest hit, so you can show everybody, “Look, I have got the biggest hit”… Then the ego has used the hit. Rather than destroying the ego, the ego has taken the hit as nourishment.So leave it completely to me. It is none of your business. Whenever I feel that you need a hit, you will get it – and you will get it in the right quantity that you need. Don’t brag about it, and don’t feel sorry for it; just try to understand it.This is a school of understanding.Osho,Twenty-five years to get to you, three years to hang around you, four years to run away from you in a roller-coaster relationship. Four years to stagger back toward you, eleven years to get a question through to you – and you give the answer to this German fellow, Gunakar, and want to send me back to hell and some difficult woman. And in twenty-eight years' time, maybe you have escaped when I crawl back to ask you, “What's next?”Osho, do you want to kill me or something?Gunateet, you are right. The question was yours – at least written by you – but Gunakar needed the answer more. So there has not been any misunderstanding.He was also surprised, because he had not asked the question. But it was his question. And he could not believe how somebody else had written exactly the question that he was going to ask. And it was not time for you, for that question. Perhaps you got the vibration of the German Gunakar, and wrote down the question; it was not your question.And I can understand your difficulty: it took eleven years for you to ask the question and now you are worried that I am sending you back to your old life and the hard woman. About that you are wrong. Once you get a woman, it is always hard. If you miss a woman, it is just ice cream. Once you get a woman, suddenly she is steel hard.But without women there would have been no enlightenment in this world. Just think – a world without women. Then you cannot find any Gautam Buddha, because there is nobody to run away from. If there is no woman, there is no problem. Women are the real incentive. They say that behind every great man there is a woman; it may be true, it may not be true. But behind every enlightened man there are many women – one won’t do.Enlightenment is a little difficult subject. When many women go on making a football of you, then at last you become enlightened. You will say, “Enough! Stop the game, I am going home.”Women are a blessing in the world. Without them, there is nothing. So just be thankful to your hard woman; perhaps you are here because of her.And you are saying that next time you come it will be in twenty-eight years, and you will ask, “What next?”I am reminded of two stories…Mulla Nasruddin was on Chowpatty Beach with his wife, and suddenly he said, “Would you like bhelpuri once more?”The wife said, “Once more? But we have not had any bhelpuri.”He said, “Beloved, it seems you are losing your memory. Just fifty years ago when we got married and we had come here for the first time, we had bhelpuri. That’s why I am saying, ‘Would you like it once more?’”Going back to your life, to your wife, to your work…but you will not be the same man. You will be taking something of me with you. I may not have answered you, but you have felt me. Answers and questions are superficial. You have tasted my love, my presence. So if by chance, after twenty-eight years, we meet again I will ask, “Do you want it once more?”Most probably, you will not need to ask me again because the seed is sown. You know exactly what has to be done: you have to slip your energies from the mind toward the heart. Those energies falling toward the heart are just like rain falling, and the seed will start sprouting.Perhaps after twenty-eight years, if existence allows it, it will not be you who asks what is next. I will ask you what is next. You will have come to flowering. You will have come just to show your gratitude.It is good that you are not German. The German soil is a little hard. It has its negative points and its positive points, its pros and cons. It is hard, it is very difficult for the seed to settle in it – but once a seed settles in it, then it is very hard not to grow.Your question was a mind question, and Gunakar needed it. You don’t need it. You have a soft heart. And the seed is already in your heart, and you know it is growing.It is almost like a pregnant woman: when the child starts growing she knows that the child is growing. An experienced mother of two or three children even knows whether the child is a boy or a girl – because the boy starts kicking, and the girl remains very centered, calm and quiet. Boys are, after all, boys. From the very beginning, they are trouble.An experienced mother can say after the third or fourth month whether the child will be a boy or a girl, because the boy is doing all kinds of gymnastics, and the girl is simply sitting silently, waiting for her own chance. Later on, she will do the gymnastics and the boy will sit and read the newspaper. Everybody has his own chance.The second story I was going to tell you is about a very rich American, a billionaire. He becomes fed up with money, fed up with all kinds of luxuries, fed up with all pleasures. And naturally he starts searching – is there something more, or is this all? Because if this is all then there is no point anymore for him to live; he has had enough of it. It is a question of life and death.And he moves, and goes from one master to another: some Tibetan lamas, some Sufi mystic, some Zen master. And then he comes to India and meets many saints. They all say, “There is one very wise old man in the Himalayas; only he can help you.”So he travels to the Himalayas, then by foot carries his luggage. He has never carried luggage in his life. He has never walked uphill in the mountains. It is too cold, but somehow he manages. Tired, he falls at the feet of the old man, who looks very ancient, and he says, “I have found you after all! I want to know what is the meaning of life?”The old man said, “First things first. Have you got a Havana cigar?”The man said, “What kind of question…Havana cigar? Yes, I have got one. In fact, I am a chain smoker, and I have been keeping one in case you make me enlightened. Before enlightenment, the last Havana cigar… I would like just a few minutes more to enjoy it, and then make me enlightened and do whatsoever you want. After enlightenment, I was thinking Havana cigars would not be allowed, because I have not seen Buddha smoking, or…”He said, “Forget all about those old fellows. Bring the Havana cigar.” And the old man started smoking.The tired American watched, and said, “But what about my question?”He said, “The time is not right. You go back. Come again after a few years.”The man said, “This is strange. Any message?”He said, “When you come, bring as many Havana cigars as you can because once you are enlightened we will both be smoking. On this hill there is nothing else to do. Just go fast and come back – but bring them. I am sending you especially for Havana cigars. Enlightenment is a very simple thing, but to get Havana cigars in the Himalayas is very difficult.”Don’t be worried – I am not a smoker! You need not bring any Havana cigars, just come. Don’t wait for twenty-eight years. Whenever you feel the flower has opened its petals in you, come back.I would just like to see you luminous, radiant, ecstatic. And I say it is possible because you have a heart, Gunateet, that is ripe to grow any moment. No hard woman can prevent it; she can only help it.So just go back, and whenever the spring comes and the flower is there, come back so I can see that the flower has lived to its potentiality and you have become fragrant.And meanwhile, you can smoke as many Havana cigars as you want.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 05 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The first time I met you, I said no to your question as to whether I had a question, and in all these eight years I have never asked any.Now my mind seems to be exploding with questions, out of which it is hard to choose any satisfying to a German perfectionist; yet I feel almost in panic – I don't want to miss that chance.Osho, why is there that constant fear of missing the train?There are people who really do not have questions. They have a quest, but not questions. They have a thirst, a deep hunger for being and more being, but no desire for gathering and accumulating knowledge. Hence they don’t have any questions.They are the best kind of disciples.There are other people who do not ask questions, but that does not mean that they don’t have questions. They do not ask because asking a question goes against their ego. And if the ego is German, then the problem becomes more difficult.It is not coincidental that Germany has produced great philosophers, philosophers who are ready to give answers to every question. But Germany has not produced sincere inquirers, seekers, who are thirsty for the answer. It has not created disciples; it creates only masters, and these masters are only great intellectuals, not mystics.Germany has contributed much as far as knowledge is concerned – Hegel, Kant, Feuerbach, Karl Marx – but it has not contributed a single mystic. In the whole of history, not a single Kabir, not a single Nanak, not a single Farid – very strange, but it is not coincidental.The German ego is ready to give the answer, whether it knows or not; but it is very reluctant to ask the question, whether it has the question or not. The same is your situation. For eight years you have been repressing, perhaps unconsciously, and there is a limit to everything. You can repress only so much, and then a point comes when you are sitting on a volcano. Now your mind is exploding with questions. From where have they come? For eight years they were not there, and suddenly out of nowhere they are almost creating in you a state of insanity – so many questions that you cannot even find which one is worthy to be asked.You will have to look backward. Those eight years that you kept them repressed are your responsibility. If you had allowed them to come, in those eight years you might have been completely cleansed of all questions; you might have become a tabula rasa, an innocent child.But because to ask is to show one’s ignorance, you went on repressing. And there is always a hope: somebody else here may ask it, so why expose yourself?But remember, each person’s question has a personality of its own. Even though the words may be the same, the language exactly the same, the phrasing of the question not a bit different, but because the questioner is different, it makes such a difference that it is almost unbridgeable. Each person has grown in a different way, has lived a different life, has passed through different ups and downs. You cannot find another person who has gone through the same experiences. Hence, the question may appear to be the same, but it cannot be the same.So never wait, thinking that somebody is bound to ask the question and save you the trouble of exposing yourself as ignorant, so you can remain silent, looking wise. Just not asking the question does not mean that you know. It only means that you are not courageous enough, it only means that you are afraid to show your darker side. But unless you show your disease, unless you say something about it, the physician cannot do anything.I had a professor friend. He was a great scholar of ancient Sanskrit. Not only was he a scholar of ancient Sanskrit, his mind was also very old and rotten.He was feeling sick, and as I was coming out of my classroom he told me, “I am feeling very weak and very sick. I don’t know what the problem is, but you have to give me a lift and take me to the nearby doctor.” So I took him to a friend who was one of the best doctors near the university campus.Now, in ancient Indian medicine the patient does not say anything to the physician; that is thought to be insulting. The physician takes the wrist of the patient, checks his pulse; that’s all. And he decides what the disease is and he decides what the medicine is going to be. And the Indian medicine, Ayurveda, has been very proud about it.So this ancient Sanskrit scholar would not say to the doctor what the problem was. He said, “You are a doctor, you have studied in England, you have got the best education; you have to find out what my disease is.”The doctor said, “This is strange. I am not a doctor of animals; I am a doctor of human beings. Of course as far as animals are concerned they cannot say what the problem is, so the vet has to find out, to figure out what the donkey is suffering fromAnd sometimes things go very wrong. I remember one case. One of my neighbors in my village had a donkey, a very good donkey. And suddenly there was some epidemic among donkeys and many donkeys in the town died. The veterinary hospital and its doctors were at a loss what to do because the donkeys could not say what was happening. And they were unable to find out. The disease seemed to be something very new.My friend was very much afraid for his donkey. He said, “Before anything happens, I want to take all precautions.”So we both took his donkey – because I used to sit on his donkey; he was the best in the town – to the doctor. And the doctor said, “He is not sick at all.”We said, “We know and he knows too, because he was not willing to come this way; we have brought him forcibly. But we want to take precautions. Other donkeys are dying, and this is such a beautiful fellow. So if you can just help; as a precaution give him some medicine so that he is not affected by the epidemic.”He gave us some solution, and also a small bamboo pipe, and he told the man whose donkey it was, “You have to put this medicine in your mouth.”The man said, “What are you saying – a donkey’s medicine? Why should I put it in my mouth?”The vet said, “This is the way it has to be given to the donkey, because the donkey will create a thousand and one troubles. Put the other end of the pipe in the donkey’s mouth and blow the medicine into his mouth.”He said, “Strange way…”But the vet said, “You don’t know how to deal with animals.”But an accident happened. When he was about to give the medicine, the donkey did such a great job. He blew such a forceful breath from his mouth that the man drank all the medicine! And he said, “Now what is going to happen? This was a freak accident, and this idiot…at the right time, just as I was going to give the medicine; he managed to force it into my body. Now let us go back to the doctor. It may have some bad effects on me – it was a precaution for the donkey, not a precaution for me.”I said, “Now I cannot go, you can go.”This Sanskrit scholar wanted to be told by the doctor what was wrong just by having his pulse checked.The doctor said, “I know that in Ayurveda, this has been the ancient method, but at that time there were no other instruments. At that time people were not so intelligent and aware and sensitive to their own bodies, feelings. They were coming almost from the world of animals. When Ayurveda was born, human beings were just emerging out of the animal kingdom; that’s why feeling the pulse was the only way.”But the scholar was not satisfied. He said, “The reality is that you are not so proficient in the subtle vibrations of the pulse rate. You are not ready to acknowledge your ignorance.”I said to him, “You have not come here to discuss whether Ayurveda is a better medical system than modern medicine. You have come here for your own sickness. Don’t waste my time, and don’t waste the time of the doctor – he is not ignorant. No modern medical practitioner is going to tell you your disease; man has come of age you have to tell him.”You can sit here silently for eight years without asking a question, just hiding yourself behind silence – which is not true silence, because inside the questions are boiling. But the German mind is not ready to accept easily that it is ignorant.It is good that you are now ready – because your mind is exploring its questions – that you are not afraid you will be understood as ignorant. Nobody is going to understand you as ignorant. Ignorance is our natural state, there is nothing wrong with it. Just as everybody is naked behind clothes – however thick your clothes are, however many layers of clothes you have, your nakedness is still there. There is nothing in it to be ashamed of.Naked we are born; ignorant we are born.And it will be helpful to recognize the fact of ignorance sooner, so that you will not die ignorant. Ignorant we are born, but if we can die innocent, life has been a successful journey. And the only way to be innocent is to get rid of all your questions.Don’t hide anything, because whatever you are hiding will come up sooner or later, will surface. It is better to bring it out yourself into the open, into the light.And the function of a master is not to give you an answer, but to destroy your question. Nobody can give you the answer. The answer will arise in you, will grow in you. It will be your growth, your enlightenment. It cannot be given from outside.But questions can be destroyed. So it is good that you have started, even though you have wasted eight years unnecessarily. And that’s why your mind is continuously worried and scared of only one thing: am I going to miss the train this time? Eight years you have been missing, every day, every moment. But there are a few people who are very expert in missing trains.I have heard that three persons, all professors of a university, are standing on a platform. The train is getting ready to leave – two have come to see one off – and they are involved in deep discussion.Suddenly, the conductor shows the flag and the train starts, and they are so absorbed that they don’t notice. They notice only when the train has almost left the platform. So they all three run to catch it – two succeed, and one fails. And the one who fails starts laughing.A crowd gathers; they say, “What is the matter?”But he is laughing so much, a belly laughter, that he cannot contain himself.He says, “Just wait a minute… I have missed the train.”They say, “But missing a train does not mean that you have to laugh.”He said, “You don’t know the whole story – just wait: the two who have caught the train came to see me off! But in a hurry…”There are people who are always missing. Missing becomes the habit for their whole life.Each moment – you have to be alert not to miss it. But you are not there, you are somewhere else. Naturally you go on missing. You will think of this moment when it has gone. You will say, “My God, I missed that opportunity.”Henry Ford was asked by a journalist, “What is the secret of your success?” – because he was a poor man, born poor, and became the richest man in the world.Ford said, “My secret is simple, it is an open secret, I never miss an opportunity.”But the journalist said, “It still remains a mystery. Nobody wants to miss an opportunity, but people go on missing. So tell me just in a little detail how you manage – because people become aware of an opportunity only when it has gone, but by that time it is too late.”Henry Ford said, “The way not to miss an opportunity is just to keep jumping. So whenever it comes, it doesn’t matter, you will jump and ride on it. Don’t stand and wait; otherwise you will get engaged in other thoughts and other things.“I keep on jumping. Let the opportunity come whenever it comes – I am not going to miss it.”In a London museum there is a beautiful painting titled Opportunity. A very strange painting… When for the first time, a century ago, it was acquired by the museum, the painter himself was alive and he was present there for the opening ceremony. The museum had asked him to be there to explain it to people – because it is a beautiful painting but a little difficult, a little strange.There is the face of a man, but you have never come across such a face: all the hairs are growing not on the head but on the forehead, and the head is clean-shaven. And the title is Opportunity.“What kind of man…? Where have you found this man?”He said, “This is the opportunity. When it comes you cannot see it, because the face is covered with hair. When it is just passing by, you cannot see it because the face is covered and by the time you recognize it and say, ‘Jesus!’ your hand slips because the head is clean-shaven. It has gone. And no moment comes back; once gone, it is gone forever.”You are afraid of missing the train. Whether you are afraid or not, everybody is missing the train. It is good that you are afraid, because that may help you to understand why you are missing.You are not in the moment. You are either in the past or in the future – both are non-existent. Neither can you do anything with the past, nor can you do anything with the future. All that you can do is with the present, and the present is such a small, split second that if you are engaged somewhere else, it simply slips by and you have missed the train.Learn to be in the present. Withdraw your energy from the past. Don’t waste your time in memories; what is gone is gone – say good-bye to it and close the chapter. What has not come yet has not come yet; don’t unnecessarily waste your time and energy in imagination, because no imagination is ever fulfilled. It is because of this that the proverb exists in every language: “Man proposes, and God disposes” – because you imagine a certain thing in the future, and it is never so.Withdrawing yourself from past and future, you will become a tremendously intense energy, focused in the present, concentrated in the present like an arrow. No train could manage to leave the platform without you. Each moment being aware, alert, watchful, in the herenow, is the way not to miss the train. Every experience needs your presence here – this moment. And this is a simple secret, but it opens the doors of existence, of all the mysteries, of all that is worth knowing, worth tasting, worth feeling, worth being.Osho,It is such a joy seeking out a question – it comes word by word and surprises me as it appears on the paper.Being here with you has been more moment-to-moment and less plan-filled than any other time in my life.The question is: where do these questions come from? How does seeking them out empty our minds and cleanse our beings?I love you beyond my understanding. Thank you again and again.We are born not knowing anything. Questions don’t come from outside. As you grow, as you face different situations, as you move into different moments, encountering different circumstances, your ignorance goes on and on becoming questions.These are the right questions. And if you insist on asking only the right questions, which come out of your ignorance in encountering existence, you will be able to get rid of them without any difficulty.The problem arises because you have many questions which are not right questions, which have not arisen out of your ignorance but which have arisen out of your borrowed knowledge. You read something in a book and a question arises; if you had not read the book, the question would have never arisen, you may have lived from eternity to eternity.For example, I have been around the world, but except for followers of Jainism – who are not many, only three and a half million, and confined only to India – nobody can ask a question that a Jaina can ask. Only a Jaina can ask it, because his scriptures give him the question. The question is not a right question; otherwise, it would arise in every human being if it was a natural question.For example, you may never have wondered what nigodh is. Only a Jaina will ask what nigodh is. And for Jainism it is a very important question; it is as important as God is to other religions – in fact, it is a replacement for God, because Jainism does not believe in God. Then the question arises: from where does this universe come?Jainism has a simple, scientific answer to it: the universe does not come from anywhere; it is always here. But because the population goes on growing one problem gets them into trouble: where do these people come from if nobody is creating them?In Mahavira’s time, there were only two million people in India – just in India. Now there are seven hundred million people in India. Where are these people coming from? Where have they been hiding all this time? Who is managing the whole circus – when they should come and not come, why they should come at a particular time and not come at a particular time?Jainism has to invent a hypothesis. The hypothesis is called nigodh; nigodh is a dormant state of human souls. Just as you go to sleep and in the morning you wake up, so there are millions of souls who are sleeping for eternity; from those dormant souls a few wake up and start moving into existence. But all such hypotheses are as dubitable as God.I have asked Jaina monks how many souls are dormant – because there will be one day when nigodh is empty, all souls will have awakened. Then the population will remain static, there will be no need for any birth control. Whatever you do, you cannot produce a child. But they don’t have any answer. They say, “We don’t know. The scriptures say an infinite number of souls.”I said, “This is just befooling people. Who has counted them? Who has the right to say that they are infinite? This can be said only when they have been counted. If they have been counted, they are not infinite. Do you see the simple logic? If you say they have been counted, then they may be many but they cannot be infinite. And if you say they have not been counted, you cannot say they are infinite.”But nobody in the whole world is ever going to ask, “What is nigodh?” This is a false question; it is a bookish question. Now, Jainas never ask about God. All over the world, every other religion will ask about God, because they have been told about God from their very childhood. And naturally, curiosity arises: what is God, how does he look?Strangely enough, different religions have different ideas of God, and nobody bothers that God cannot have so many appearances unless he has many masks. He shows one face to the Christians, another face to the Jews, another face to the Hindus, but why should he take such trouble? And none of these fellows who are talking about God have seen him. But centuries have passed, and people are discussing and inquiring and questioning, and all questions concerned with such things are absolutely futile.“How many hands does God have?” Now, is this a question that really means anything to you? – whether he has two hands or four hands or one thousand hands. What does it matter to you? But there are people who believe that God has one thousand hands, because to take care of this big world, two hands are not enough. But who says to that one thousand hands will be enough? The world is still big. If two hands are too few, one thousand hands are also too few. And just think of a god who has one thousand hands!I think two hands can do things in a better way than a person who has one thousand hands. He is bound to get confused. And to carry one thousand hands… The weight of one thousand hands will be too much.There was one very famous Hindu monk, Swami Shivananda, who became world famous. Seeing him, I dropped the idea of one thousand hands – because he was not able even to carry his two hands. His hands became so fat that he was not able to raise them. Two persons used to raise his hands, then he would be able to move; otherwise those hands were so much of a weight. And nobody even thinks – because he was a medical doctor before he became a mahatma – first, medically he is living a wrong life; otherwise how have these hands become so heavy? Secondly, he is thought to be a great yogi – according to Yoga he is living a wrong life; otherwise how have these hands gone out of proportion? And still he is worshipped as a great saint.When I saw him, I said to him, “One thing is settled in my mind, that God cannot have one thousand hands. Seeing you…you need two persons to carry you from one place to another place. If you had one thousand hands, it would really be a great trouble.” Perhaps trucks would have been needed. “Bring all your transport, Swami Shivananda is going to the bathroom,” otherwise how would he go? One hand in one truck…at least one thousand trucks would be needed. And for the transport company it would be a problem: how to manage one thousand trucks around him? There would be a parking problem.But just hypotheses…and there are thousands of things which have kept human beings engaged in creating questions. And there are always so-called wise people who are ready to answer them. They are the enemies of humanity. Rather than saying that your question is wrong because it has no relevance to your growth, it has no relevance to your own spirituality, that whether God exists or not does not matter, or how many heads he has…The Hindu god has three heads. No other god in the world has three heads – naturally he is superior. He can look in three dimensions; a three-dimensional god, in all dimensions he is looking. Other gods are one-dimensional.You cannot cheat a Hindu god, but a Mohammedan god or a Christian god – you can hit him from behind, he cannot see. You cannot hit the Hindu god. Three heads, one thousand hands… If you got caught in his hands, it would take eternity to get out of the jungle.All useless, fictitious, meaningless things are in the air, and they have been there for centuries. They create many questions in you. So you have to remember one very basic thing: that any question that is not concerned with your individual growth has no meaning, no substance for you. Only then can you sort out those few questions which can be of help.And then ask them, and expose yourself. Then don’t wait a single moment and don’t hesitate, don’t feel embarrassed. It is your right to ask the question. It is nature demanding that you ask the question, because once the question is solved – or better, dissolved – you will feel light; your heaviness will be gone.The day you don’t have any question will be a day of great celebration, because you will be as light as you can conceive. And then existence becomes just a pure dance – no more questions. Existence becomes a trust – no more questions. There are no more tensions in the mind – life becomes a let-go, a tremendous relaxation. You become part of the trees and the mountains and the ocean and the rivers and the stars. You are no longer separate; your questions keep you separate.Your unquestionable trust in existence allows you to merge into it.Osho,Govind Siddharth's enlightenment showed me that I am not connected with enlightenment at all. I cannot imagine how I would feel being enlightened. I realized how far away it is for me, and that I am not really seeking it.Concerning myself, I have mostly forgotten about the state called enlightenment. I see that I am only longing for it when I am in a state of pain, and feel lost, and don't know any more what to do. But in moments of happiness and fulfillment, enlightenment does not exist at all.Would you please comment on this?Lokita, enlightenment is absolutely un-Germanic. I have gone through all the great philosophers of Germany; nobody has any idea of enlightenment.So you need not be worried. It simply shows you are a pure Nordic German, stuck with another German, Niskriya. One German is enough of a hindrance toward enlightenment, and two Germans together – it is impossible. You both will tug at each other’s legs and will not allow anybody to become enlightened!And the idea of enlightenment has arisen because of Govind Siddharth’s enlightenment. It is not your longing or your search. This is what I have been calling borrowed. If it is not nature that is desiring something in you, a longing coming out of your very soul, out of your very roots, then don’t waste time on it.That’s why when you are in pain, in misery, in anguish, you think of enlightenment and when you are happy and contented and enjoying yourself, you never think about it. In fact, if you are contented, happy and feeling pleasure, and I offer you enlightenment you will refuse it. You will say, “Osho, when I am in pain I will come myself. Don’t disturb my happiness at this moment. It is so difficult to be happy with Niskriya, and now you have come with enlightenment…” Remember: anything that comes out of pain and anguish and anxiety is at most an effort to escape from all these painful experiences.Hearing again and again that enlightenment is blissful, you think that rather than suffering pain it is better to be enlightened. But when you are contented and feeling happy, joyful, no fight with Niskriya…because I know perfectly well that two Germans in one room must be fighting twenty-three hours a day at least. For one hour, naturally, they need rest and contentment. At that time if somebody comes and says, “Come on and this is enlightenment,” you will say, “No, not at this time; I have hardly got one hour of peace and you have come to disturb that peace also.”You have to understand one thing: that enlightenment is not an escape from pain but an understanding of pain, an understanding of your anguish, an understanding of your misery – not a cover-up, not a substitute, but a deep insight: “Why am I miserable, why is there so much anxiety, why is there so much anguish, what are the causes in me that are creating it?” And to see those causes clearly is to be free from them. Just an insight into your misery brings a freedom from misery. And what remains is enlightenment.Enlightenment is not something that comes to you. It is when pain and misery and anguish and anxiety have been understood perfectly well, and they have evaporated because now they have no cause to exist in you… That state is enlightenment. It will bring you, for the first time, real contentment, real blissfulness, authentic ecstasy. And only then can you compare.What you used to call contentment before was not contentment. What you used to call happiness before was not happiness. But right now you don’t have anything to compare it with. Once enlightenment gives you a taste of the real, you will see that all your pleasures, all your happinesses were simply the stuff dreams are made of; they were not real. And what has come now, has come forever.That is the definition of the real: a contentment that comes and never leaves you again is real contentment. A contentment that comes and goes again is not contentment; it is simply a gap between two miseries. It is like we call a gap between two wars peace time – it is not a peaceful time, it is simply preparation for another war. If the war is a positive war, the time between two wars is a negative war, a cold war. It goes on underground; you are getting ready for a hot war. Anything that comes and goes is a dream. Let that be the definition. Anything that comes and never goes is reality.Don’t be bothered about the word enlightenment. What you call it does not matter; you can call it illumination, you can call it blissfulness, you can call it self-realization, you can call it actualization of all your potentials – whatever you want to call it. But remember one quality: that it knows only a beginning; it knows no end. Anything that comes and goes, beware – that is simply illusory, it is only a gap, because one gets tired.Niskriya also gets tired, and when one is tired one thinks, “Just be loving, be peaceful.” So for an hour or two hours there is love, but it does not last long; just a small thing, anything, and the quarrel begins. And every other day you are ready to separate. Just look in one week how many times you decide to separate.You don’t know I have been keeping you together. Niskriya is a very obedient follower. I tell him, “Niskriya, just let things be as they are. One woman is absolutely needed for your enlightenment; just remain…” And the same is true for you: he is needed for your enlightenment.Separately – because there will be no fight, no anxiety, no pain – you may start thinking that life is perfectly peaceful, what is the need of enlightenment? But it will not be peace; it will be the peace of the graveyard.I want the peace of the garden, not of the graveyard. The birds should be singing, because their songs deepen the peace. The flowers should be blossoming because their colors, their fragrance make the peace alive: the foliage, the greenery, everything is overflowing with life.In a graveyard there is also silence and there is peace, because everybody is dead. They are waiting for the last judgment day; then they will come out of their graves and you will see such a quarrel as you have never seen, not imagined. Because lying in their graveyards, they are repressing everything, and when they come out…just skeletons hitting each other!You will see the scene, the last judgment day. Nobody will bother who is hitting whom, just hitting will be such a joy. So much has been repressed – because somebody has been in the grave for thousands of years. Just think of yourself in a grave for thousands of years – how much anger you must be gathering! It will explode in just one day, in twenty-four hours. More time is not given; perhaps God is afraid to give more time. Because if you give more time, that quarrel will never end, it will continue. So finish it in twenty-four hours.And in twenty-four hours in that crowd you cannot find your enemy or where your wife is, where your neighbor is. So don’t waste time – whoever you meet, hit him hard! Somebody must be hitting your wife, so you hit somebody else’s wife; it does not matter, the question is of hitting.There is a peace in the graveyard. If people live separately… And that’s what religions have thought: renounce the world and go into the caves, and there will be peace. It will be the peace of the graveyard, your cave will be your grave, because there is nobody to provoke you, nobody to insult you. Just being alone, what can you do except be silent? But that is not the peace that passeth understanding, that is a deadness, a suicide.Try to understand your misery. Live it, go to the very depth of it, find out the cause, why it is there. Let understanding be your meditation. And try to understand your contentment also, your happiness also; and you will see their superficiality. Once you know that your happiness is superficial and your anguish is very deep – and it is in your hands – you can change your whole style of consciousness. Your contentment can become your whole being; not even a small space is left for discontentment.Your love becomes your very life. And it remains. Time passes, but what you have achieved goes on deepening. More and more flowers, more and more songs are born out of it.That’s what we call enlightenment. The word is Eastern, but the experience has nothing to do with East or West.Osho,I have a story to tell:It happened in the early second half of the month of June, 1985, when I was living in Rajneeshpuram.One morning, soon after I woke, I took a pee in the bathroom, and felt a tidal wave of relaxation descending on me as it sometimes happens in the last stage of your meditation techniques. The relaxation was all over me, and my eyelids closed gently and instantly. I couldn't move or stop this tidal wave feeling.As my eyes closed, you appeared in all your beauty. Your physical presence was so real and intoxicating – as one sees and feels you in a darshan, sitting in the first row. But in a moment you started disappearing, beginning from all sides of your body, and a deep blackness started taking your place. Soon all that was left was a deep, deep blackness of a kind I have never seen before. It gave a feeling of terror, and lasted for a couple of minutes.As I came out of this experience I was stunned, dazed, almost drained. I was full of a deep inner pain; I was very shaky and upset, as the meaning that somehow had revealed itself to me was in the impact of the experience. It meant physical death to your body, or at least a death-like calamity.I tried to force myself to be normal, but couldn't talk to people. When my friend noticed I was disturbed, and asked me the reason, I told her of the incident. I continued to feel that something grave was peeping over the horizon.In the late afternoon when I was working, suddenly out of nowhere a deep tidal wave of relaxation overpowered me again. My eyes closed and a bright purple color appeared all over in front of me, amid which you appeared again in your fullest glory, beaming. Beautiful flowers were popping open all around you like bubbles – it was psychedelic! I felt now fully assured that no real harm was going to come to your body. Whatever calamities that came would pass away, and a more-glorious-than-ever phase for you and your people would follow.In the later months a great calamity did come to your body in the form of your illegal arrest by the power-blinded US government – which was a physical threat to your life. Now, in the light of the first part of my story turning into a reality, it is quite natural for me to feel that the second part of the story has already started turning into a reality, slowly, slowly.Osho, would you like to comment?You have related your story with absolutely the right interpretation. It needs no comment. This is a good sign. Slowly, slowly, to other sannyasins also, the same is going to happen. They will come to feel an experience, and they will also be able to interpret it correctly. I can only say you are blessed that your mind has not interfered, has not misled you, and your heart has been in complete control seeing the experience and interpreting it.Osho,A glimpse of your eyes, a flash of total love – it happens in a second but stays forever.Osho, how could this happen?It is a simple phenomenon. A moment of love is a moment of eternity. The depth of it is so great that time cannot erase it.Although the happening was in a single moment, it is like a woman becoming pregnant: the happening is in a single moment, but it gives birth to a child who may live seventy, eighty years, who may give birth to many more children. It may become a tree: many branches, and each branch bifurcating into new branches.I am reminded… If you go to Bodhgaya, where Gautam Buddha became enlightened, the tree under which he was sitting is still there, although it is not the same tree but the continuity of the same tree, a child of the same tree.When Ashoka was the emperor of India, he sent his daughter Sanghamitra, who had become a sannyasin, to Sri Lanka with a branch of the original tree. Sri Lanka was converted by Sanghamitra to the ideology of Gautam Buddha, and the branch was planted there and became a big tree.Here in India, after Gautam Buddha, a strange tragedy happened: Buddhism disappeared and Hindus burned the tree under which Gautam Buddha had become enlightened. It was only when India became independent just forty years ago that a branch from Sri Lanka was brought back. Now you see a beautiful tree again flourishing in Bodhgaya – although it is not the same tree, but it is the same tree.A moment of deep love goes so deep in your being that time cannot erase it. It goes on and on giving birth to itself within you.Hence I say that a moment of love is a moment of eternity.Osho,Most of humanity lives to eat and sleep, work, accumulate power and money, or to propagate itself.Osho, what do you live for?I will tell you a real historical fact…In Greece, there was a great philosopher, Xeno. He lived a long life – in those days it was really very long, because the average life in those days was not more than twenty-five years. Xeno lived ninety years.And he is a strange philosopher, unique in a sense, because his teaching is that life is meaningless; so meaningless that any man of intelligence will commit suicide, that is the only intelligent act you can do. So many of his disciples committed suicide, went on committing suicide. Ninety years long, thousands of disciples – and he was a very convincing man. What he was saying was so accurate, because ordinary life is certainly so meaningless. Unless you know how to change it into a divine phenomenon, it is meaningless.And he was a great logician; he argued and convinced people, and people committed suicide, young people committed suicide.When he was dying, somebody asked, “Xeno, one thing has always disturbed us. Because of your philosophy, thousands of people have committed suicide. Why have you gone on living?”He said, “It was just to teach people to commit suicide; otherwise who will do my job? I had to live.”People are living absolutely meaningless lives. I also teach them a kind of suicide – not exactly the same as Xeno. I teach them a suicide in which they are reborn in a more luminous life, of a greater glory, of a divine ecstasy. I have to live because it would be absolutely unkind, knowing the path of transformation and not telling it to the people who need it.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 06 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I am requesting your guidance on my answer to something I heard you say to me – which you never actually said.During my sannyas darshan you spoke to me at length about what happened to Buddha's teachings after Buddha left his body. I heard you say that Buddha's disciples compromised Buddha's teaching. They created safe religions, and thus compromised. You told me, “Do not compromise.”While you were speaking these words to me, I heard another communication. The request that I silently heard spoken was, “Do not let it happen to me.”Since that day I have continually looked for what I might be able to do to fulfill this request. Much to my wonder, I know what to do, I know how to fulfill the unspoken request – but I want your guidance.Will you please give me your specific guidance?What happened to Gautam Buddha and his teachings is almost the rule, not the exception. The moment the master leaves his body the disciples start compromising with the surrounding world to survive, to continue to exist. And truth is something that cannot be compromised.Just Gautam Buddha’s teachings…five hundred years afterward, there was not a single Buddhist in the whole of India. The greatest man who has ever walked on the earth, and the most refined teaching and the clearest perception of truth simply disappeared like a dream.One wonders – it has not happened to Christianity, it has not happened to Mohammedanism, it has not happened to Jainism. So the complexity of the phenomenon has to be understood. The people who had followed Gautam Buddha refused to compromise. That was the cause of the disappearance of Buddhism from India. The Buddhists were either killed, burned alive or forcibly converted into Hinduism, or the fortunate ones escaped to the neighboring countries.In a way, it was a blessing in disguise because the Buddhists who escaped India spread all over Asia and converted the whole continent to the teachings of Gautam Buddha. But the problem was, they had learned something that a disciple should never learn: they had learned in India that if you insist on truth, crucifixion is the result. If you want to survive, you have to compromise with all kinds of lies which are prevalent.What they did not do in India they did in China, they did in Japan, they did in Korea, and they did in Ceylon. All over Asia they compromised with the local population, its superstitions, its ancient ideologies founded on untruths, just created out of fear. But because they compromised with them, they survived. And it was not only that they survived, they became very respectable. Buddhism became the religion of the whole of Asia except India.It is a very strange phenomenon, because Buddha was born here; all his great disciples were born here. Hundreds of people became enlightened under his guidance. The consciousness of this country reached its highest point in the presence of Gautam Buddha. And yet the moment Buddha had gone, the tremendous experience disappeared, evaporated – because the people who remained behind were still not ready to betray their master. They were ready to die, but not to betray; they were not going to compromise.And Hinduism took revenge with great vengeance, because in the presence of Gautam Buddha, Hinduism did not have the guts to encounter this man. Efforts were made. Hindu pundits, scholars went to argue, but they were mere parrots. In the presence of Gautam Buddha, their borrowed knowledge proved completely inadequate for human growth. The very presence of Gautam Buddha was enough to convince them that this man had experienced something that they had not experienced. What they were saying was simply a repetition of old scriptures. What he was saying was a valid individual experience: his own. And when the experience is your own, it has an authority.Hinduism had to wait for Buddha’s death. In his presence, it was impossible to argue in favor of superstitions. They had to wait five hundred years because after Buddha, his immediate disciples – Sariputta, Moggalayan, Mahakashyap, Ananda, and hundreds of others, were filled with the same light, with the same silence. They created more living enlightened people. This continued for five hundred years.Slowly, slowly, it died out. Instead of the enlightened man, slowly, slowly the scholar, the pundit became more important. That was the time when Hinduism came with vengeance – and certainly Hinduism is a far older religion. It had great scholars. The Buddhist scholars were amateurs, they could not withstand Hindu scholarship; they were defeated very easily, because now, it was not their own experience.These were the people who have written Buddhist scriptures. You will be surprised to know that every Buddhist scripture begins with the words I have heard. These people had not seen, these people had not experienced. These people had simply heard from others about the innermost reality, but it was only hearsay.Hindus were more proficient scholars, almost ten thousand years old, very refined logicians, rationalists. The poor Buddhist scholars could not manage to prove anything. They were defeated so utterly that they had to move back into the Hindu fold. The Buddhist monks who had escaped from India learned a lesson: if you don’t have your own experience, then it is better to compromise to survive. They had burned their fingers in arguing for somebody else’s experience.They dropped argument. They started talking of the synthesis of all religions; they started spreading the idea that all religions are right. Nobody is wrong, the question of discussion does not arise. And they were the first in the world to bring this idea that all religions are right. Naturally all religions respected these people – they were not quarrelsome. Up to now every religion had been quarrelsome, arguing, proving that “We have got the truth; we are right and you are wrong.”And these were the first people who were saying, “Everybody is right. There are millions of paths, but the goal is one. There is no need for any argument. We may be moving on different paths, but we are moving toward the same goal.”The same has happened with Jainism in India, which was a contemporary religion to Buddha. Jainas are still in existence in India. It is also a strange fact that Mahavira, their greatest teacher, and Buddha were contemporaries. In the presence of Gautam Buddha, Mahavira could not make any impact on the country. Yes, he had a small following, but Buddha loomed so large, he was such a huge tree that for three hundred years British scholars, historians, philosophers, thought that Mahavira was not separate from Gautam Buddha, that Mahavira was another name of Gautam Buddha. Because it is a title, just as buddha is a title.Buddha means the awakened one; Mahavira means one who has conquered. And they both had the same title of Jaina – Jaina also means one who has conquered. Because the same title belonged to both, it was thought that Mahavira was not somebody separate. It was just recently that scholars started feeling that this was not right, that these were two different people.Buddha created so much impact, he overshadowed everybody – but within five hundred years he disappeared. Mahavira’s followers are still in existence because they compromised with the Hindus. They were not burned; they were not killed. They compromised so much that you cannot find much difference. And they had to compromise because they are dependent on the Hindus for everything. They are not a whole culture. If they need shoes – they cannot make shoes and certainly they need shoes – they will have to depend on the Hindus. They need their toilets to be cleaned; they cannot do that, they have to depend on Hindus.It is a strange phenomenon that Jainism and Buddhism both arose as a revolt against Hinduism. Mahavira is very strongly against Hinduism, but Jainas compromised on every point – because from where are you going to get your clothes? The weavers are either Hindu or Mohammedan. Who is going to make your houses? Who is going to cultivate food for you? – because Jainas cannot even cultivate. It is against their religion, because plants have life, and if you cultivate you will have to cut plants and you will be doing violence.So all the violence has to be done by Hindus; then naturally you have to be dependent on them, and you cannot argue, and you cannot insist that you have the truth. You have to say that everybody has the truth; just the languages are different, paths are different, ways are different, but the basic experience is the same. Jainism survived. The same is true about Mohammedanism, Christianity – they have all compromised with the existing people.Just a few months ago, the present pope visited India. The Indian Christians are the low caste Hindus, converted to Christianity because of poverty. There is no other reason for their conversion – they are poor, uneducated, and Christianity promises them…But the pope was faced with great difficulties because the Hindus who have become converted cannot simply drop their habits of thousands of years. In the church they bring incense before Jesus Christ. And it was reported to him by the bishops and the cardinals: “What should be done? We try to prevent them but they don’t listen. They bring flowers, they bring incense…not only that, in the church they repeat the mantra omkar.” And the pope agreed that they should be allowed; otherwise, they will desert. And this is something so deep in them: they cannot think that om, the sound of om, can be anything other than the most spiritual thing. They are Christians, and om has nothing to do with Christianity – but basically they are Hindus. And the pope’s concession is a compromise, it is cunning.Tomorrow these people will start painting Jesus Christ in the color red, and you will have to accept it because without the red color no stone can become God. It has never happened in India. When for the first time the British government made roads and milestones, they had no idea what they were doing. They painted the milestones red, because red shows from far away, it stands out against the greenery, is clearer. So they painted them red, and they were surprised that every milestone was being worshipped! The villagers came with flowers, incense…every milestone had become the monkey god Hanuman.Their engineers tried to explain that “These are not gods, these are milestones.”The people said, “You don’t know. We have been doing this for thousands of years. Any stone painted red becomes divine.” They were very happy – not happy because of the roads, they were happy because of the milestones.Christianity has been compromising from the very beginning in every country. That has been its way of survival. You will be surprised to know that Indian Christianity is older than the Vatican. Indian Christianity is the oldest in the world, because one of Jesus’ closest disciples, Thomas, came to India. It was difficult to convert Indians to any other religion. They have seen so much, they have heard so much about religion, they have so many beliefs.Thomas was at a loss in the beginning, but finally he managed to compromise. He started dressing like a Hindu. If you see pictures of Thomas, you will be surprised that he shaved his head just like a Hindu shankaracharya. And he started using the thread that Hindus use, and he also used the wooden sandals that Hindu monks were using to avoid leather. And he would wear just a small dhoti with no shirt on top, just like the old brahmins. He learned Sanskrit. And seeing him, that he was just like a Brahmin – so whatever he was saying must be right – many people started following. They were the first Christians.But this is more businesslike; it is salesmanship. It is not real conversion; it is tricky, it is exploiting innocent people. In every country Christianity has compromised with the local population. Whatever its religion was, Christianity has compromised with it, taken its principles, its behavior. It is because of this compromising attitude that Christianity has become the biggest religion in the world – almost half of the world is Christian.Truth cannot be so cheap. And truth cannot be so appealing to such a big mob. The crowd psychology is that whatever it believes should be accepted as true; then there is a possibility of fifty-fifty: “You believe something from us, we will take something from you.” But truth knows no fifty-fifty. It has to be a hundred percent pure; otherwise it is worse than a lie.So when I said to you, “Don’t compromise” I was saying many things in that.First, to compromise means that convenience and survival are more important to you than truth. Secondly, it means that truth is not a revolution but a business, that it is not a transformation of your being but a social conformity. Thirdly, it means that you will never find yourself on the path. Once you have learned to compromise, you have started going astray.Not to compromise is one of the basic, essential principles to follow if you want to find truth in its purity and full glory. And when I said this to you, certainly you rightly heard something more which was not said: “Please don’t do it to me.”My whole effort is to make you individuals, courageous enough even to stand against the whole world. If you feel that you are right and you are experiencing the truth in your innermost core, then the whole world may be against you – it does not matter. Then even crucifixion is nothing but a seal of validity. A man who can go to his crucifixion laughing has proved beyond doubt that he knows something more than the mortal body.Jesus seems to be wayward. At the crucifixion, on the cross, he was not joyous, he was not smiling, laughing. On the contrary, he was complaining. He was shouting at God, “Have you forsaken me?” Because his expectation was not crucifixion; his expectation was crowning. He is the only begotten son of God, how can God allow him to be crucified? A miracle is bound to happen. But the miracle did not happen, because miracles don’t come from outside. The miracle would have happened if he had smiled and laughed because he knew that “You can only crucify a dead body, you cannot crucify my consciousness.”It happened in the case of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He was laughing – and his crucifixion was crueler than Jesus’ because Mohammedans are more violent, more fanatic than any Jew. They cut him piece by piece, it was not a single stroke. First they cut his legs, then they cut his hands, then they made him blind, then they made him deaf. They killed him piece by piece and still he was smiling, to the very last.And somebody asked, “Before they cut your tongue, we want to know – why are you smiling?”He said, “I am smiling because they are punishing somebody else. The body that they are punishing is not me.”This is the miracle. It does not depend on God, it does not depend on anybody else. It depends on your experience. Al-Hillaj proves himself to be far closer to truth, just by his simple action. He is not grumbling, he is not saying to God that “This is not right that they are behaving in this primitive way with me and you are simply silent.” He is not talking about God at all. He is simply enjoying the whole thing and laughing at the stupidity of people: “You are punishing somebody else. And I have always been telling you that you cannot punish me, you cannot even touch me. Punishment is not the question at all.”When you heard, although I did not say it to you, “Don’t do it to me” you heard rightly. I was just going to say it, but seeing that you heard it, I did not say it. All these years it has haunted you that you heard it and I have not said it: was it your imagination or was I really saying something without saying it?No, it was not your imagination. I was saying it without saying it. I say many things to you without saying them. I simply create the atmosphere by saying many other things in which you can hear the unsaid. This is because there are a few things which can only be whispered, not shouted. And there are a few things that cannot even be whispered but only indicated indirectly. Only then are they beautiful.Osho,Recently it has started happening that as I begin to open my eyes first thing in the morning I can see a vision, like a scene from a movie – and that scene happens days after in reality, just like a repetition.Before I arrived here in Mumbai, I had a vision of the Golden Manor Hotel – the setting, the garden, the people – and when I arrived here, it was exactly the same as my vision. I wrote you a letter about this earlier, but did not have the courage to deliver it. Now it has been happening often, and I don't know if it is good or bad.Also, when you were in Uruguay and I was in Brazil, I had the sudden compulsion to go to my room, to sit on the floor and close my eyes. I did so, and like a flash, I saw you sitting at a table, laughing joyously. I could only see the back of another man who seemed a little bit serious or sad. Then you saw me and invited me in, and the man turned his face to see me. He was beautiful, very beautiful The scene was so full of light! I'm sure he was not Jesus – the beard was different and the eyes were deeper and more direct. Hours later, the radio gave the news that Krishnamurti had died hours before.Osho, from that day on, I was totally sure that you live on two levels simultaneously, and I don't know on which level you are for most of the time during your daily life.You answered Turiya that you don't come into our dreams.But isn't it true that you are so close to the disciple that we are one with you all the time, not only in our dreams?One very fundamental thing has to be understood: a dream and a vision look alike, but they are two totally different phenomena. A dream is a mind projection. It has no validity of its own. It is only a thought in picture form.Small children cannot think in thoughts, but they can understand pictures; hence, in their books you will see big pictures, beautiful colors, and very little writing. Slowly, slowly, as the child grows up, the pictures go on becoming smaller and the writing in his books increases. Finally, when he is in the university, pictures disappear and only writing remains. You may not have inquired why this is so…If you give a child in kindergarten school a book which has no pictures, he will not be interested at all because he has not yet learned to think in words. But he can dream more perfectly than you can dream; he dreams so perfectly that once in a while you will find a child waking up in the morning and crying, “Just now I had my bicycle. Where has it gone?” He was dreaming of riding on his bicycle, and as he opens his eyes he is in his bed and the bicycle has gone. And his dream is so clear that it is very difficult for him to make a distinction between the real bicycle and a dream bicycle; they look almost alike.We are grown up, but our unconscious never grows, it remains a child. So in sleep, when your conscious mind – which has learned language, concepts, words – is fast asleep, your unconscious starts dreaming. It is a child, so every thought form has to be translated by the unconscious mind into a picture form.This is one of the great discoveries of Sigmund Freud: listening to your dreams. And he does the opposite process, translates your dream back from picture form into language, into concepts, into words. It needs a tremendous expertise. Still, nobody can be certain about it. If you go to Sigmund Freud, each dream will end up as something sexual, because it is his idea, that all sex is repressed.It is true that much sexuality is repressed, but there are many other things also which are repressed; it is not only sex. But it is a problem with inventors and pioneers particularly; they become so obsessed with their findings that they don’t take note of other possibilities. Freud’s own disciple, Adler, went away from him just because Adler said that sex can be a part of repression, but that is not all. His own idea was that ambition, will to power, is far more important, and that a major part of your dreams concerns the will to power.For example, you dream that you have become a bird and you are flying. To Sigmund Freud it will symbolize only that you want the same sexual freedom as the birds and the animals, nothing else. But to Adler it will mean that flying upward means you are ambitious, you want to become the prime minister. But this is all guesswork.Another disciple, Carl Gustav Jung, also went away from Freud because he was more interested in ancient mythologies and he thought that our dreams are part of our previous lives. So if you are a bird flying, he will interpret it that in some of your past lives you have been a bird.Now what to do with these people, and how to decide? The language of pictures cannot be precise. It is almost like a painting: many people can see it and can decide its meaning in different ways. Just as the child has a picture language, your unconscious has a picture language.I am not interested in interpreting your dreams because it is such a rubbish job. You can go on interpreting for years and years, and the dreams will not come to an end – every day, six hours every night you have to dream. And you have inexhaustible sources of dreaming. And it is very quick – the dream time is not the same as your ordinary time. Just reading your newspaper, you may fall asleep for a minute and you may see a dream which spreads for years. When you wake up you look at your watch and only one minute has passed. You say, “My God, in one minute I saw a dream which was spread for a whole year, or even for years.”Dream time is totally different. Up to now there has been no way to invent dream wristwatches, and perhaps there never will be a possibility, because there are lazy people and there are speedy people; some people are running fast, some people are simply sitting still. In dreams also, the same differences exist: lazy people dream in a lazy way, speedy people dream in a speedy way; your dream reflects you. So I don’t think there is any possibility of making a watch which can function for everybody. It is not possible, because everybody’s dream speed is different.A vision also appears to be just like a dream, but it is not a dream. A vision is an objective phenomenon; it is not projected by your mind. You are seeing something; you are not projecting. With a certain clarity, your mind is capable of seeing things.For example, I was traveling with one of my friends. He is a poet. We were in an air-conditioned bus, and it must have been nearabout ten o’clock in the night, and he suddenly heard, Munna, Munna. Nobody else heard. I was sitting by his side, and he asked me, “Have you heard? Somebody is calling ‘Munna, Munna.’”I said, “I have not heard anything. You must be dreaming.”He said, “No, I am awake. I was smoking, I was not dreaming. And only my father calls me Munna. Nobody else calls me Munna, that is my childhood name. My mother, who used to call me Munna, has died. My father is the only person alive who calls me Munna, nobody else even knows. And the voice was exactly like my father’s.”I said, “Let us reach the destination and we can phone your house from there, to see what is the matter.”We reached Nagpur nearabout twelve o’clock, and we phoned and we found that the father had died at exactly ten o’clock. Perhaps at the time of death he remembered his only son, and remembered the name that he always used.Now, this is not a dream. He had not seen anything, but he had heard; it is objective. And the father was almost sixty miles away, and a dying man cannot shout to reach sixty miles. And if he had shouted that loudly, then everybody in the bus would have heard it. But only his son heard it. Even I was not aware that his father called him Munna.This is a vision…not visual, this is audio vision – not video, Niskriya! I may not come into your dreams – and if I come it is your projection, I am not responsible for it. If I do anything, I am not responsible for it. But I can come into a vision, and then the whole responsibility is mine.The difference is very delicate. The dream always happens when you are asleep. The vision always happens when you are not asleep.This is the first distinction: you are fully awake. And the vision always appears to be coming from outside, reaching to you. And sooner or later, you will find its validity, its reality.You will never find the reality of dream. It is simply garbage, it is really the unwinding of the mind. The whole day the mind has to work, and it gets wound up, and needs unwinding to be fresh for tomorrow. So it is unwinding. Inconsistent things go on coming: you had been talking to somebody, you wanted to say something but you did not say it. Now it is hanging, it needs to be released – in the dream it will be released.The dream is a great help, a cleaning. It is not against you, it keeps you sane; otherwise, everybody will go insane. For six hours your mind goes on cleaning itself of every impression that has remained incomplete in the mind – throws it off, prepares itself for tomorrow’s work. But dreaming has no other significance.Vision is a reality. The dream is of the mind. And the vision has a connection with the heart. These things you will have to feel, because the differences are very, very fine. Whenever you feel something coming as a vision to you, be in a meditative mood, silent. Allow it to happen, be receptive, don’t interfere, don’t interpret. Just first let it be complete so that you can see it from the very beginning to the very end. Most probably there will be no need of interpretation. Just seeing it in its completion will be enough; you will have the understanding. And then, soon some events will follow which will validate your vision.Your dreams will never be validated by existence. So whatever you have seen was a vision – you were awake. And if you are silent, you can see things happening thousands of miles away. Space makes no difference. And you can see things which do not happen on the material level but happen on the level of consciousness. That’s what you are mentioning: two levels.Yes, it is true. I have to work on two levels: one is the level where you live, where you are, and one is the level where I am and I want you also to be. From the top of a hill I have to come into the valley where you are; otherwise you won’t listen, you won’t believe the sunlit top. I have to take your hand in my hand and persuade you – and on the way, tell stories which are not true! But they keep you engaged, and you don’t create any trouble while walking; you go on, engaged with the story. And when you have reached the hilltop, you will know why I was telling long stories, and you will feel grateful that I told those stories; otherwise you would not have been able to travel that long, that far uphill.It is something to be remembered: all the masters of the world have been telling stories, parables – why? The truth can be said simply, there is no need to give you so many stories. But the night is long, and you have to be kept awake; without stories you are going to fall asleep. Till the morning comes there is an absolute necessity to keep you engaged, and the stories the masters have been telling are the most intriguing things possible.The truth cannot be said, but you can be led to the point from where you can see it. Now, the question is how to lead you to the point from where you can see it.There is a story in Sarmad’s life. He was teaching his students, his disciples, and suddenly he said, “Come on out of the class, something is happening.” So they all came out.A man was dragging a bull, but the bull was very powerful. The man was also powerful, but a bull is a bull! So although the man was dragging the bull…the man was being dragged.Sarmad showed his disciples, “Look, this is the situation.”They said, “What do you mean?”He said, “This is the situation between me and you, but I am not so stupid as this man.”And he said, “Listen! Are you taking the bull for the first time?”The man said, “I am a new servant, and I come from the city and I don’t know what to do – because I drag him one foot and he drags me four feet. It has been going on for hours, and I don’t think that it is going to end.”Sarmad said, “Drop it. You don’t understand the ways of the village, and particularly the language of bulls.”And he took a little grass, green and beautiful, and just walked ahead of the bull, without even touching the bull – and the bull followed him. And Sarmad started walking faster, and the bull walked faster.The man said, “This is great! He is not even dragging him, the bull is going on its own.”And Sarmad said, “Take this grass. Don’t let him eat; otherwise, you will be in trouble. If he creates trouble, start running – he will run with you, but you will reach home.”And he said to his disciples, “This is what I have been doing with you. All the parables, all the stories are nothing but green grass.”Visions should not be made an object of thinking. You should just wait, and life will provide you the right validity. Then accept it with gratitude.Whatever you have seen was a vision, and it has been validated by life itself. Now there is no need to think about it. If you start thinking, you will create a mess. And if you don’t think, you will allow more visions to happen to you.And a man of visions starts moving from the lower plane, from the valley, to the higher plane, toward the top, without much effort.It is a good indication that you are ready.Osho,The longer I am your disciple, the less I know and understand.A magic pull brought me to Mumbai, and sitting in your presence has been like coming home again – glimpses of two hearts beating together, moments of love and wonder, days of joy and playfulness.Being back in Holland there is only this big longing left inside my heart: to sit at your feet again and again and again.Beloved Master, my mind is losing control, and my heart starts singing. What is happening?The mind is a habit. Even if there are moments when the heart is singing and the whole being is full of joy, the mind cannot leave its old habits. It will certainly ask what is happening. Can’t you allow things to happen without asking why, what?Do you understand why we ask such questions? The mind asks these questions because it wants to control your lifestyle, it wants to know everything that is going on. Nothing should happen which is beyond it; everything should be in its control. The mind is a great controller. And if everything remains in its control, it will be a tragedy because nothing great can happen to you. Everything that is great, magnificent, is beyond mind.And mind can never get the answer why, what, how. You have to learn one thing: that it is not necessary to satisfy the mind about every experience. Experiences of the heart, experiences of the being, experiences of the transcendental should not be made a point of inquiry. You should not ask why, you should enjoy them. You should not ask what is happening, because if you insist on these questions the happening will stop. These questions are not your friends. Let the mind ask questions only when something is going wrong. You are sick, you have a headache, your stomach has cramps – let the mind ask; that is the right realm for the mind.But your heart is dancing – what has the mind to do with it? Just tell the mind, “Keep quiet, this is not your world. Look at your affairs. You should not go on poking your nose everywhere.” The heart is a higher reality. The being is still higher, and there are realities higher than the being. Mind cannot ask questions about them, and no answer is possible. You will have to learn some new ways, and you will have to drop some old habits.So just make it a simple point,: if there is something wrong, you are miserable, misery is perfectly the right terrain where mind is needed. Without mind, you cannot create misery; it is the world of mind – then ask why. But it is strange: nobody comes to ask, “Why am I miserable?” But when the heart is dancing, people ask, “Why? What is happening?”The reason is because your heart has not danced for centuries, so the experience is so new that you get scared. You start feeling perhaps you are a little bit crazy, getting old, senile. What is happening? – because the experience is new. But remember, the mind’s area of concern is only with anything going wrong. The mind has the right to ask and to find the right cause and to put things right.But celebration, rejoicing, ecstasy – mind has nothing to do with them. Just tell the mind, “Rest, everything is going fine, you need not worry.” If you can teach the mind to ask the right questions and not to interfere in realms which are beyond it, you will have disciplined yourself for more and more, greater and higher experiences.Osho,It seems that my problems are getting more and more since I have become your sannyasin. Is that your work?It is my work.My work is to make you more and more aware, and when you become more aware you become aware of more problems. Those problems were there before. I don’t create your problems, it is just that you were unconscious, you were not taking any note. Those problems were there.It is just like a house which is in darkness, and many spiders are weaving their nests and scorpions are living and snakes are enjoying, and suddenly you bring light there. The light does not create the spiders or the scorpions or the snakes, but it makes you aware of them. And it is good to be aware, because then the house can be cleaned, then you can avoid the snakes.You have many problems which you are not seeing – which in fact, you do not want to see. You go on postponing. You are so afraid of seeing those problems because then you will have to solve them. But by postponing they are not solved; it is not so easy. Problems are not letters written to George Bernard Shaw.George Bernard Shaw used to collect letters; he would not open them. He would open them on the first of every month, so for thirty days he would collect thousands of letters from all over the world. His date was fixed: on the first of every month he would open them. And he would go on throwing them, because most of them had already been answered. It was rarely that some letter was left that had not answered itself.Somebody asked him, “This is a strange way…”He said, “It is not strange, it is the simplest way. When somebody does not get an answer for two weeks, three weeks, he gets the answer that this man is not going to answer. He drops the hope.”“And most of those letters are useless anyway. I am not going to waste my whole month. I have given them just one day – and any really authentic letter that needs my attention, I answer. This way, I save my time, I save their time; otherwise they would have to read…and this is such a difficult world that they would not only read they would reply also…again you have to read it.“It is better to finish it from the very beginning. It is a chain phenomenon; it can go on endlessly. And the more you allow it and then stop, the more it hurts. The first letter and it is finished – it does not hurt. The man just understands that this man is not the type who answers letters.”But problems are not letters, and life is not George Bernard Shaw. You cannot postpone. But people are postponing. They go on pushing them this way and that way, everywhere hiding them, thinking that some miracle…and things will settle down and problems will be solved. This is not going to happen. On the contrary, those problems will create their children. They will start finding boyfriends, girlfriends – two problems meeting together and a third problem is produced, and you will be in more difficulty.It is better to go on facing each problem as it comes by.It is not sannyas that has created your problems. Sannyas has simply given you a little more awareness. Your problems have always been there. Sannyas has given you the opportunity to solve them.And one should enjoy solving one’s problems. It sharpens your intelligence. Each problem is a challenge. Each problem makes you more intelligent. And the day you do not have any problems, your mind will come to its utmost clarity – because no dust, no problem. Your mind becomes a mirror, so pure that it reflects reality.Yes, it is my work. But don’t think that I am creating your problems. I am just giving you insight, awareness, silence, so that you can see your problems and solve them.

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-b/

Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 07 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When I came to Greece to see you, everything reflected more and more of the zorba.Now, being here in India, everything around you is reflecting more of the buddha.Osho, does this depend on being in Greece or India?Human history has been a tragedy. And the reason for it being a tragedy is not very complex. You do not have to go very far to find it out; it is in everybody.The whole past of man has created a split in man; there is a constant civil war in every human being. If you do not feel at ease, the reason is not personal. Your disease is social. The strategy that has been used is to divide you into two enemy camps: the zorba and the buddha, the materialist and the spiritualist.You are not divided in reality. In reality you are a harmonious whole. But in your mind the conditioning is that you are not one whole, one piece; you have to fight against your body. If you want to be a spiritual being, the body has to be conquered, defeated, destroyed, tortured in every possible way. This has been the accepted ideology all over the world. In different cultures, different religions, the formulations may be different, but the basic rule is the same: divide man, create a conflict in him so one part starts feeling higher, becomes holy, starts condemning the other part as the sinner.And the trouble is that you are one, there is no way to divide you. Every division is going to create misery in you, every division will mean that half of your being is fighting with the other half. And if you are fighting within yourself, how can you be at ease? The whole of humanity up to now has lived in a schizophrenic way. Everyone has been cut into pieces, fragments. Your religions, your philosophies, your ideologies have not been healing processes; they have been root causes of inner conflict and war. You have been wounding yourself. Your right hand wounds the left hand, your left hand wounds the right hand; both your hands become wounded.The West finally chose to go with the zorba. There was no other way to remain sane – one part had to be completely destroyed, ignored, forgotten. The West denied the inner reality of man, his consciousness – there is no soul, man is only body, and eat, drink and be merry is the only religion. This was simply a way to find some peace of mind, to get out of the conflict, to come to a decision and a conclusion, because this is accepting that you are one: just matter, just body.The East has chosen the other way, but the basic problem is the same. The East has chosen that you are the soul, and the body is an illusion. Matter does not exist, the world is made of the same stuff as dreams are made of, so don’t be bothered about it. Renounce it, forget all about it; it is not worth taking note of.On the surface it seems that East and West are doing different things, but essentially they are not doing different things. Essentially they are trying to find a rational way to be one, because to be two means a constant dis-ease, a conflict. It is better to drop the idea of the other.The East says that the body is illusory, it is only an appearance, a shadow; it has no reality. The West says that consciousness is a byproduct – it does not exist in itself, it is an appearance. When the body dies nothing remains, the body is all, and the consciousness that you feel is just the combination of all the elements of the body.For example, if you take all the parts of your car separately, or all the parts of your watch separately, do you think something like a soul will be released out of the watch? Who was running the watch? It was just because of the combination of the parts in a certain way that the watch was running, the car was running, that all machines are working; it is a byproduct. Put all the parts together again and the watch will start ticking. The soul has not gone anywhere, there has been no soul in the first place.As far as I am concerned, I see that the fundamental reason is to somehow choose one and decide that the other is illusory, so that you can be at peace, so that there is no need to fight, torture, and be in constant fear of being defeated. Why have the East and the West chosen differently? That also has to be understood.The Eastern mind, in search of a unitary being, tried to find out: what exactly is this inner consciousness that the Eastern mystics, saints and sages have been talking about, and calling the body illusory? To us the body seems to be real, and consciousness is just a word. But because all the saints in the East were insisting that this word consciousness is your reality, the East has tried to find out what this reality is before deciding in favor of the body. The natural tendency will be to decide in favor of the body, because the body is there, already appearing real – consciousness you have to search for, you have to go into an inner pilgrimage.The East, because of people like Gautam Buddha and Mahavira, could not deny that these people were sincere. Their sincerity was so clear, their presence was so impressive, their words were so authoritative – it was impossible to deny. No argument was enough, because these people were their own argument, their own validity. And they were so peaceful and so joyful, so relaxed, so fearless. They had everything that every human being desires – and in a way they had nothing. Certainly they had found a source within themselves, a treasure. And you cannot just deny it without giving enough time to the search. Unless you find that there is no consciousness, you cannot deny it. We had people so fragrant… We could not see their roses, but the fragrance was so much that the East tried to look inside, and found that the soul is far more real. The body is just an appearance.And just by the way, it will be significant to remind you that modern science has come to the conclusion that matter is illusory, that matter does not exist; it only appears. They have come to the conclusion from a very different route. By searching deeply, they have found that, as they reach deeper into matter, it is less and less substantial. And at a point after the atom, there is no matter at all: there are only electrons, which are particles of electricity – which is not matter but energy. Just a hundred years ago, Nietzsche declared, “God is dead,” not knowing at all that within a hundred years the whole of science would agree that perhaps God may be alive, but matter is dead.The East has moved inward and found that the body, matter, is relatively non-substantial. The ultimate reality belongs to consciousness. In the West, development happened in a different way. And there are reasons why it happened in that way.The East is ancient. At least ten thousand years of constant, consistent search for the inner reality of man – and all the genius of the East has been devoted to it. When the Upanishads were being written in the East, nearabout five thousand years ago, the West did not exist as a human society at all. In India we have Mohenjo Daro, Harrapur: cities that existed seven thousand years ago, with such refined development – they have streets as wide as those in Mumbai. They have bedrooms with attached bathrooms.And you will be surprised at why I am saying this: because just a hundred years ago in America, there was a court case against bathrooms, which went up to the Supreme Court. The first man who made a bathroom attached to his bedroom… Christianity was against it because this is dirty – making your bathroom attached to your bedroom. This is un-Christian; cleanliness is next to godliness – and here is the bathroom next to the bedroom! Just a hundred years ago…and the Supreme Court had to decide that there is nothing unclean in it, and if somebody wants to have a bathroom attached to his bedroom it is nobody else’s business to interfere, and it has nothing to do with your religion. But the church was fighting.In Harapur, seven thousand years ago, they had bathrooms attached to their bedrooms, they had bathtubs, and they had a very special arrangement for circulation of water in the city. Hot and cold water in your bathroom is not a new thing; it was available in Harapur, in Mohenjo Daro. They had swimming pools. It must have been a very highly cultured society.At the time of Gautam Buddha, just twenty-five centuries ago, even then the West was not very evolved. And you can see it. We did not crucify Gautam Buddha, and the West crucified Jesus Christ five hundred years after Gautam Buddha.And what Jesus was saying was nothing compared to Gautam Buddha. Gautam Buddha was saying that there is no God; still, nobody thought of crucifying him. Jesus Christ was not saying anything against Judaism; on the contrary, he was simply saying that he was their lost prophet. And he was repeating everything written in the Old Testament – he was not saying anything that was contradicting the old religion. And Gautam Buddha was contradicting everything in Hinduism: he said that the Vedas are idiotic, he said that there is no God, he said that all priests are the most cunning people in the world. And priests in India, the brahmins, are the highest caste. But nobody thought of crucifying him.People challenged him for discussions, people discussed, and because they could not defeat him in argument… They could not defeat him. When they came in front of him, they were sincere enough to realize and recognize that he knew better, that their knowledge was only bookish, and his knowledge was authentic experience.Western development is childish compared to Eastern development. It begins in Greece. But even a man like Socrates, who was neither denying God nor affirming God, who was simply saying, “I have not experienced, hence I cannot be untruthful. I cannot say whether God exists or not. And I would like everybody to be sincere about it. Unless you encounter, don’t say yes, don’t say no; remain agnostic, keep your conclusions suspended.” A very reasonable man, but he was poisoned. He has not denied your tradition, he has not denied your past, he has not denied anything – he simply argued for a more rational approach, a more logical approach. It is not a crime. And this is the reward that he gets: he is poisoned, society decides that he is a dangerous man. Those people who could have changed Western society toward inner reality are being crucified or poisoned. Naturally, the talented people became afraid even of talking about inner things, mysteries. They started talking only about objective things, matter, because matter cannot be denied. And there is no problem with going into a deep search into matter.The crucifixion of Jesus and the death of Socrates closed the door for Western genius to move inward. Anybody who had any intelligence became aware that it is simply inviting your death; it is better to use your talents and genius in such a way that the society cannot condemn it. So the whole genius of Western humanity became a servant for creating more comforts for the body, more technology, more machines, more knowledge about matter – and everybody was happy. Even in these matters, if there was something that went against religion, immediately the church was there to stop it.For example, when Galileo wrote that the sun does not go around the earth as it appears to, but that in actuality the earth goes around the sun, as it does not appear to, he was called by the pope to his court and told – and he was old, seventy-five years old, sick and almost on his deathbed – “You have to change your book because it goes against the Bible. In the Bible the statement is that the sun goes around the earth, and we are not ready to listen to any argument. Simply change it; otherwise death will be your punishment.”Such an idiotic church, which is not even ready to listen to any argument, which only knows to dictate: “Do it or be ready to die.” Galileo must have had a great sense of humor. He said, “There is no need for you to take so much trouble to kill me. I am going to die anyway. As far as the book is concerned, I will change it, but I want you to remember that by my changing the book, neither is the earth going to change nor is the sun going to change. The earth will still go around the sun, because they don’t read my book and they don’t care what I write.” So he canceled the statement in his book. And in the footnote he wrote, “I am canceling the statement, knowing perfectly well that it makes no difference. The reality remains the same.”When Copernicus found that the earth is not flat, as it is said in the Bible, but round, he was immediately in trouble. Now, these matters have nothing to do with religion. What has religion to do with whether the earth is round or flat? It can have any geometrical shape – religion does not have anything to do with it.But Christianity, Mohammedanism, are very primitive religions. They don’t have the cultured, sophisticated attitude of Hinduism, Jainism, Buddhism, Taoism. They don’t know how to argue, they only know how to fight. Their only argument is the sword: at the point of the sword, it is to be decided who is right.It is the church – you will be surprised to know – that has prevented the West from going in the direction of inwardness. It forced Western humanity to go toward matter. The inner was the church’s absolute monopoly, and it decided everything about it. There was no need to search, there was no need to discover, there was no need to meditate. You were only supposed to believe in God. But if did something as far as matter is concerned, there would be no problem as long as it did not come in conflict with the Bible.Copernicus said to the pope, “It is just a small thing, and I have every proof that the earth is round. It is my lifelong work, and it does not affect your religiousness.”The pope said, “You don’t understand. The question is not whether it affects our religiousness or not; the question is that the Bible is God’s book, the holy book. If one statement in the Bible is proved wrong, that has great implications: first, that God can be wrong. We cannot accept that.”They cannot even accept that the pope can be wrong, what to say about God? The pope is a faraway representative. Jesus represents God, and the pope represents Jesus – not directly, but through hundreds of popes who have died before him. He is connected through them to Jesus, and Jesus has a direct telephone line to God.Just one statement against the Bible, if it is proved valid, makes God fallible. And it cannot be accepted – that’s one thing.Secondly, if one statement is proved wrong, what is the guarantee about other statements? It creates suspicion. It destroys the very foundation of belief and faith. “So we cannot accept anything in the Bible as wrong, but you can do everything that does not go against the Bible.” Naturally only matter is left. You can do research in physics, in chemistry, in biology, in zoology, in geology. You can do all these things; you are free to do so.The church has been like the Great China Wall, preventing people from going inward. It looks strange, but it is a fact: the Christian church has proved to be the greatest enemy of religion on the earth. Other religions have also proved to be enemies, but not that great. Genius was left to work only with matter. In the East, the genius had first preference for the inner journey. Only second-class, mediocre people would work for the outer, material things; real intelligence would always move into meditativeness.Slowly, slowly, the distance became bigger. The West became materialist – and the whole responsibility goes to the Christian church – and the Eastern humanity became more and more spiritualist. The division, the split that was created in each man, became a split on a wider scale: as East and West.One great poet has written, “East is East and West is West, and never the twain shall meet.” And this man, Lord Kipling, was very much interested in the East. He lived in India for years; he was in the government service. But seeing the difference: the whole Eastern consciousness moves inward and the Western consciousness moves outward – how could they meet?My whole work is just to prove Lord Kipling wrong. I would like to say – neither West is West nor East is East, and the twain have already met.What do you mean by east? In Mumbai, Calcutta is east; in Calcutta, Mumbai is west. This is nonsense; these words are relative words. You cannot say that a certain place is east and a certain place is west; they are all relative. For the people of Calcutta, Tokyo is east – and that’s what the Japanese think. They call their land “the land of sunrise” and they call their king “the only begotten son of the sun god.” The sun god is the real god, and Hirohito, the king of Japan, is his only son.In fact, in the Second World War when the Japanese were defeated, they could not believe it. Thousands of soldiers committed suicide just out of shame – “How can it happen that God’s son should be defeated? Now there is no point in living, everything has gone wrong.” They believe that they are the real east.Nobody is east and nobody is west. But the attitudes can be understood, and they are very prominent. And my whole approach is to bring a bridge into each individual, so that you are one whole. Don’t be against your body; it is your home. Don’t be against your consciousness, because without consciousness your house may be very decorated but it won’t have any master, it will be empty. Together they create a beauty, a fuller life.Symbolically, I have chosen Zorba for the body and Buddha for the soul.Your question is that when I was in Greece I was talking more about Zorba, and here in India the atmosphere seems to be closer to Buddha. Your observation is true.In Greece I was talking about Zorba. Still they deported me. If I had been talking about Buddha, you would not have seen me again! I was talking about Zorba because that is the foundation. But I was making it clear that Zorba alone is only the foundation of the house, it is not the house itself.In India I am talking about Buddha, but I have not forgotten Zorba. Each statement that I make – whether it is about Zorba or about Buddha – implies the other automatically, because to me they are inseparable. It is only a question of emphasis. To make the Greek mind understand, I emphasized Zorba.The ambassador to America in Sri Lanka wrote me a letter saying, “Your followers around the world are making restaurants, discos, and calling them Zorba the Buddha. It is very insulting to Buddha. And if you do such a thing in a country like Sri Lanka, there can be violence. I advise you to drop this name.”I told my secretary to write to him “In the first place, nobody has a monopoly on Zorba or on Buddha. Secondly, we are not concerned with Gautam the Buddha; buddha is not a personal name, it is a quality. It means the awakened one. Anyone who is awakened can be called the buddha. Gautam Buddha is only one of the millions of buddhas who have happened and who will happen. And you cannot prevent Zorba from becoming a buddha. In fact, you should help me to make zorbas into buddhas, because that is the only real revolution – that a materialist, a zorba, who knows nothing of higher consciousness, becomes a buddha.” He never replied.Zorba has his own beauty. And the island in Greece where I was staying is the place where Kazantzakis, the novelist who created the novel Zorba the Greek… Zorba is a fictitious name; he is not a historical person. But the island where I was staying was the island where Kazantzakis was born.And Kazantzakis is one of the best novelists of this century, and he suffered tremendously at the hands of the church. Finally, when he wrote Zorba the Greek, he was expelled from the church. By writing Zorba he was forced: “Withdraw your book Zorba; otherwise you will be expelled.” Because he did not withdraw the book, he was expelled from Christianity and condemned to hell.Zorba is really Kazantzakis’ own individuality, which Christianity had repressed, which he could not live, which he wanted to live. He expressed that whole unlived part of his life in the name of Zorba. Zorba is a beautiful man – no fear of hell, no greed for heaven, living moment to moment, enjoying small things: food, drink, women. After the day’s work, he would take his musical instrument and dance on the beach for hours.And the other part of Kazantzakis, which he lived in Zorba the Greek – Zorba is the servant – the other part is the master who employed Zorba as his servant. He is always sad and sitting in his office, doing his files, never laughing, never enjoying himself, never going out and always feeling deep down jealous of Zorba because he earns a little, not much, but he lives like an emperor, not thinking of tomorrow, of what will happen. He eats well, he drinks well, he sings well, he dances well. And his master, who is very rich, is just sitting there sad, tense, in anguish, in misery, suffering.One day Zorba says to his master – which is Kazantzakis himself – “Master, there is only one thing wrong with you: you think too much. Come with me.” It was a full-moon night.Kazantzakis objected: “No, no! What are you doing?”But Zorba pulled him out to the beach and started dancing, playing his instrument. And he told Kazantzakis, “Try. Jump! If you cannot dance, do something.” And with Zorba’s energy and his vibe, Kazantzakis also started dancing. For the first time in his life he felt that he was alive. Zorba is the unlived part of every so-called religious person.And when Zorba was published why was the church so much against it? It was just a novel; there was nothing for the church to be worried about. But it was so clear that it was about the unlived Christian in every Christian; this book could be a dangerous book. And it is a dangerous book.But Zorba is tremendously beautiful. Kazantzakis sends him to purchase some things from the city, and he forgets all. He drinks and goes to the prostitutes and enjoys, and once in a while he remembers that it seems many days have passed but still, the money is with him. Unless all the money is finished, how can he return? The master will be very angry, but nothing can be done about it – it is his problem. And after three weeks he comes back, and he had gone only for three days, and he does not bring anything that he was sent for. And he comes with all the stories: “What a great journey it was, you should have been there. I met such beautiful bubalinas…and such good wine.”And the master said, “But what about the things? For three weeks I have been sitting here boiling.”He said, “When there are so many beautiful things available, who bothers about such small things? You can cut my salary every week, by and by, slowly, and take your money back. I am sorry I could not come earlier. And you should be happy that I have come – because the money was finished I had to come. But next time when I go, I will bring all the things.”He said, “You will never go again. I will send somebody else.”Zorba’s whole life is a life of simple, physical enjoyment, but without any anxiety, without any guilt, without any botheration about sin and virtue and…I would like this man Zorba to be alive in everybody, because it is your natural inheritance. But you should not stop at Zorba. Zorba is only the beginning. Sooner or later, if you allow your zorba full expression, you are bound to find something better, higher, greater. It will not come out of thinking; it will come out of your experiences, because those small experiences will become boring.Buddha himself had come to be a buddha because he had lived the life of a zorba. That thing has not been noticed by the East: that for twenty-nine years Buddha lived as no Zorba could ever live. Zorba was so poor in comparison.Gautam Buddha’s father had arranged for all the beautiful girls to be picked from the whole kingdom for Buddha’s enjoyment. He made three beautiful palaces in three different places for different seasons. He had beautiful gardens and lakes. Buddha’s whole life was just luxury, pure luxury. But he got bored.One of the most significant experiences that he comes across was when one night beautiful girls were dancing He was drinking, they were drinking, and then everybody fell asleep drunk. In the middle of the night he woke up and looked around, and he was shocked, and that shock was one of the turning points in his life. Some girl was snoring – she was a beautiful girl, but her mouth was open and snoring she looked so ugly; the saliva was coming out. Somebody’s nose was flowing. He said, “My God, this is what beauty is!” He was finished. Those girls were dispersed the next morning. “I don’t want any girls in my palaces. Enough is enough.”In fact, it was too much. In twenty-nine years he lived almost the equivalent of four or five lives of an ordinary man. With all that luxury, he soon found himself tired and bored, and a question became very prominent in his mind: “Is this all? Then what am I going to live tomorrow for? Life must mean something more; otherwise, it is meaningless.” It was out of the zorba that the search for the buddha, started. Not everybody becomes a buddha; and the basic reason is that the zorba remains unlived.Do you see my argument? My argument is: live Zorba fully, and you will naturally enter into the life of a buddha.Kazantzakis has written Zorba the Greek. He’s dead. If he had been allowed to live longer… He was sick, he was very tense; he remained very miserable because he was always afraid of sin. And then when he was expelled from the Christian church – that means condemned to hell; only Christians can go to paradise – it was such a shock that he could not survive. He was really killed by the Christian church expelling him.If he were alive, I would have told him: “Your book is half. You need to write another book, Zorba the Buddha. Then it will be a complete phenomenon. But you can write the other book only if you live your zorba. You have not even lived zorba; how can you live the buddha?”Enjoy your body; enjoy your physical existence. There is no sin in it. Hidden behind it is your spiritual growing, is your spiritual blissfulness. When you are tired of physical pleasures, only then will you ask, “Is there something more?” And this question cannot be only intellectual, it has to be existential. “Is there something more?” And when the question is existential, you will find within yourself something more.There is something much more. Zorba is only the beginning. Once the buddha, the awakened soul, takes possession of you, then you will know that pleasure was not even a shadow. There is so much bliss. This bliss is not against pleasure. In fact, it is pleasure, which has brought you to bliss. There is no fight between Zorba and Buddha. Zorba is the arrow – if you follow it rightly, you will reach the Buddha.Certainly in Greece there is an atmosphere different from that in India. The Greek personality has remained materialistic. In India, the basic, essential atmosphere is that of the awakened soul. Whether you go on sleeping, it doesn’t matter, but the atmosphere around you is that of the sunrise. The birds are singing, the flowers are blossoming, and from everywhere the indication is for you to wake up.I will go to Greece again because I have been enjoying all these deportations. And next time I have to talk about Buddha – because I have talked only about Zorba, and I never leave anything incomplete. And already, the minister of interior in Greece has invited me: “We will make arrangements, you come.”I said, “I will come but, at least for three weeks, don’t deport me” – because no country seems to be able to have me for more than three weeks. A few countries are so stupid that they cannot even have me for thirty-six hours.England proved to be the worst. They would not allow me six hours to sleep at the airport – not even entering England, but just the airport lounge. They wouldn’t allow me to sleep there for six hours.I said, “What reasons have you got?”And the airport officer said, “We have no reasons. This is the file, the information from the prime minister is that this man is dangerous and should not be allowed in.”But I said, “I am not entering England, and from the lounge there is no way to enter into England. And you have checked me well – I am not carrying any bombs or anything. And sleeping six hours in the airport, what danger can I cause? Just think…”He said, “Don’t put me in trouble, because tomorrow it is going to be in parliament and then I will be answerable – ‘Why did you allow him?’”So I had to go to jail for six hours. They said, “The only place we can allow you to remain is in jail.”And the next day in parliament the question was there, and I am always surprised that the question is asked and the same answer is given, that the man is very dangerous. But nobody in the parliament has the intelligence to ask, “What danger could he have been just sleeping in the lounge at the airport? He may be dangerous, but what danger could he have been?” Nobody in the parliament asked.So I have informed the minister in Greece that I will go. I have to go. I was really thinking to stay longer, and I had fifteen more days on the visa to stay, but the archbishop of Greece threatened the government that if they didn’t deport me immediately then they were going to burn down the house where I was staying – burn me alive and all the people who were staying with me, – dynamite the house. And the government was threatened, and they thought, “Some problem may arise, it is better to send this man away immediately.”I was asleep when I was arrested. You don’t arrest people when they are asleep. And they had no reason, because I had not gone out of the house for fifteen days. I said, “You have to show some reason why you are deporting me.”They said, “We don’t have any reason, just orders from above.” And all the orders were based on the threat of the archbishop. It is the same archbishop who expelled Kazantzakis.And these people are living almost out of date, out of time. They are not contemporaries. Because the day they deported me from the island, the people of the island, who had no idea about me, just rumors… But seeing the threat of the archbishop they all felt ashamed. And they asked me, “What can we do? We are poor people.”I said, “All of you go to the airport to show the archbishop how many people are with him and how many people are with me – although I have been here for only fifteen days and they have been here for two thousand years.” And there were only six old women with the archbishop in the church, and three thousand people, the whole island, at the airport.Still they don’t understand that they are no longer needed, that their time is finished. And they talk about loving your enemy and loving your neighbor, and God is love – and they threaten a man, who has not done anything, that they will burn him alive, with all his friends. At least twenty-five people were staying in that big mansion.This shows that somehow the Western mind has not grown toward inwardness, toward love, toward non-violence. Their whole approach is materialistic. Two thousand years after Jesus was crucified, and this man is threatening me – Jesus Christ’s representative in Greece is threatening me – that he will burn me alive. Does he represent Jesus Christ or was he also one of the rabbis who crucified Jesus Christ?The mind of the priest in the west has been a hindrance to Western growth toward meditation. But a strange time of revolution has come – at least for the new generation, because the new generation is not with these old priests and these old churches. And the new generation in the West is looking toward the East. That’s a great hope.That is Zorba searching for Gautam Buddha.Osho,Thoughts of death have been a frequent visitor during my disciplehood. How can a disciple die in a master's presence, especially when the master is physically distant?Osho, is Mahakashyap the only answer?The question is not whether or not you are in the presence of the master, but whether or not you are filled with love and trust for the master. Physical closeness means nothing. Only spiritual closeness is significant. Your love, your trust is enough. You can be on the moon and the master will be by your side – really, the master will be inside you – because as your love deepens, something of the master, his energies, start melting and merging with you. The fear of physical distance is the fear of lack of love and trust.Mahakashyap alone is not the answer. Everybody has to be an answer unto himself. Mahakashyap remained with Buddha, and after Buddha’s death he died; he could not survive separately. But that is Mahakashyapa’s uniqueness. It is not the only answer.I will tell you a few other stories around Buddha so you can understand:Ananda lived with Buddha for forty-two years. Nobody else lived so long with Buddha, nobody was allowed to live so long with him. But there was a problem. Ananda was Buddha’s cousin-brother, and older than him, and the Eastern tradition… Before taking initiation – Ananda was the elder brother – he said to Gautam Buddha, “Siddharth” – Siddharth was his family name – “Listen, after initiation, whatever you say I will have to do. I will be your disciple; you will be my master. Right now I am your elder brother, you are my younger brother; whatever I say you have to do. Three things you have to remember – don’t forget them when I become a disciple.” It is a beautiful story.Buddha said, “What are the three things?”Ananda said, “First, I will always live with you; you cannot send me anywhere else to spread the message. Second, if I want anybody to meet you – even in the middle of the night – you cannot say no; that is my personal privilege. And thirdly, I will sleep in the same room where you sleep. Even in sleep, you cannot make me stay in a different place.” Buddha promised, and these three conditions were followed for forty-two years. But Ananda did not become enlightened. You can understand his pain and his anguish – people who had come long after him became enlightened, and he remained in his ignorance just the same as before. The day Buddha died he said, “What will happen to me? I could not become enlightened even though I was with you for forty-two years, day in, day out, twenty-four hours a day. Without you, I don’t see any hope.”Buddha said, “You don’t understand the dynamics of life. Perhaps you will become enlightened only when I am gone; I am the barrier. You take me for granted. “The day you asked those three conditions, I thought that those conditions were going to be a barrier for you. You cannot forget that you are my elder brother, even now. You cannot forget that you have a certain privilege over others. You cannot forget that I have agreed on three conditions only for you, for nobody else. Perhaps my death will help.”Buddha died. And after twenty-four hours, there was a great meeting of all the enlightened disciples to write down whatever Buddha had said in those forty-two years. But the problem was that nobody had been with him continuously for forty-two years except Ananda – but he could not be allowed in the meeting because he was not enlightened. An ignorant man, unenlightened – you cannot rely on what he is saying, whether he heard it or imagined it, whether he has forgotten something, whether he has put his own interpretation on it. It was difficult.And the scene was really tragic. The conference was inside a hall and Ananda was sitting outside on the steps crying. Because he had lived with Buddha for forty-two years, he knew more than anybody else. He remembered each single moment, but he was unenlightened. Crying, sitting there outside the hall, something transpired. He had not cried his whole life. With those tears, his ego disappeared; he became like a child. They opened the door to see whether Ananda was still sitting outside – because they had told him, “Sit outside. If we need some confirmation from you, we will ask you, but you cannot enter the conference.”They saw a transformed being. The old Ananda, the old egoist had gone. An innocent being with tears of joy…and they all could see the light surrounding him.They invited him, “Come in. Now there is no need for us to be worried. But it is strange. You could not become enlightened for forty-two years, and just after twenty-four hours you have attained that state” – and this situation had been continually emphasized by Gautam Buddha.Ananda said, “It was my fault. His death became the death of my ego too.”All the scriptures that are in existence were related by Ananda. There were other enlightened disciples who did not die with Gautam Buddha. It was asked – when Mahakashyap died, it became a very significant question, it was asked of other enlightened disciples – “If Mahakashyap has died, how are you living?”One of the disciples, Moggalayan, said, “I have to live now for my master’s message. I am not living anymore – I died with him; now he is living in me. That was one way, the way of Mahakashyap – to dissolve into Gautam Buddha. This is another way. I have also dissolved, but dying is not going to help anybody. And there are so many blind people in the world who need eyes, there are so many people in darkness who need light. I will live. I will live as long as it is possible; I will live for Buddha.”So it is not a question of one person being decisive. Each person has to be unique in his own way. Somebody dies for the master, somebody lives for the master, and you cannot say who is greater – perhaps no comparison is right. Both are themselves.Just remember one thing: your love. Then wherever you are, space and the distance in space do not matter. And at a certain depth, even time does not matter.And when both time and space are immaterial, then you have really touched the feet of the master. Then whatsoever transpires in you – to live for the message or to die, whatever comes naturally and spontaneously – let it happen.

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-b/

Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 08 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I often wanted to ask you some questions, but after waiting for a while, I always found my questions answered by you. And at the same time I found out that all those questions were just silly questions, coming from my mind without any connection to my heart. My heart only wants to cry, and my mind only wants to know, despite any answer.Could you please comment on how to deal with a continuous questioning mind that is not interested in any answer anyway? Or am I just a Greek donkey?The disciple who can wait will find all his questions answered at the right moment. But waiting is a great quality; it is deep patience, it is great trust. The mind cannot wait, it is always in a hurry. It knows nothing about patience; hence it goes on piling questions upon questions without getting the answer.It is something very delicate to understand: that it is not the answer that is significant but the right timing, your readiness to receive it; otherwise it will just go above your head. The impatient mind is too occupied in questioning. It forgets that questioning in itself is a meaningless activity – the real thing is the answer, but for the answer you need a certain silence, peace, openness, receptivity. The mind is incapable of these qualities; hence, for thousands of years the mind has been asking and asking but it finds no answer.In the world of the mind there are only questions. And in the world of the heart there is only the answer, because the heart knows how not to ask, how to wait – let the spring come by itself; wait like a thirsty earth, the rainclouds will come, they have always been coming. There is no need to distrust, because there is not even a single exception where trust has failed, where waiting is not fulfilled, where patience is not immensely rewarded.The functioning of the heart and the mind are totally different, not only different but diametrically opposite. The mind creates philosophies, theologies, ideologies – they are all questions that don’t have any answer. The heart simply waits. At the right moment, the answer blossoms by itself.The heart has no question, yet it receives the answer. The mind has a thousand and one questions, yet it never receives any answer because it does not know how to receive.Your mind is full of questions; yet you have been observing that, by and by, they are being answered. This should create in you a new insight, a new trust. A new dimension is opening: that you have just to wait, alert and awake, and if it is needed the answer will come to you.You are also seeing that most of the questions that the mind is filled with are silly. They are – not most of them, all of them are – silly for the simple reason that mind does not go through the discipline of asking receptively. It is more concerned with questions. Even while the answer is being given, it has moved on to another question. Perhaps, listening to the answer, it has created ten more questions out of the answer itself.Questions arise out of the mind just like leaves grow on trees. And slowly, slowly, they become more and more silly, because it is very difficult to find many significant questions, and the mind is not satisfied with a small quantity of questions. It is greedy. It wants to ask everything; it wants to know everything without being ready to understand anything.There are few significant questions – and there is only one really fundamental question – but that small quantity does not satisfy the greed of the mind. You will be amazed to know that the English word greed comes from a very strange word in Sanskrit – and if you want to see those people from where this word has come, Mumbai has most of them. In Sanskrit the vulture is called giddha, and from giddha comes greed. And Mumbai has the greatest number of vultures in the whole world, because Mumbai has the greatest number of Parsis.There is a certain relationship between Parsis and vultures. Parsis have a very strange way of disposing of their dead. They don’t burn them like Hindus, Buddhists, Jainas; they don’t bury them like Christians, Mohammedans and Jews. They have a unique way of their own, and they have a certain rationale for it. In their cemetery – and Mumbai has the biggest, because Mumbai has the biggest population of Parsis – they have a big well. There are steel rods on top of the well. The dead body is put on those steel rods, and between the steel rods there are gaps. All around, there are big, ancient trees and thousands of vultures sit there, waiting for some poor Parsi to die. The vultures need food every day; Parsis supply the food. The dead body of the Parsi is put on those rods on top of the well, and the vultures eat whatever is edible. And whatever is not edible – bones, et cetera – goes on falling through the gaps between the rods into the well.On the surface it looks very strange: “What are you doing?” – but the Parsis have their rationale. In this world everybody has some reasonable grounds for every superstition. They say, “Because we have been eating everything, now it is our duty to be eaten.” A beautiful logic – you have been eating for your whole life. If you are a meat-eater you have been eating animals. If you are a vegetarian, then you have been eating vegetables; they too are life. For your whole life you have been eating, and it is natural to be part of the same circle by being eaten.According to the Parsis, this is the most natural thing. And I think people who believe in nature will support their idea – because to burn a body is to destroy food, is to unnecessarily kill a few vultures, or keep them hungry.In a Hindu village, vultures don’t exist – what will they do there? At the most, once in a while a cow dies, or a buffalo, and they can eat that. Now there is a widespread movement among intellectuals around the earth that we should not break natural cycles anywhere. For our whole lives we have been eating – now it is time that we should be eaten. And anyway you are dead; why unnecessarily destroy good food for the vultures?Just go there in Mumbai, you will see a beautiful scene – you will not see it anywhere else in the whole world – so many vultures sitting together just waiting for poor Parsis to die, praying to God, “Finish someone today.” And God seems to listen to the vultures; some Parsi is bound to come.The English word greed comes from the same root as giddha, the vulture. The vulture is one of the ugliest birds you can conceive of. And greed is certainly one of the ugliest things in man that you can think of. But the mind is a vulture. It is never satisfied with anything. You go on giving to it; it goes on taking and goes on asking for more. It never feels grateful; it is always complaining that it is not enough. Nothing is enough to the mind. Question after question – meaningful, meaningless, relevant, irrelevant – and not even a small space for any answer to enter into your mind. It is so crowded with questions.The heart knows no questions. And this is one of the mysteries of life: that the mind questions the whole life long and never receives any answer, and the heart never asks but receives the answer. But there is one thing to be remembered: the mind is noisy, there is maddening noise. The heart may be receiving the answer, but because of the noise of the mind you may not come to feel that the answer has been received, that you are carrying it with you, that you are pregnant with it.Not only does the mind disturb your peace, your silence; it disturbs it to such an extent that the heart, which is capable of listening to silence, waiting, receptive, is denied all connection with your being. The mind monopolizes your being; it simply puts the heart aside. And because the heart is silent, and a gentleman, it does not quarrel; it simply goes down the street, waits by the side of the road.Mind wants to occupy the whole space. The disciple has to understand this whole situation – that the dictatorship of the mind has to be destroyed, that the mind is only a servant, not a master. The master is the heart, because all that is beautiful grows in the heart; all that is valuable comes out of the heart: your love, your compassion, your meditation. Anything that is valuable grows in the garden of the heart.Mind is a desert, nothing grows there – only sand and sand and barren land. It has never given any fruit, any flower. You have to understand it: mind should not be supported as much as you have been supporting it up to now. Mind has to be put in its right place.The throne belongs to the heart. And this is the revolution through which the disciple becomes a devotee: when the heart becomes the master, and the mind becomes a servant. This has to be remembered: that as a servant, the mind is perfect. As a master, it is the worst master possible; as a servant, it is the best.And the heart – wherever it is, either on the throne or on the street – is your only hope, the only possibility for you to be bridged with your being, to be bridged with existence. It is the only possibility for songs to arise in you, stars to descend in you, for your life to become a rejoicing, a dance.You are asking me how to stop this mind, its constant questioning, its silly crowd of questions. That is where everybody takes the wrong step. If you try to stop it, you will never be able to stop it. Ignore it. Be indifferent to it. Let it chatter. Be aloof, unconcerned – as if it does not matter whether it chatters or not, whether there are questions or not. Only this aloofness, this ignoring – Buddha has given it the right name, upeksha – this indifference slowly, slowly makes the miracle happen.What you want to achieve by fighting is not possible, because when you fight with someone you are giving energy to the enemy. You are giving attention, and attention is food; you are getting entangled with the mind, and mind enjoys a good fight. It has never happened that anybody has been able to stop the mind by fighting with it. That is the most important thing to understand: don’t take any step toward fighting. Just ignore, just be aloof, just let the mind do whatever it wants to do. When the mind feels unwelcome, when the mind sees that you are no longer interested in it, that it is pointless to go on shouting – you are not even hearing it, you are not even curious about what is going on in the mind – it stops.It happened…and I have remembered it because the boy is here today. He is my sister’s son.He was very young, six years old. We had gone to see the chief minister of Madhya Pradesh and the boy’s father was driving. The father had gone to make inquiries, to say that I had come, and ask whether the chief minister was in the house or not.At that very moment – the boy must have been feeling sleepy in the jeep; we had come a long distance – he fell asleep and hit his head on the dashboard in front of him. He looked at me. I didn’t pay any attention; I looked outside the jeep. He was going to cry and create trouble – he looked again and again I looked outside.Then his father came out. I went in for a half-hour meeting. Then we went home. It was almost two hours later, as we arrived home, that he started crying. As soon as he saw his mother he immediately started crying. I said, “What happened?”He said, “I hit my head on the jeep.”I said, “That happened two hours ago!”He said, “I know, but there was no point in crying because twice I looked at you and you looked outside the window. What is the point in crying with such a man? You did not even ask what had happened…you had seen that I had hit my head. Now my mother is here; now I can cry.”Even that small child could understand that when there is indifference, it is pointless to make any fuss; it is as if there was nobody in the jeep.When you are indifferent, the mind starts feeling as if there is nobody – what is the point of all the questions? Because you are interested, curious, you get involved; you are giving juice to the mind.Indifference to the mind is meditation.And all those questions will disappear, because they are absolutely meaningless. And when the chattering of the mind has disappeared, there is a silence, a peace, so that you can hear the still, small voice of your heart. Only the heart knows the answer – it already knows it.And if you are with a master, the heart simply says yes to the master, because the heart knows the answer already. Perhaps the master is putting it in a better way, more articulate, but the heart is in complete agreement. And that agreement dissolves all distances between the master and the disciple. Then silence is not only silence, it is also communion. Then things are not said but heard; then things are not said but shown.And when the heart is totally willing, life is such a simple, uncomplicated phenomenon that you cannot conceive of anything more simple. It is the mind which creates complications, goes on creating complications and questions. Mind’s whole expertise is to create complications. If you want to live a simple, a beautiful, a silent, a joyful, a blissful life, let the mind be ignored and let the heart be restored to its status as master. This is the whole work of a religious seeker; nothing more is needed.Osho,I have never been good at remembering my dreams. They seem to be there only in times of emotional crisis. Once or twice a year I have a ‘big' dream which is more like a vision – and that's it.During the last years it has become worse, and now it's down to zero. Considering dreams as important for my work as a therapist, I have tried hard with all kinds of methods but had no success.Recently I made peace with it. As lots of flashes and intuitions come up in the daytime, or before I'm falling asleep, I thought this might be fine too. After yesterday's discourse where you said that to unburden the subconscious is the way to the superconscious, I started worrying and wondering again. Am I so repressive? What am I scared of that makes me incapable of remembering my dreams?The process of dreaming and the process of remembering the dream are two things. Very few people remember dreams; that does not mean that they don’t have dreams.Everybody has dreams – but remembering a dream is a totally different thing. Even the people who remember dreams remember only the last dreams, the dreams of the early morning when you are just waking up, because the mechanism of memory is part of the conscious mind. Dreams happen in the unconscious; the unconscious doesn’t have any memory mechanism. Only the conscious mind has the memory mechanism. So if a dream is happening in the unconscious mind but very close to the conscious mind, then it is remembered faintly, vaguely.In the morning when you are waking up you are coming closer to the conscious mind, from the unconscious back to the conscious mind. The last dream, the tail end, will be remembered, because it will be very close to when you wake up. So even people who remember, remember only the last dreams. They have been dreaming for almost six hours through the whole night; if they sleep for eight hours, they dream for six hours. You can catch hold of just a faint reflection of the last dream, but if you don’t catch hold of it for a few seconds, it will have gone. As you become more awake, you are farther away from the unconscious. So to different people, different things will be happening. There are people who wake up very slowly; they don’t wake up quickly, in a jump. The people who wake up quickly, in a jump, will have a different kind of memory from the people who wake up very slowly. They will have another kind of memory.It also depends on what kind of dreams you are having. Because you are a therapist – and not only a therapist, but my therapist – your repression cannot be superficial. Because my whole teaching is: Don’t repress; live out every instinct, every feeling, every emotion. If you are living out your emotions, your feelings, then you will not have superficial dreams; your dreams will be very deep. They will be less in the unconscious and more in the collective unconscious – so deep that you will not be able to remember them. Unless a special effort is made, they cannot be remembered. And the only effort that is possible is hypnosis.If you are hypnotized and led by your hypnotist deep into your unconscious and asked, “What is happening there? What kind of dream is going on?” only then will you be able to express it to him. When you wake up, you will not be able to remember what you have said either. It will take a long training between you and the hypnotist. After each hypnosis he has to suggest to you that you will remember it when you wake up. He has to emphasize it every time so much that it becomes a deep-rooted impression. Then you may be able to remember your dreams. But there is no need. Unless you are especially working on dreams, for some specific purpose, there is no need.I am emphasizing that you should ignore the mind. Now the unconscious, collective unconscious, cosmic unconscious… These are all parts of the mind, and you are trying to remember them. Just the conscious mind is enough to torture you – why do you need to remember the unconscious mind?In the East we have been aware that the conscious mind is not the only mind. Below it, there is the unconscious mind; then below that is the collective unconscious mind, then below that is the cosmic unconscious mind. Above it, there is the superconscious mind; above that there is the collective superconscious mind, above that there is the cosmic superconscious mind. And when I say mind I mean this whole range; they are one entity, one rainbow.Ignore them all. There is no need to remember. Many people are in madhouses because by some accident their collective unconscious has broken up and released its memories. Now their conscious mind is not capable of holding those memories, the weight is too much; that’s what is driving them mad.For example, in your collective unconscious mind, the woman who is your wife now may have been your mother in your past life. If this memory comes to your mind then you are going to be in trouble. Then how are you going to behave with your wife – as your mother or as your wife? Just being your wife was enough; just being your mother was enough too; now she is both. And you will be crushed, because you cannot have a sexual relationship with a woman who is your mother…the whole inhibition of thousands of years. And how will you manage your wife? Because she has no remembrance she is going to say, “You are crazy, just forget all about it.” But you cannot forget about it.Nature has a beautiful arrangement: with each death, a thick layer of forgetfulness comes over your memories. You are carrying all the memories of all your lives. But a small human being finds it so difficult to live with a small conscious mind of one life – if so many lives burst upon him he is bound to be insane. It is a natural protection.It happened…I was in Jabalpur and a girl was brought to me. She must have been, at that time, nine years of age. She remembered her past life completely – so realistically that it was not a memory for her, it was a continuity. It was just some accidental error in nature that there was no barrier between the past life and this life.There is a place just eighty miles away from Jabalpur, Katni. She was born in Katni and she remembered that she had her family in Jabalpur. She remembered the names, she remembered her husband, she remembered her sons, the house – she remembered everything. One of my friends brought them to me.I said, “This is strange, because the people she is remembering are living just three or four blocks away from my house.” They had a petrol pump, so I used to go for petrol at their petrol pump every day. But I said, “Wait, wait in my house and I will call them – the Pathak brothers – I will call them and we will see whether this girl remembers them or not.”So they came with their servants and a few neighbors. There were twelve, thirteen people in the crowd, so that they could see whether she could find out… She immediately jumped, and said, “Brother, have you recognized me or not?” She caught hold of both brothers, among thirteen people, and she inquired about the mother and the children…and father had died, and she was crying. It was not a memory, it was a continuity. They took her to their home and then it was a problem: the girl was torn apart about whether to go to this family’s house in Jabalpur and live there, or to go back to Katni to the new family where she had been born.Of course, in this family she had lived for seventy years, so the pull was more toward the past-life family. And in the new family she had been born only nine years before; there was no pull – but that was her family, her real family. This other family was only a memory, but to her it was such a heart-rending problem. And both the families were disturbed about what to do: if she remained in Jabalpur, she would remember the other family continuously, worry about what was happening to them and feel, “I want to go there.” If she was there, she would be thinking that she wanted to be in Jabalpur.Finally I suggested that the only way – it was a freak case, there was nothing spiritual in it – was that she needed a deep hypnosis for a few days, so the barrier could be created. She had to be hypnotized to forget the old and the past. Unless she could forget the past, her whole life was going to be a misery. Both families were ready to accept that something had to be done. She was hypnotized continually for at least ten days, to forget. It took ten sessions to create a small barrier so that the old life’s memories didn’t float into the new life.I have been inquiring about her. She is now perfectly okay – married, has children, has forgotten completely. Even when those people come to see her, she does not recognize them. But her barrier is very thin and artificial. Any accident, and the barrier could be broken, or any hypnotist could break it very easily within ten sessions; or some great shock, and the barrier could be broken.There is no need for you to remember. It is perfectly good. We have to get free from the mind. The East has known all the layers of the mind, but the East has emphasized a totally different aspect than the West: ignore it – you are the pure consciousness behind all these layers.Western psychology is just childish, just born at the end of the last century. It is not even a hundred years old. They have taken up the desire to enter into dreams and to find out, to dig deeper into what is there in the mind. There is nothing. You will find more and more memories, more and more dreams, and you will destroy the person because you will make him vulnerable to an unnecessary burden which has to be erased. One has to go beyond mind, not within the mind. And you don’t have any memory as far as the state of beyond mind is concerned.Just drop the idea of the mind. Don’t meddle with it; it is getting into unnecessary trouble and a nightmare. You have to surpass the mind, you have to transcend the mind. Your whole effort should be one-pointed, and that is how to be a no-mind: no dreams, no memories, no experiences. Then you are at the very center of your being. Only then do you taste something of immortality. Only then, for the first time, do you know what intelligence is.Osho,Only just now I discovered that a master-disciple relationship is really a two-way affair, in which the disciple needs to respond openly to the master in order for the master to be able to do his work.I myself, on the contrary, have always watched passively, kept a distance and drawn my own conclusions.Please comment.The master never does anything – and if you remain aloof, nothing will ever happen to you. Your receptivity and openness are not needed for the master to do something; your openness and receptivity are needed so that the very presence of the master can provoke something to happen in you – and these are two different things. Doing something is a very positive effort, and just allowing your presence for something to happen in you is a totally different thing. There is no positive effort. The effort is on the side of the disciple.So what you have discovered you have discovered wrongly: it is not a two-way affair, not a two-way road; it is a one-way street. It is up to you to be open, ready, available.The presence of the master is there, just like the light – you open your eyes and the light is there. The light does not travel to your eyes in particular. You can keep your eyes closed and the light will not knock on your eyelids: “Please open your eyes.” You can keep your eyes closed; the light is very democratic, it will not interfere. But if you open your eyes you will see the light; not only the light, but in the light you will see many other things too: the flowers, the people, the whole world. Still, you cannot say that light has been doing something to you. Something is transpiring in you. It will not transpire without the light, so certainly the presence of the light is needed – but just the presence is needed, not the action.Action is needed on your part, not just presence, because you can be present here and closed – nothing will evolve out of it. The disciple has to do everything.And this is the beauty of the whole phenomenon. Otherwise, you will become a puppet in the hands of the master. Then he will do things that he wants to do; then he will make you the way he wants to make you – the ideal, the mold. He will destroy your individuality; he will destroy your freedom. No master worth the name can do that. The master can give his whole being to you, can make it available – but only as a presence, not as an action.The doing is on the part of the disciple. You have to be receptive, you have to be silent, you have to be meditative, you have to trust everything, because it is your life and you should be responsible for it. You are not a painting that the master painter can change in whatever way he wants.I have heard that in a small school, a beautiful painting was shown that had been made by the drawing teacher of the school. He was showing the students the art and the craft of painting. And he said, “It is such a delicate phenomenon. Look at the painting.”And they said, “Yes, we can see a man with a sad face.”The painter went to the painting and just gave one or two touches with his brush and the whole painting changed – the face was smiling. And because the face was smiling, the whole complex of trees and flowers and stars now had a different effect. Everybody was impressed; the teachers were impressed. Parents had come; they were very much impressed. Just one small boy was not interested.The painter asked, “Are you not interested?”He said, “I am interested. But this is not something great; my mother does it every day.”He said, “What do you mean? Is she a painter?”He said, “She is not a painter. But I go home smiling, and with one slap the whole world changes into tears and tears and crying. And if you want me to show you, I can show you here, because I have also become an expert. Every day it is happening.”He simply went and hit a small girl sitting there, and the girl started crying. And she had been smiling and enjoying, but suddenly the hit, and tears came to her eyes and she started crying. And because of her crying and this boy’s craftsmanship, the whole crowd fell silent.And even the drawing teacher said, “This is right. I was thinking that I had some great art. Your mother knows better. Without brush, without color, just a hit and everything changes; the whole world changes.”The master can change you, but that change is very costly. He can do many things, but you are becoming more and more of a slave. You had come to be liberated, and it is going the wrong way. No authentic master has ever done anything. He has made himself available in many ways. He has taught you how to be available, how to be open, how to be receptive – and then whatever your potential is, it will start growing. In the blissful showering of the presence of the master your potential will grow, but it will grow according to its own intrinsic qualities. Nothing is imposed from outside.So please note it down: your observation is not right, it is not two-way traffic. From the master’s side there is no traffic at all. You have to do something. Certainly the master is present and available, his love is available. In his shadow, in his loving radiation, you will start growing. But he will not touch you; he will let you be whatever you can be. Whatsoever is your destiny, you should not be carried away from it.He is just a silent help: without touching you, he transforms you. That is the miracle of the master.Osho,Sitting in your presence, meditation is really at its best. If asked why, I would say that it is because your blissful presence is contagious and somehow motivates me to be as total as possible.Osho, would you please explain again how it is possible to be in such a nice meditation when not being in your presence?My presence has to be only a lesson. Once you have learned the art of opening, the art of being silent, it does not matter whether I am present or not. If you have really learned it, it will happen anywhere. It may be a little difficult in the beginning, but soon you will get the knack of it.It is almost like swimming. The teacher who teaches swimming just gives you courage and trust, and is there so that nothing goes wrong. Just in three or four days’ time, one hour each day, you start swimming. And the moment you start swimming you are surprised – why didn’t you start it from the very beginning? There is nothing to it. It’s just that in the beginning you were not moving your arms artfully; it was haphazard. In just three or four days you have learned to move your arms more smoothly, more harmoniously; now the teacher is not needed. Now you can go anywhere, for any distance, because the depth of the bottom does not matter; you are swimming on the surface. The depth can be one thousand feet, ten thousand feet, five miles deep; it does not matter, because you are always swimming on the surface.And once you have learned… It has not been heard of in the whole history of humanity that anybody who has learned swimming has forgotten it. You may not swim for fifty years, and when again somebody pushes you into the swimming pool, you start swimming. You cannot say, “For fifty years I have not practiced.” It is not a question of practice at all. It is a knack: once you have known it, you have known it; there is no way not to know it anymore.Meditation is also a knack.You have not to become attached to the presence of the master, because that will be learning something wrong. You have to learn how you are opening. Forget about the master; that is his business: to be present or not to be present. Your business is to see how you are opening, what happens in your opening, and then try on your own, when you are alone to see whether it can happen or not. It is bound to happen. Maybe in the beginning you will feel that it is a little difficult; a certain attachment grows unconsciously. But you cannot say that the teacher has to follow you everywhere, wherever you go swimming. That will not do. Then each swimmer will need one teacher; it will be too much. Each meditator will need one master with him; it will be too costly, and there is no need at all. You just have to see what is happening in you, and let the same happen when the master is not present.Or, you can visualize. He will be present somewhere, a few miles away. Here, it is a few feet away. It is only a question of visualizing – just visualize that your master is a few feet away. Space makes no difference, but you have to learn what happens in you, so that you can repeat it in the absence of the master. Otherwise, one can become attached to things which were there to help you – but now they will hinder you. The presence of the master was to help you; now it has become a hindrance, because the master is not there, so you cannot meditate.Remember, no attachment should grow, no clinging should grow. They are all against your independence, your freedom, your individuality. And whatever is happening here can happen anywhere; it just needs a little understanding of how it happens here. Just try. Even if you fail a few times, don’t be worried. It is a knack which will come to you. And once it happens without any support from outside – even the smallest support, such as the presence of the master – you will feel a great joy, because a great freedom has happened. Now there are no barriers for you. Wherever you are you can be in meditation, you can be in silence, you can be peaceful. Now you can carry your paradise within you. And unless that happens, a disciple has not matured.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 09 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is it that reduces me to a hysterical, incoherent child in your presence or even at the thought of being in your presence?Is it something inherent in the master-disciple relationship, or my psychological immaturity, or both?Humanity is not yet mature. We have the faces of human beings, but our minds are lagging far behind.In the ordinary world, it is easy to manage your mask, your pretension, your hypocrisy. But when you come to a master… The very urge to come to a master shows a tremendous desire in you to know your original face, to know yourself. The face that you are now carrying is not your original face; it is not you. I am saying you are not you, and you know it.The master is only a mirror. You cannot deceive the mirror, it simply reflects your reality.There is an ancient parable of a very ugly woman who was very antagonistic toward mirrors because she thought, just as you all think, that it was the mirror that created the ugliness in her – because when the mirror was not there, she was no longer ugly. She was so madly against mirrors that whenever she would see a mirror, she would immediately break it. The parable is significant. That’s what we are all doing in our lives in many ways. Whatsoever reflects our reality we want to escape from, because it is not gratifying.Here in my presence, or even when you think of me, if you feel yourself as immature, a retarded child, don’t try to explain it away in any way. This is the truth. And this is not only your truth; this is the truth of the whole of humanity. You are just fortunate that you have become aware of it. You have come across a mirror.Breaking the mirror is not going to help. Poisoning Socrates has not helped the Greeks – he was a mirror. Crucifying Jesus has not helped the Jews – he was a mirror. Killing al-Hillaj Mansoor has not helped the Mohammedans – he was a mirror. On the contrary, people have remained retarded, childish, because there is no one to show them where they are, who they are. They are in a crowd of similar kinds of retarded children.After the First World War, for the first time in Germany they tried to figure out the average mental age of a soldier. Thousands of soldiers went through the process, through many experiments, and the result was shocking and shattering to the whole of human pride. The result was that the average mental age of the soldiers was only fourteen years. And the average age of those who are not soldiers cannot be much more. A man may be seventy years old – his body has aged, but his mind has remained at the age of fourteen. And once in a while you can see it in yourself; you can see it in others in certain situations.Every woman knows moments when she starts throwing tantrums; the tantrums cannot be coming out of maturity. Every man knows that whenever he feels nervous, he starts smoking. Now, smoking cannot help in any way, but it diverts your mind from nervousness. Only nervous people smoke. And you can watch: some days you smoke more; some days you smoke less. The days you smoke more are the days when you are very tense, worried, very much in anguish. The world is too much. You are feeling so nervous that you want to divert your mind to something, something uncomplicated, something not involving anybody else – because that could bring more complications. The cigarette is very innocent and very soothing, because it has a chemical like the one in tea and coffee, which gives a certain soothing effect of the moment.And more specifically, smoking has a resemblance to a deep-rooted remembrance of drinking milk at your mother’s breast. The breast has almost the same warmth, the milk is warm just as the smoke from your cigarette or cigar is warm. The cigarette or cigar have the same feel on your lips as the nipples of your mother, and the smoke is flowing inside you just like the milk through the nipple. You have fallen back into childhood: those golden days when there were no anxieties, no problems, no worries. So whenever you feel nervous, you start looking for your cigarette. When you are not nervous – when you are feeling happy and blissful and joyous – you completely forget all about cigarettes. All smokers are retarded people, so the retarded people are in the majority in the world.And there are other substitutes. You may not be smoking and you may think, “I’m not retarded because I use chewing gum.” And it is worse than cigarettes – chewing gum! You are not only retarded, you are stupid, engaged in an activity which is absolutely useless, uncreative, unnecessarily tiring your mouth and your teeth. But it proves Charles Darwin was right. Although scientists have tried in many ways to disprove the theory of evolution proposed by Charles Darwin, the theory has such psychological significance that even if it is proved wrong, its significance cannot be destroyed.Just watch a monkey. He cannot sit in one posture, he cannot sit on one branch. The whole day he is continually chewing this or that, eating this or that.. From the time he wakes up in the morning till he goes back to sleep, he is chewing something. Perhaps man is not yet completely free from his animal heritage – although he walks on two legs, that does not make much difference. As far as I know, monkeys don’t think that you have evolved, developed, gone forward further than them. They laugh at the very idea. They think you have fallen from the trees. And they have substantial reasoning behind it. You are no longer as strong as a monkey; you cannot live in trees, you cannot go on jumping from one tree to another tree for miles. You have lost the beauty of the body that the monkey has. Just because you started walking on two legs…Monkeys think, “Poor fellows…those few monkeys can’t make it living in the trees” – because it is a very challenging life, risky, full of danger – “those cowards have got down onto the earth and started walking on two legs. Not only that, to hide their cowardice, they are proposing a theory of evolution!” No monkey agrees with the theory of evolution.If in my presence you feel in yourself a childishness, a mind which has not become mature. This awareness has to be welcomed. Once you become aware that you are retarded somewhere, that something is blocking your consciousness, then those blocks can be removed. In fact, to be aware that there are some blocks – the very awareness removes them. There are things which one has just to be aware of. The very awareness brings the transformation; it is not that after being aware you have to do something to make the change. Seeing your mind as childish, you can also see that you are not the mind – otherwise, who is seeing the mind as childish? There is something beyond the mind: the watcher on the hills. You are only looking at the mind. You have completely forgotten who is looking at it.Watch the mind, but don’t forget the watcher – because your reality is centered in the watcher, not in the mind. And the watcher is always a fully grown-up, mature, centered consciousness. It needs no growth. And once you become aware that the mind is only an instrument in the hands of your witnessing soul, then there is no problem; the mind can be used in the right way. Now the master is awake, and the servant can be ordered to do whatever is needed. Ordinarily the master is asleep. We have forgotten the watcher, and the servant has become the master. And the servant is a servant – it is certainly not very intelligent.You have to be reminded of a basic fact: intelligence belongs to the watching consciousness; memory belongs to the mind. Memory is one thing; memory is not intelligence. But the whole of humanity has been deceived for centuries and told indirectly that the memory is intelligence. Your schools, your colleges, your universities are not trying to find your intelligence; they are trying to find out who is capable of memorizing more.And now we know perfectly well that memory is a mechanical thing. A computer can have memory, but a computer cannot have intelligence. And a computer can have a better memory than you have. The day is not far off when people will be carrying small computers in their pockets rather than unnecessarily going through years of studying history and geography and chemistry and physics. All that can be contained in a small computer which you can carry in your pocket, and whatever information you want, the computer can supply it immediately, and it is going to be absolutely correct.Man’s memory is not so reliable. It can forget; it can get mixed up, it can get blocked. Sometimes you say, “I remember it, it is just on the tip of my tongue.” Strange, it is on the tip of your tongue, then why don’t you speak?But you say it is not coming, “It is on the tip of my tongue, I know that I know, and it is not very far; it is very close.” But still some block, some very thin block – it may be just a curtain – is not allowing it to surface.And the more you try, the more tense you become, the less is the possibility of remembering it. Finally, you forget all about it, you start doing something else – preparing a cup of tea or digging a hole in the garden – and suddenly it is there because you were relaxed, you had forgotten all about it, there was no tension. It surfaced. A tense mind becomes narrow. A relaxed mind becomes wide – many more memories can pass through it. A tense mind becomes so narrow that only very few memories can pass through it.But for thousands of years a misunderstanding has continued, and it continues still, as if memory is intelligence. It is not. You will find people who have a great memory but no intelligence, and you can also find people who have great intelligence and no memory at all.It is said about Thomas Alva Edison that perhaps he is the only man who is credited with at least one thousand inventions, but his memory was nil.In the First World War he was standing in a queue to receive his ration card. Ration cards had come into existence for the first time. By and by the queue became smaller and smaller, and finally he came to the front and the clerk shouted, “Thomas Alva Edison!” – he looked here and there, because he had forgotten his name. Because it was long, long ago…when his father and mother were alive, they used to call him by name. Now he was so well known, such a great scientist, a great professor that nobody used his name, people called him ‘Professor.’ He himself had forgotten. Fortunately, one man in the queue behind him recognized that this fellow looked like Thomas Alva Edison, who was standing in front and looking here and there.And the man said, “What is your name?”Edison said, “My God, I will have to go home and ask my wife.”The man said, “As far as I know, you are Thomas Alva Edison.”Edison said, “It seems I have heard this name somewhere before. Perhaps I am. If nobody else claims it, then that card is mine.”He was such a great intelligence. You cannot find many more people of that intelligence. But, going for a lecture tour, before getting into the car, he said good-bye to his wife and kissed her and waved at her maidservant. And the wife said, “You are absolutely wrong; I am your maidservant and she is your wife!”He said, “The whole day I am so engaged in experiments. I only come home at night. It is a long time since I have seen my wife in the sunlight, so please forgive me – whichever is my wife, I kiss her, and whichever is my maidservant, I wave to her. But let me go, because the train is standing at the platform.”Absolutely no memory! His wife used to keep notes of his thoughts because sometimes he would come to a thought, but it was incomplete. And before he forgot it, he would tell somebody, whoever was close by, “Please write it down and keep it for me. Whenever I need it, just remind me – because half is missing. It will come, but my fear is that when the other half comes, this half may be lost.”Somebody suggested, “You are behaving strangely. Why don’t you keep a notebook?”He said, “That is the trouble. I have been keeping notebooks, but then I go on forgetting where I have put them. Then the notebook becomes the problem. This is far better. At least somebody is responsible for the half thought and he will remind me: ‘This is half your thought. If the other half has come to your mind, take this and relieve me of the burden.’”In India – as in Arabia, China, Greece, Rome, in all old countries – all the old languages depend on memory, not on intelligence. You can become a great Sanskrit scholar without a bit of intelligence – no need for intelligence, just your memory has to be perfect. Just like a parrot; the parrot does not understand what he is saying, but he can say it absolutely correctly, with the right pronunciation. You can teach him whatever you want. All old languages depend on memory.And the whole educational system of the world depends on memory. In examinations, they don’t ask the student something that will show his intelligence, but something that will show his memory, how much he remembers from textbooks. This is one of the reasons for your retarded mind. You have used memory as if it were your intelligence – a tremendously grave misunderstanding. Because you know and remember and you can quote scriptures, you start thinking that you are grown up, you are mature, that you are knowledgeable, you are wise. This is the problem that you are feeling.I am not a man of memory. And my effort here is to provoke a challenge in you so that you start moving toward your intelligence. It is of no use how much you remember. What is significant is how much you have experienced yourself.And for experiencing the inner world, you need great intelligence – memory is of no help. Yes, if you want to be a scholar, a professor, a pundit, you can memorize scriptures and you can have a great pride that you know so much. And other people will also think that you know so much, and deep down your memory is nothing but ignorance.In front of me, you cannot hide your ignorance. In every possible way, I try to bring your ignorance in front of you because the sooner you get hold of your ignorance, the sooner you can get rid of it. And to know is such a beautiful experience that in comparison, borrowed knowledge is just idiotic.I have heard about the archbishop of Japan. He wanted to convert a Zen master to Christianity. Not knowing, not understanding anything of the inner world, he went to the master. He was received with great love and respect.He opened the Bible that he carried with him and started reading the Sermon on the Mount. He wanted to impress upon the Zen master that: “We follow this man. What do you think about these words, about this man?”He had read only two sentences and the Zen master said, “That will do. You are following a good man, but he was following other good men. Neither you know nor does he know. Just go home.”The archbishop was very shocked. He said, “You should at least let me finish the whole thing.”The Zen master said, “No nonsense here. If you know something, you say it. Close the book because we are not believers in books. You carry the very truth in your being, and yet you are searching in dead books. Go home and look within. If you have found something inside, then come back. If you think these lines that you have repeated to me are from Jesus Christ, you are wrong.”Jesus Christ was simply repeating the Old Testament. He was trying his whole life to convince people: “I am the last prophet of the Jews.” He had never heard the word Christian, he had never heard the word Christ. He was born a Jew, he lived a Jew, he died a Jew. And his whole effort was to convince the Jews: “I am the awaited prophet, the savior which Moses has promised. I have come.”The Jews could have forgiven him. Jews are not bad people. And Jews are not violent people either. Nobody who is as intelligent as the Jews are can be violent. Forty percent of Nobel Prizes go to Jews – it is simply out of all proportion to their population. Almost half the Nobel Prizes go to Jews, and the other half to the rest of the world. Such intelligent people would not have crucified Jesus if he was saying something which was of his own experience. But he was saying things which were not his experience – all borrowed, and yet he was pretending that they were his. Jews could not forgive that, that dishonesty.Otherwise, Jesus was not creating any trouble for anybody. He was a little bit of a nuisance. Just like the Witnesses of Jehovah or the Hare Krishna people; they are a little bit of a nuisance. If they catch hold of you they will not listen to you at all and they will go on giving you all kinds of wisdom, advice – and you are not interested; you are going to some other work, you want to be left alone. But they are determined to save you. Whether you want to be saved or not does not matter – you have to be saved.It happened that I was sitting near the Ganges in Allahabad, and it was just as the sun was setting. A man started shouting from the water, “Save me! Save me!”I am not interested in saving anybody. So I looked all around… If somebody was interested in saving him, let him have the first chance. But there was nobody, so finally I had to jump. And with difficulty – he was a heavy, fat man,. The fattest men in India you will find in Allahabad and Varanasi – the brahmins, the Hindu priests, who do nothing except eat.Somehow I pulled him out. And he started being angry: “Why did you pull me out?”I said, “This is something! You were asking for help, you were shouting, ‘Save me!’”He said, “It was because I was becoming afraid of death. But in fact I was committing suicide.”I said, “I am sorry, I had no idea that you were committing suicide.”I pushed the man back! And he started shouting again, “Help!”I said, “Now wait for somebody else to come. I will sit here and watch you commit suicide.”He said, “What kind of man are you? I am dying!”I said, “Die! That is your business!”But there are people who are bent upon saving you. The Zen master said to the archbishop, “Jesus was repeating old prophets. You are repeating Jesus. Repetition is not going to help anybody. You need your own experience – that is the only deliverance, the only liberation.”It is good you understand that your mind starts behaving like a child, immature. Remember also who is watching the child, the immature mind, and be with the watcher. Pull out all your attachments from the mind – because the mind is only a mechanism – and the mind will start functioning perfectly well. Once your watcher is alert, your intelligence starts growing for the first time.Mind’s work is memory, which the mind can do very well. But the mind has been burdened with intelligence, which is not its work, by the society,. It has crippled its memory. It has not made you more intelligent, it has simply made your memory erroneous, fallible.Always remember: your eyes are for seeing, don’t try to listen with the eyes. Your ears are for listening, don’t try to see with the ears. Otherwise, you will get into an insane state. While your eyes are perfectly all right, your ears are perfectly all right, you are trying to do something with a mechanism that is not meant to do it. If your watcher is clear, then the body does its own functions, the mind does its own functions, the heart does its own functions. Nobody interferes in each others’ work.And life becomes a harmony, an orchestra.Osho,Why do I always feel so miserable? Have I ever really let you in? The moment I sit in front of you, all is gone. What is happening? Can't you take it all away?The answer is in your question. You don’t want to take responsibility for your own being; somebody else should do it. And that’s the sole cause of misery. There is no way that anybody else can take away your misery. There is no way that anybody else can make you blissful. But if you become aware that you are responsible for whether you are miserable or blissful… Nobody else can do anything. Your misery is your doing; your bliss will also be your doing. But it is hard to accept: misery is my doing?Everybody feels that others are responsible for his misery. The husband thinks the wife is responsible for his misery, the wife thinks the husband is responsible for her misery, the children think the parents are responsible for their misery, the parents think the children are responsible for their misery. It has become such a complexity. And whenever somebody else is responsible for your misery, you are not aware that by giving them responsibility you are losing your freedom.Responsibility and freedom are two sides of the same coin.And because you think others are responsible for your misery… That’s why there are charlatans, so-called saviors, messengers of God, prophets who go on telling you, “You have not to do anything, just follow me. Believe in me and I will save you. I am your shepherd, you are my sheep.”Strange, that not a single person stood up against people like Jesus Christ and said, “This is utterly insulting to say that you are the shepherd and we are sheep, and you are the savior and we are just dependent on your compassion, that our whole religion is just to believe in you.” But because we have been throwing the responsibility for our misery on others, we have accepted the corollary that bliss will also come from others. Naturally, if misery comes from others, then bliss has to come from others. But then what are you doing? You are neither responsible for misery nor are you responsible for bliss – then what is your function? What is your purpose – just to be a target for a few people to make you miserable and for others to help you and save you and make you blissful? Are you just a puppet?All the strings are in the hands of others. You are not respectful of your humanity; you do not respect yourself. You don’t have any love for your own being, for your own freedom. If you are respectful of your life, you will refuse all saviors. You will say to all the saviors, “Get lost! Just save yourself, that’s enough. It is our life and we have to live it. If we do something wrong, we will suffer the misery; we will accept the consequences of our wrong action without any complaint.”Perhaps that is the way one learns – by falling, one gets up again; by going astray, one comes back again. You commit a mistake but each mistake makes you more intelligent; you will not commit the same mistake again. If you commit the same mistake again, that means you are not learning. You are not using your intelligence, you are behaving like a robot.My whole effort is to give back to every human being the self-respect that belongs to him – which he has given to just anybody. And the whole stupidity starts because you are not ready to accept that you are responsible for your misery.Just think, you cannot find a single misery for which you are not responsible. It may be jealousy, it may be anger, it may be greed – but something in you must be the reason that is creating the misery. And have you seen anybody in the world ever making anybody else blissful? That too depends on you, on your silence, your love, your peace, your trust. And the miracle happens – nobody does it.In Tibet, there is a beautiful story about Marpa. It may not be factual, but it is tremendously significant. I don’t care much about facts. My emphasis is on the significance and the truth, which is a totally different thing.Marpa heard about a master. He was searching and he went to the master, he surrendered to the master, he trusted totally. And he asked the master, “What am I supposed to do now?”The master said, “Once you have surrendered to me, you are not supposed to do anything. Just believe in me. My name is the only secret mantra for you. Whenever you are in difficulty, just remember my name and everything will be all right.”Marpa touched his feet. And he tried it immediately – he was such a simple man. He walked on the river. Other disciples who had been with the master for years could not believe it – he was walking on the water!They reported to the master that: “That man, you have not understood him. He is no ordinary man, he is walking on water!”The master said, “What?”They all ran toward the river and Marpa was walking on the water, singing songs, dancing. When he came to the shore, the master asked, “What is the secret?”He said, “What is the secret? It is the same secret that you have given to me: your name. I remembered you. I said, ‘Master, allow me to walk on water’ and it happened.”The master could not believe that his name… He himself could not walk on water. But perhaps…he had never tried. But it would be better to check a few more things before he tried. So he said to Marpa, “Can you jump from that hill?”Marpa said, “Whatever you say.” He went up on the hill and jumped, and they were all standing in the valley waiting – just pieces of Marpa will be there! Even if they can find pieces of him, that will be enough – the hill was very high.But Marpa came down smiling, sitting in a lotus posture. He came just under a tree in the valley, and sat down. They all surrounded him. They looked at him – not even a scratch.The master said, “This is something. You used my name?”He said, “It was your name.”The master said, “This is enough, now I am going to try,” and the first step in the water, he sank.Marpa could not believe it when he sank. His disciples jumped in and somehow pulled him out. He was half dead. The water was taken out of his lungs…somehow he survived.And Marpa said, “What is the matter?”The master said, “You just forgive me. I am no master, I am just a pretender.”But Marpa said, “If you are a pretender, then how did your name work?”The pretender said, “My name has not worked. It is your trust. It does not matter who you trust – it is the trust, the love, the totality of it. I don’t trust myself. I don’t trust anybody. I cheat everybody – how can I trust? And I am always afraid of being cheated by others, because I cheat others. Trust is impossible for me. You are an innocent man, you trusted me. It is because of your trust that the miracles have happened.”Whether the story is true or not does not matter. One thing is certain, that your misery is caused by your mistakes and your bliss is caused by your trust, by your love. Your bondage is your creation and your freedom is your declaration.You are asking me, “Why am I miserable?” You are miserable because you have not accepted the responsibility for it. Just see what your misery is, find out the cause and you will find the cause within yourself. Remove the cause and the misery will disappear. But people don’t want to remove the cause, they want to remove the misery. That is impossible, that is absolutely unscientific.And then you ask me to save you, to help you. There is no need for you to become a beggar. My people are not to become beggars. My people are not sheep; my people are emperors. Accept your responsibility for misery, and you will find that just hidden inside you are all the causes of bliss, freedom, joy, enlightenment, immortality. No savior is needed. And there has never been any savior; all saviors are pseudo. They have been worshipped because you always wanted somebody to save you. They have always appeared because they were always in demand, and wherever there is a demand, there is a supply.Once you depend on others, you are losing your soul. You are forgetting that you have a consciousness as universal as anybody else’s, that you have a consciousness as great as any Gautam Buddha’s – you are just not aware of it, you have not looked for it. And you have not looked because you are looking to others – somebody else to save you, somebody else to help you. So you go on begging without recognizing that this whole kingdom is yours.This has to be understood as one of the most basic principles of sannyas: a declaration of self-respect and freedom and responsibility.Osho,Would you please talk about the sadhana based on holding as much as possible to the “I” thought or the sense “I am” and on asking oneself the questions, “Who am I?” Or “From where does this I arise?” In what way does this approach to meditation differ from that of watching the gaps between one's in-breath and out-breath? Does it make any difference whether one witnesses the breath focusing on the heart center or on the lower belly center?It is an ancient method of meditation, but full of dangers. Unless you are alert, the greater possibility is that you will be led astray by the method rather than to the right goal. The method is simple – concentrating yourself on the concept of I, closing your eyes and inquiring, “Who am I?”The greatest problem is that when you ask, “Who am I,” who is going to answer you? Most probably the answer will come from your tradition, from your scriptures, from your conditioning. You have heard that: “I am not the body, I am not the mind. I am the soul, I am the ultimate, brahman, I am God.” You have heard all these kinds of thoughts before.You will ask a few times, “Who am I? Who am I?” And then you will say, “I am the ultimate, brahman.” And this is not a discovery; it is simply stupid. If you want to go into the method rightly, then the question has not to be verbally asked. “Who am I?” has not to be repeated verbally. Because as long as it remains a verbal question, you will supply a verbal answer from the head. You have to drop the verbal question. It has to remain just a vague idea, just like a thirst. Not “I am thirsty.” Can you see the difference? When you are thirsty, you feel the thirst. And if you are in a desert, you feel the thirst in every fiber of your body. You don’t say, “I am thirsty, I am thirsty.” It is no longer a linguistic question; it is existential.If “Who am I?” is an existential question, if you are not asking it in language but instead the feeling of the question is settling inside your center, then there is no need for any answer. Then it is none of the mind’s business. The mind will not hear that which is non-verbal, and the mind will not answer that which is non-verbal.All your scriptures are in the mind, all your knowledge is gathered there.Now you are entering an innocent space. You will not get the answer. You will get the feel, you will get the taste, you will get the smell. As you go deeper, you will be filled more with the feeling of being, of immortality, blissfulness, silence – a tremendous benediction.But there is no answer like, “I am this, I am that.” All that is from the scriptures. This feeling is from you, and this feeling has a truth about it. It is a perfectly valid method.One of the great masters of this century, Raman Maharshi, used only this method for his disciples: “Who am I?” But I have come across hundreds of his disciples and they are nowhere near the ultimate experience. And the reason is because they know the answer already.I have asked them, “Do you know the answer?”They said, “We know the answer.”I said, “If you know the answer, then why are you asking? And your asking cannot go on very long – do it two or three times and the answer comes. The answer was already there, before the question.” So it is just a mind game. If you want to play it, you can play it. But if you really want to go into it as it was meant by Raman Maharshi, and by all the ancient seers, it is a non-verbal thirst. So if you can avoid the danger of falling into a verbal question, it is perfectly good, you can go ahead.Not knowing oneself hurts, it is a wound. Not knowing oneself makes the whole of life meaningless. You may know everything, only you do not know yourself – and that would be the first thing to know.You have also asked about witnessing, watching the breath and where one should watch. Anywhere – because the point is not where you are watching, the point is that you are watching. The emphasis is on watching, watchfulness. All those points are just excuses. You can watch the breath at the tip of the nose where the breath goes in, you can watch it while it is going in, you can watch it when it returns – you can watch it anywhere. You can watch thoughts moving inside. The whole point is not to get lost in what you are watching, as if that is important. That is not important. The important thing is that you are watchful, that you have not forgotten to watch, that you are watching…watching…watching.And slowly, slowly, as the watcher becomes more and more solid, stable, unwavering, a transformation happens. The things that you were watching disappear. For the first time, the watcher itself becomes the watched, the observer itself becomes the observed. You have come home.Osho,I have not expected anything from you, yet you have tricked me and given me some beautiful things. Is there anything a sannyasin has to ask for, or does everything happen on its own?Everything happens on its own, but a sannyasin has to be alert not to miss the train. The train comes on its own, but you have to be alert. All around you so much is happening; every twenty-four hours – awake, asleep – you have to be watchful of what is happening. And the more you are alert, the more you will be surprised. The same things are happening that were happening before, but the meaning has changed, the significance is different.The roseflower is the same, but now it is radiant, surrounded by some new energy that you were not aware of before – a new beauty. It seems you used to see only the outer side of the rose; now you are able to see its inner world. You used to watch the palace from the outside; now you have entered into its innermost chambers. You have seen the moon hundreds of times, but when you see it silently, peacefully, meditatively, you become aware of a beauty that you were not aware of before, a beauty that is not ordinarily available, for which you need to grow some insight. And that insight grows in silence, in peace.It happened – a very significant incident. One of the Indian poets, Rabindranath Tagore, translated one of his small books of poems, Gitanjali: “Offering Of Songs.” He was awarded the Nobel Prize for that small book. In India it had been available for at least fifteen years. But unless a book meets the international standards of language and gains international appreciation, it is difficult for it to get a Nobel Prize.Rabindranath himself was a little worried, because he translated it and to translate poetry is always a very difficult affair. To translate prose is simple; to translate poetry is immensely difficult, because prose is of the marketplace and poetry is something of the world of love, of the world of beauty, of the world of the moon and stars. It is a delicate affair. And every language has its own nuances, which are almost untranslatable. Although the poet himself translated his own poetry, he was doubtful about the translation. So he showed it to one of the Christian missionaries, a very famous man of those days, C.F. Andrews – a very literate, cultured, sophisticated man.Andrews suggested four changes. He said, “Everything else is right, but in four places it is not grammatically correct.”So Rabindranath simply accepted his advice, and changed those four places. In London, his friend, the Irish poet Yeats, called a meeting of English poets to hear Rabindranath’s translation. Everybody appreciated it. The beauty of it was something absolutely new to the Western world.But Yeats, who was the most prominent poet of England in those days, said, “Everything else is right, but in four places it seems that somebody who is not a poet has made some changes.”Rabindranath could not believe it. He asked, “Where are those four places?”Yeats pointed out the four places exactly.Rabindranath asked, “What is wrong?”Yeats said, “There is nothing wrong, they are grammatically correct. But poetically… Whoever suggested them is a man who knows his grammar but does not know poetry. He is a man of the mind but not a man of the heart. The flow is obstructed, as if a river had come across a rock.”Rabindranath told him, “I asked C.F. Andrews; these are his words. I will tell you the words that I put there before.”And when he put his words in, Yeats said, “They are perfectly right although grammatically wrong. But grammar is not important. When it is a question of poetry, grammar is not important. Change it back, use your own words.”I have always thought that there are ways of the mind and there are ways of the heart; they need not be supportive of each other. And if it happens that the mind is not in agreement with the heart, then the mind is wrong. Its agreement or disagreement does not matter. What matters is that your heart feels at ease, peaceful, silent, harmonious, at home.We are trained for the mind, so our mind is very articulate. And nobody takes any care of the heart. In fact, it is pushed aside by everybody because it is of no use in the marketplace, it is no use in the world of ambitions, no use in politics, no use in business. But with me, the situation is just the opposite – the mind is of no use. The heart…Everything happens, your heart just has to be ready to receive it. Everything comes, but if your heart is closed… The secret laws of life are such that the doors of your heart will not even be knocked on.Existence knows how to wait; it can wait for eternity.It all depends on you. Everything is ready to happen any moment. Just open all your doors, all your windows, so that existence can pour into you from every side. There is no other god than existence, and there is no other paradise than your very being. When existence pours into your being, paradise has entered into you – or you have entered into paradise, just different ways of saying the same thing.But remember: nothing is expected of you. All the religions have been telling you for centuries that you have to do this; you have to do that. That you have to torture yourself, you have to renounce pleasures, you have to fight with your body, you have to renounce the world.The Buddhist scriptures have thirty-three thousand principles that a sannyasin should follow. It is almost impossible to remember them – following them is out of the question. I don’t have a single principle for you to follow; just a simple understanding that it is your life – enjoy it, allow it to sing a song in you, allow it to become a dance in you. You have nothing else to do but simply to be available. And flowers are going to shower on you.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 10 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,What is the difference between obeying the master and following his guidance?The question is complex. In the first place, the master does not expect to be obeyed but to be understood. He does not give you guidelines either. In his presence, your loving heart finds them.It means that those who order and expect that their orders should be followed, complied with, are not authentic masters. The master is not a commander. He does not issue things like “Ten Commandments.” Certainly, he explains to you his experience, his realization, and then it is up to your intelligence to do whatever is right. It is not a direct order, it is an appeal to your intelligence.An order never cares about your intelligence, an order never wants you to understand anything. The basic purpose of all ordering of people is to reduce them into robots. All over the world, in every army, they are turning millions of people into machines – of course, in such a way that you don’t understand what is going on. Their methodology is very indirect. What does it mean that thousands of people every morning are marching, following orders – “Right turn, left turn, move forward, move backward” – for what is all this circus going on? And for years it goes on. It is in order to destroy your intelligence.The strategy is that if for years continuously you go on following any kind of stupid thing, meaningless, every day in the morning, every day in the evening, and you are not supposed to ask why – you just have to do it, to do it as perfectly as possible – there is no need for you to understand why. And when a person goes through such a training for years, the natural effect is that he stops asking why. And why? – because the questioning attitude is the very base of all intelligence. The moment you stop asking why, you have stopped growing as far as intelligence is concerned.It happened in the Second World War…A retired army man, who had fought in the First World War, and was honored well; he was a brave man. And now almost twenty-five years had passed. He had a small farm and lived silently.He was going from the farm to his house with a bucket full of eggs, and a few people in a restaurant, just jokingly, played a trick on the poor old army man. One of the men in the restaurant shouted, “Attention!” and the man dropped the bucket and stood in the position of attention.It had been twenty-five years since he had gone through the training. But the training had gone into the bones, into the blood, into the marrow; it had become part of the unconscious. He completely forgot what he was doing – it happened almost autonomously, mechanically.He was very angry. But those people said, “Your anger is not right, because we can call out any word we want. Who is telling you to follow it?”He said, “It is too late for me to decide whether to follow it or not to follow it. My whole mind functions like a machine. Those twenty-five years simply disappeared. ‘Attention’ only means ‘attention.’ You destroyed my eggs. I am a poor man.”But this is being done all over the world. And not only today; from the very beginning armies have been trained not to use intelligence, but to follow orders. You have to understand one thing very clearly: that to follow an order and to understand a thing are two diametrically opposite things. If, by understanding, your intelligence feels satisfied and you do something out of that, you are not following an order from the outside; you are following your own intelligence.And an authentic master is not your commander. He loves you, and he wants you to be more understanding, more intelligent, more capable of finding your way, more insightful, more intuitive. This cannot be done by orders.I am reminded of another incident in the First World War. In Berlin, one German professor of logic was recruited into the army. There was a shortage of soldiers, and everybody who was physically able was asked to volunteer; otherwise they were forcing people to go into the army because all the societies, all the nations, all the cultures have taken it for granted that the individuals exist for them, not vice-versa. To me, just the opposite is the case: the society exists for the individual, the culture exists for the individual, the nation exists for the individual. Everything can be sacrificed, but the individual cannot be sacrificed for anything. Individuality is the very flowering of existence – nothing is higher than it. But no culture, no society, no civilization is ready to accept a simple truth.The professor was forced. He said, “I am not a man who can fight. I can argue; I am a logician. If you need somebody to argue with the enemies, I am ready, but fighting is not my business. It is barbarous to fight.”But nobody listened, and finally he was brought to the parade grounds. The parade started, and the commander said, “Left turn.” Everybody turned left, but the professor remained standing as he was.The commander was a little worried: “What is the matter? Perhaps the man is deaf.” So he shouted loudly, “Now turn to the left again!” All the people turned to the left again, but that man remained standing as if he had not heard anything.Forward, backward…all the orders were given and everybody followed. That man remained just standing in his place.He was a well-known professor; even the commander knew him. He could not be treated just like any other soldier; he had a certain respect. Finally, when the parade ended and everybody came back to the same line from where they had started, the commander went to the professor and asked, “Is there some problem with your ears? Can’t you hear?”He said, “I can hear.”“But then,” the commander said, “why did you remain standing? Why did you not follow the orders?”He said, “What is the point? When everybody finally has to come back to the same state, after all this movement going forward and backward, left and right, what have they gained?”The commander said, “It is not a question of gaining, it is a training!”But he said, “I don’t need any training. This kind of stupid thing… You come to the same place after doing all kinds of stupid things, which I don’t see any point in. Can you explain to me why I should turn left and not right?”The commander said, “Strange, no soldier asks such questions.”The professor said, “I am not a soldier, I am a professor. I have been forced to be here, but you cannot force me to do things against my intelligence.”The commander went to the higher authorities and asked, “What to do with this man? He may spoil other people – because everybody is laughing at me, and everybody is saying, ‘Professor, you did great!’ I cannot tackle that man. He asks…each thing has to be explained: ‘Unless I understand it, unless my intelligence supports it, I am not going to do it.’”The commander in chief said, “I know the man. He is a great logician. His whole life’s training is in questioning everything. I will take care of him, don’t be worried.”He called the professor to his office and said, “I am sorry, but we cannot do anything. You have been recruited; the country needs soldiers. But I will give you some work which will not create any difficulty for you and will not create any difficulty for others. You come with me to the army mess.”He took the professor there, and showed him a big pile of green peas. He told the professor, “Do one thing, sit down here. You have to sort out the big peas on one side, the small peas on the other side. And after one hour I will come to see how things are progressing.”After one hour he came back. The professor was sitting there and the peas were also sitting there, in the same place. He said, “What is the matter? You have not even started.”He said, “For the first and for the last time, I want you all to understand that unless you explain to me why I should sort out the peas… My intelligence feels insulted by you. Am I an idiot, to sort the peas? What is the need? Moreover, there are other problems. Sitting here, I thought that perhaps there is some need, but there are questions which have to be decided: there are peas which are big and there are peas which are small, but there are peas of many other sizes. Where are they going to go? You have not given me any criterion.”A mystery school, a spiritual path, is not the path of a soldier. Here, orders are prohibited. Here, only intelligence is appealed to. The decision is always on your part.It is only the phony masters who give you orders, because they cannot satisfy your intelligence. An authentic master is perfectly capable of satisfying your intelligence and then leaving it up to you. It is your life, and the final decision has to be made not by anyone else other than you. You have to take the responsibility on your own shoulders. So there are no orders as far as true masters are concerned.You have also asked about guidelines. People have been told such nonsense for centuries – as if spirituality is a kind of geography, so that maps are given to you, guidelines are provided to you: follow the right guidelines and you will reach the goal.Alas, things are not so cheap. There are no maps in existence, no solid guidelines either, because each individual is so unique that what may be a guideline for one may prove a distraction for another; what may be medicine to one may prove poison to another. Individuals are so different. And if a master cannot understand the difference of individuals, their unique qualities, talents, genius, then who is going to understand? No general guidelines can be provided. The master simply goes on dropping all kinds of hints. Remember my word hints – not guidelines. You have to choose whatever suits you, and you have to experiment to see whether it is workable for you or not. If it works, go deeper into it; if it does not work, don’t feel guilty. You have not committed any sin; you have simply failed in an experiment.With a master, life becomes a scientific experiment. It is no longer a question of heaven and hell, punishment and reward. It is a question of exploration. And each individual has to explore in his own way. There are no golden rules. This is the only golden rule there is. There is no superhighway with milestones telling you how far you are from the goal. In spiritual exploration, you have to walk and create your path by your walking; there is no ready-made path so that you have simply to walk on it.And my feeling is that this is tremendously blissful and ecstatic. You are not like railway trains. Running on rails, you cannot run into the jungles, into the mountains, anywhere you like. The railway train is a prisoner. But a river is not a prisoner. It also travels long. It may have come thousands of miles from the Himalayas, and it finally reaches to the ocean – with no map, with no guidelines, with no guides, and nobody on the way to whom the river can inquire, “Which way am I to go now?” – because each step is a crossroad. But strangely enough, every river reaches to the ocean with great freedom, finding its own path.The master can only give you certain hints about how to find your path. He can give you certain indications whether you have found it or not, can give you certain criteria to judge whether you are moving toward the goal or away from the goal. But he does not give you guidelines. In the very nature of things, it is not possible. The moment you have found a master, you have found the path.And who is the master? – not one who fulfills your mind expectations. A Christian mind has Christian expectations, a Hindu mind has Hindu expectations, a Buddhist mind has Buddhist expectations. A master is one who fulfills the longing of your heart. It has nothing to do with the mind. It is a love affair. You simply find that you are in love. You simply find that your heart feels at home, at ease, that your heart has found a treasure, feels a tremendous benediction. And as you come closer to the master – in your love, in your trust – your peace deepens; your silence becomes something not dead, the silence of a graveyard, but something singing and dancing, alive.The more you are moving toward your life’s fulfillment, the more your life becomes a rejoicing, a deep joy for no reason at all, a blissfulness so deep and so abundant that you can start sharing it with others. In fact, you have to share it with others because it is overflowing, you cannot contain it. For the first time, you are small and your bliss is infinite. These are the indications that you are moving toward home: your ecstasies go on growing deeper and higher.And if you are moving away, you will become more miserable, more sad, more saintly, more Christian, more Hindu, more Jaina – all kinds of diseases. More knowledgeable, but more and more empty inside, a beggar living by a thin thread of hope that somewhere in the other life, somewhere in the other world, you will be rewarded for all your sadness, your long British faces. Saints don’t laugh. They have fallen below humanity, because only human beings laugh. Buffaloes don’t laugh, donkeys don’t laugh – they all belong to the category of the saints and sages. Perhaps these fellows – donkeys and buffaloes – may have been great sages in their past lives and now they are getting their reward. Don’t misbehave with them. Be respectful. One never knows… But as far as I am concerned, your sense of humor, your laughter will become deeper as you grow in consciousness. You will become more playful in life.So there are neither orders nor guidelines but only vague hints: indications, and a constant effort to sharpen your intelligence so that you can find your way. And when you have found, you have the courage to burst into song, into dance, into rejoicing. That’s the function of the master: to make you more intelligent and more courageous, more loving, more understanding. But there are no orders, no disciplines, no guidelines. Orders, disciplines, guidelines – these have been used by people who wanted to dominate you, by people who wanted to dictate their terms, to enforce their ideas on other people’s lives. I call all such people great criminals. To impose your idea on somebody, to give some ideal, some mold, is violence, sheer violence. You are being destructive, and a master cannot do that. A master is always creative.Osho,I am having questions coming to me. I write them down and read them over. Meditating again, I often get the answer, and coincidentally, many times the same question is read out to you in the discourse or at the video that night. Even if it is from someone else, I feel that it is my question, and I feel as if I am being answered. Also, being here with you, my intuition is functioning more clearly than ever.Beloved master, can you please comment?It is a fallacy that any question is yours. It is just an old habit of possessiveness: the house is mine, the wife is mine, the child is mine, even the question is mine. All human beings are potentially capable of all the questions that any one of you can ask, because all questions come out of your insane mind and you are all equally insane. There are only a few things in which you are equal – insanity is one of them. Only once in a while somebody is more insane than others; then he is caught. And the whole function of psychologists, psychiatrists, psychotherapists is not to destroy insanity – they cannot; they don’t have any understanding about what sanity is. All that they can do is that when somebody has gone a little ahead of the average insane humanity, they can pull him back: “Just be normal.” Just be normal means just be normally insane; don’t try to be abnormal. Abnormally insane people are thought to be mad. Normally insane people raise no questions, no problems, because they are the only kind of people there are, although they are full of the same problems as the mad people. But the difference is of quantity.Just sit down in your room, close all the doors and lock them from inside and write down on your pad anything that goes on in your mind. Don’t do any kind of editing work, simply go on writing whatever comes into your mind. And you will be surprised; after ten minutes, read it, and you will be shocked: is it written by you or by some insane person? What kind of nonsense, what rubbish goes on and on in your mind?It is said that God made the world. There are many people who prove that there are so many mistakes in the world it cannot be made by God. A perfect God cannot make such an imperfect world. But on one point I have a soft spot for him: he has not made small windows in your head through which others can look inside at what is going on. Otherwise, it would have been such a perfect world – just little windows, so at least your friends can just have a look at what is going on. And they will be surprised that on the face nothing shows, and inside this man is carrying such garbage. And it goes on, round and round, twenty-four hours a day.In my meditation camps I used to have a special meditation. The meditation was that for one hour everybody was to sit relaxed and say whatsoever came to his mind – just to become a spokesman of his own mind, just a loudspeaker – and to do whatever he felt like doing, no inhibition, for one hour. And it was such a joy, and people were doing such great things! Such good people…you would have never imagined. One man… I would never have thought that he would do this, he was continuously phoning, just sitting in front of me. And he was a man of the age of near-about sixty, a rich man, continuously phoning: “Hello, hello!” Later on I discovered that that’s what he did; his whole business was the stock market. And he used to sit just in front of me, so once in a while he would look at me and smile because he would see that what he was doing was not right, what he was talking was nonsense. But what to do? – this was the meditation one had to do!Jayantibhai is sitting here. One of his friends – they are old friends, they are still friends, and very deeply related – simply stood up and started pushing Jayantibhai’s car down the hill. It was the car in which I used to come to the camp, and he was going to push it down the hill – it would be finished! And he was Jayantibhai’s great friend. I had to tell a few people, “Stop your meditation. Just catch hold of that man; otherwise that car is finished. And he knows it is his friend’s car, and he knows that I will need it, that I have to go…”Somehow he was prised away from the car, but he was so angry that in his anger he climbed up the tree that was just in the middle where all the meditators were sitting, and he started throwing his clothes from there, he became naked. He is such a serious, silent person – you cannot imagine that he can do such things. And it was such a difficulty to bring him down: “The meditation is finished, you come down,” but he wouldn’t listen, it was too difficult for him to come out of the meditation.These things go on in the mind, but you don’t do them. Finally I had to stop that meditation, because it was dangerous. It was very beautiful to throw out your garbage, it was very cleansing, but it was dangerous – people may start hitting each other. It happened in one place. People were meditating, and one sardarji started hitting…not that anybody was his enemy or anything. He made such long jumps to hit people that the whole of the grounds were empty; all the meditators were standing around the edge of the grounds, and the sardarji was alone inside.I said, “Sardarji, now sit down. Everybody has gone.”He said, “What came over me, because I am not a violent man?” And the people of his town also reported, “He is a very good man. What came to his mind?”I said, “It must have been coming to his mind every day; it is just that the chance was not there. Today he got a chance. He alone finished all the meditators!” And there were at least five hundred people.I asked him later on, “Did you not realize what you were doing?”He said, “I realized that what I was doing was not right, and that these people have done no harm to me. Most of them are unknown to me. But from my very childhood I have had dreams of beating people, cutting their heads off. Even in the day, when I close my eyes I have always had this: that I alone am enough for hundreds of people. You have seen it yourself – five hundred people, great meditators, all forgot their meditation.”I said, “And do you think you are sane?”He said, “That’s what I have been asking after your meditation. This thing is in my mind…any day, something goes wrong, goes beyond my control and I will be insane. Insanity is there, it is just repressed.”There are only two kinds of people in the world: normally insane people and abnormally insane people.One man became mad – and mad people are very inventive because they don’t have any fear of anybody; no question of respectability, no question of what others will think about them. They become very fearless, and they start doing their thing, what they had always wanted to do but were suppressing. This man had this idea that some strange, slimy creature was rolling all over him, and the whole day he was throwing it off of himself. His family said, “What are you doing? – because we don’t see any slimy creature or anything.”He said, “You cannot see it. I was also in your situation before; I had suspicions about it but I had never seen it. Now it seems my third eye has opened. I can see it!” and he would go on throwing it off.They said, “You are just… Are you going to the business, to the office, or not?”He said, “How can I go? And it is so disgusting – it crawls on my face, it goes on into my hair…I cannot go anywhere.”So finally they took him to the psychiatrist. The psychiatrist said, “Don’t be worried, I have seen such cases. Come here and sit down.”He sat there, and he was continuously throwing off the creature. The psychiatrist said, “There is nothing; you just have an idea, you have become obsessed with an idea.”He said, “Obsessed? I will show you.”He took his chair close to the psychiatrist. And the psychiatrist said, “What are you doing?”And the man started throwing his creatures onto the psychiatrist, and the psychiatrist said, “Stop! Don’t throw those creatures on me. What kind of fellow are you? Have you come here for treatment or have you come here to make me sick also? What a disgusting fellow.”He said, “Now you see, it is not an idea.”The psychiatrist said, “I do understand, it is not an idea. I can see them; it seems my third eye is also opening! Just don’t come again. You can try another psychiatrist; he lives just opposite me. He is my enemy, and when I find cases like you, I send them to him. But forgive me – this is your fee, take it back. But don’t drop your creatures here! Take them to the other psychiatrist every day – that is his office. And if you want something, I will pay your fee. Whatever fee you have to give to the psychiatrist, I will give to you. But open his third eye just the way you have opened mine. You are great – there are yogis who are trying hard to open their third eyes and nothing opens, and within minutes you have opened my third eye.”And as the man was going out, he looked back. The psychiatrist was throwing off those creatures.Everybody is in the same boat. Just a few are sitting in the middle, a few are sitting at the very edge, can fall into the river easily. It is not your question. No question is yours. Remember, all questions come out of your normal insanity. So when you hear that somebody else has asked your question, don’t be puzzled. These are the same slimy creatures; it is not your monopoly. They also have their own. If you remain silent, you will find that every question that has ever bothered you is being asked by somebody else, by someone else – because we are not islands; we are all connected, we are one continent. And we are continuoually broadcasting our ideas, even without saying anything to anybody sitting by our side. Neither are you trying to say something to him, nor is he trying to listen to you, but those ideas are radiating.It is something to be understood: that most of your ideas are just uninvited guests, which you pick up from just anywhere. They are in the air, and once they get into your head you think, “It is my idea.” And if you listen carefully, every answer is for you. Even if the question was not yours, even if you were not able to recognize any resemblance of the question to any question in your mind, the answer is certainly for you – as it is for everybody else. My work is not what you call retail; it is wholesale. Now, if I go on doing retail work, it will be too big a job in too small a life; I cannot help many people. I do a wholesale job. My answer is for you, whether you have asked or not. Perhaps you may ask tomorrow or the day after tomorrow; just wait but remember the answer. The question will come. The question may be coming, already arising from your unconscious layers; it has just not reached in time. So keep the answer; the question is bound to come.I am answering your questions just to kill them, just to destroy them, so that I can help you to go beyond questions and beyond answers into a state of silence where there is no question and no answer. That space is the space of all miracles, of all mysteries. That magical space I call true religion.To enter into it is to be a religious person.Osho,When sitting here with you, I try to watch and to be as aware as possible. My mind runs on, wondering if this space is right, whether I should be the watcher or be lost into you. At the same time, I try to relax and ignore all this.Somehow, despite all these gymnastics, a moment comes when melting happens, and I become so soft and receptive, so very simple and flowing.Osho, how can I get out of my own way so that I don't waste so much of this precious time with you?There are things which are really simple, but become very complicated because of you. Now sitting here, you can simply relax and enjoy – but no, you make a problem out of it: whether to relax or to merge or to watch. And in all this you are missing the train. There is no need to do anything here. Just relax and listen, and out of that listening a few insights will come to you. Use those insights in your life.When somebody insults you, watch it – as if you are just the watcher, he is insulting somebody else. That’s truly the case. Or you are sitting by the side of the ocean – merge with the beauty of the sunrise, don’t bring the watcher in, because beauty is something which has to be enjoyed. And anger is something which has to be dropped. So different methods have to be used in different situations.Lying on your bed, you have nothing to do – just relax. The whole day you have been active, you have been doing a thousand and one things. Now is the time to forget it all and just let your whole energy relax and be refreshed. Relaxation, merging, watching – all are different techniques for different situations. And if you are trying all the techniques in a single situation, you will simply miss the whole point and you will not be able to do either this or that. Still, you are fortunate that doing such a stupid thing, you finally find relaxation. Perhaps you get tired, because enough is enough – merging, watching, relaxing. You get tired, so relaxation comes on its own; you feel soft. It is good.In India we have a proverb that if a person gets lost in the morning and comes home by the evening, he should not be called lost. At least he has come back – for the whole day he has been wandering and doing all kinds of stupid things. But when you see that relaxation comes and you are soft and things become beautiful, why not do it from the very beginning? Or is that introduction a necessity?If you have read George Bernard Shaw’s dramas, his introductions are very long, longer than the drama. The drama is very small, and the introduction is three times bigger. Every friend, well-wisher, told him, “This is unnecessarily tiring. If we miss the introduction and just read the drama, then it feels that perhaps we are missing something: the man has written such a big introduction, there must be something in it. And if we read your introduction, it is so tiring that by the time we come to the drama we feel like throwing the book away – you have tortured us so much.”There is no need of long introductions, just a preface. So it is okay if for a minute or two you do merging, relaxation, watching – finish it quickly so you feel satisfied that the introduction part is done. Then come to the real drama, relax and enjoy.Things are simple. But somehow the mind wants to make them unnecessarily complicated, because unless they are complicated, the mind is not of any use. The mind is useful only when something is complicated, then the mind is needed. When the thing is simple, the mind is not needed at all. And life is so simple that if one is courageous enough to live it, mind can be abandoned completely. And to abandon the mind and to live life spontaneously is what I call sannyas.Moment to moment, we will see. Why go on doing rehearsals? When the moment comes, your consciousness will face it and respond to it. But people are preparing so much that almost their whole lives are used up in preparations.I have heard about a German professor. He wanted to have the biggest collection of philosophical, religious, spiritual literature. And he was a very rich man too, so he wandered around the earth collecting all kinds of scriptures. There are three hundred religions in the world, and there are hundreds of philosophies, and each philosophy has hundreds of books in different languages. And he had translators translating them all into German. This was all preparation for when he would start reading.But by the time he was ninety he was still collecting books. Somebody told him, “Now it is time that you should start reading. The preparation has gone on too long, and you have thousands and thousands of books. We don’t think you will be able to read all of them. Your life is just at the very end, maybe a year or two more.”But the man said, “But my collection is not complete yet.”So he started collecting more forcibly, put more men into collection, into translation. Finally he fell sick, and the doctor said, “He is not going to survive more than seven days.”He called all the scholars who were translating his books: “Now stop translating. Just try to find small summaries from every scripture, because I have got only seven days and I want to know what is written in all the scriptures. So just prepare small summaries of all the scriptures.”But the scholars said, “You have collected so many scriptures, even summaries will not be possible. We will try, but in seven days all the summaries will not be ready.”The last day came. He inquired again, “What has happened?”They said, “We are trying.”He said, “Forget all about it. Do one thing: just make one small note summarizing all the scriptures. Because there is no more time; I feel that I am going. So be fast and be quick.”They said, “How can we be fast and quick? We have to look into scriptures to find the very gist, the very essential center of all of them. It will take a little time.”The whole day passed, and by the evening they had come to a conclusion, a small summary of a few pages. They reached him; the man was almost drowning. He said, “That many pages won’t do. Just make it half a page, just a small summary that can be printed on a postcard. I don’t have time for all these pages.”So they rushed back, again they summarized. Now it meant nothing, because all those scriptures, summaries and summaries… And by the time they came back, the man was dead.His wife said, “It is a very sad thing. You can at least shout loudly in his ear; perhaps he may be able to hear. He is just going down.”The doctor said, “Now it is useless. But you can try, there is no harm in it.” So one scholar shouted the summary of all the scriptures. But the man was dead already, and the doctors were saying, “Now he cannot hear.”His whole life went into preparation. And this is not the story of one strange, weird man. This is the story of all normal people: preparation, preparation, preparation. They forget completely, that…preparation for what? We are not certain even of the next moment. Preparation for what! Either live or prepare. If you want to live, live now. Or prepare for tomorrow – and remember, tomorrow never comes. What comes in place of tomorrow is death. An intelligent person lives his life. He does not bother about preparations, disciplines.You are here with me. Live this moment to its totality, to its very intensity. Perhaps out of that totality and intensity, you may get the taste that will go on lingering with you into the next moment. And once you have known that a moment can be lived with totality and intensity, you know the secret, the very secret of life. You are always given a single moment; you are not given two moments together. If you know the secret of living one moment, you know the whole secret of life, because you will always get one moment, and you know how to live it, how to be totally in it.Your question reminds me about one of my old friends, a centipede. A centipede has one hundred legs; hence, the name centipede. The name comes from ancient Sanskrit, shatpadee. Just one morning, early in the morning as the sun was rising, the centipede was going for a morning walk. A philosophical rabbit, watching the legs, could not believe – he said, “My God, this centipede is going to be in trouble soon. How is he going to remember which foot first, which foot second…one hundred legs! He is bound to be in trouble.”The rabbit came close and said to the centipede, “Uncle, I am a philosophical rabbit – just a student, an inquirer about truth.”The centipede said, “That is all right, but what is the problem?”He said, “The problem is: how do you manage one hundred legs?”So the centipede said, “I never thought about it. And no centipede has ever thought about it; there is no mention of it in our scriptures. We have been managing perfectly well. But your question is valid. Just sit. I will try,” and he could not go even two feet. Puzzled, he fell down.And he was very angry at the rabbit. He said, “You rascal, never again ask any centipede your philosophical question, because now I am in trouble. And the question has got into my head; now I cannot walk without thinking about how it is happening – which one? And one hundred legs… My life is finished, but be kind enough not to ask such questions to anybody else. I will try to forget this question. I don’t know…if I can forget it I can live; if I cannot forget it, I am finished.”Now you are trying to be in my presence, relaxing, merging, watching… You will get into trouble. Forget all nonsense; forget all philosophical questions. Here, just be. Simply be, and out of that being grows an understanding that will give you the insight into where to merge, where to watch, where to relax. Here, you are to just get a taste of being – of being fully alive, silent, joyous – and everything else will come out of that.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 11 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,The fruit falls on the ground when it is ripe. One day you will leave us, and it will be impossible to have another master in your place.How can anybody else be the substitute for the Master of Masters?Osho, when you leave the physical body, will your meditation techniques help our inner growth as they do now?My approach to your growth is basically to make you independent of me. Any kind of dependence is a slavery, and spiritual dependence is the worst slavery of all.I have been making every effort to make you aware of your individuality, your freedom, your absolute capacity to grow without any help from anybody. Your growth is something intrinsic to your being. It does not come from outside, it is not an imposition; it is an unfolding.All the meditation techniques that I have given to you are not dependent on me – my presence or absence will not make any difference – they are dependent on you. It is not my presence, but your presence that is needed for them to work. It is not my being here but your being here, your being in the present, your being alert and aware that is going to help.I can understand your question and its relevance. It is not irrelevant. The whole past of man is, in different ways, a history of exploitation. And even the so-called spiritual people could not resist the temptation to exploit. Out of a hundred masters, ninety-nine percent were trying to impose the idea that, “without me you cannot grow, no progress is possible. Give me your whole responsibility.” But the moment you give your whole responsibility to somebody, unknowingly you are also giving your whole freedom.And naturally, all those masters had to die one day, but they have left long lines of slaves: Christians, Jews, Hindus, Mohammedans. What are these people? Why should somebody be a Christian? If you can be someone, be a Christ, never be a Christian. Are you absolutely blind to the humiliation when you call yourself a Christian, a follower of someone who died two thousand years ago? The whole of humanity is following the dead. Is it not weird that the living should follow the dead, that the living should be dominated by the dead, that the living should depend on the dead and their promises that “we will be coming to save you”. None of them has come to save you. In fact, nobody can save anybody else; it goes against the foundational truth of freedom and individuality.As far as I am concerned, I am simply making every effort to make you free from everybody – including me – and to just be alone on the path of searching. This existence respects a person who dares to be alone in the seeking of truth. Slaves are not respected by existence at all. They do not deserve any respect; they don’t respect themselves, how can they expect existence to be respectful toward them?So remember, when I am gone, you are not going to lose anything. Perhaps you may gain something of which you are absolutely unaware. Right now I am only available to you embodied, imprisoned in a certain shape and form. Right now you have to come to me. When I am gone, where can I go? I will be here in the winds and in the ocean; and if you have loved me, if you have trusted me, you will feel me in a thousand and one ways. In your silent moments you will suddenly feel my presence. Once I am unembodied, my consciousness is universal.Then, you will not need to seek and search for me. Wherever you are…your thirst, your love…and you will find me in your very heart, in your very heartbeat.Osho,Being on my own in the marketplace, I felt myself becoming very mechanical and unaware in my activities. Now, being in your presence and going inside, my body-mind speed is slowing down, and self-consciousness is arising. This state of self-consciousness gives a lightness, and one wants to stay in it more and more. When I look at you, I see a grace that is pointing far beyond.Osho, can you speak on the self-consciousness of the disciple, and the grace of the master?It is good that you are becoming aware of a very essential phenomenon: that in the marketplace you had become mechanical, robot-like. Coming here, you are more relaxed. The speed of the mind is slowly, slowly getting less. And as your awareness is becoming clear, your mechanical-ness is disappearing. You have to see that awareness and mechanical-ness cannot exist together; there is no coexistence possible between those two factors.In the marketplace you are not expected to be aware; you are expected to be efficient. Efficiency is a quality of machines, machines are more efficient than human beings. Because efficiency is required, you become more mechanical, and as you become more mechanical your awareness disappears. And your awareness is your real being. By efficiency and mechanical-ness, you may succeed in earning more money, more power, more prestige, more respectability, but you will lose yourself. And you are losing yourself very cheaply; what you are gaining in return is worthless. Do you know how many people have lived before you on this earth? Do you realize the fact that millions of them were successful people? Millions of them were famous in their time, and now people don’t even remember their names. They have disappeared like dreams, without leaving any trace behind. We are also going to disappear in the same way.The only people who have died and yet continue to live on in people’s love, in people’s trust, are not the very successful: the emperors, the world conquerors, the richest. Those few people who, in spite of their deaths, still beat in the hearts of man belong to a totally different category: they were the people of awareness, people with soul. Their impact has been so deep that it will remain unto the last man. Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Kabir, Christ, al-Hillaj Mansoor – these people cannot be forgotten. They will go on living in the deepest parts of your being for the simple reason that they never compromised their awareness for the expectations of the marketplace.So the first thing: you have become aware. Make your awareness sharper, and next time you go to the marketplace there is no need to become robot-like. Perhaps you will not be as efficient as robots – so what? Perhaps you will not be as successful as the mechanical ones – so what? Let them have their day, and then they will disappear like soap bubbles. Don’t feel jealous of them. Be compassionate toward them, and remain contented with your awareness.Risk everything for awareness, but never risk awareness for anything. This is the commitment of a sannyasin: that he is ready to lose his life but not his awareness; he has found a value which is higher than life. There is no other value which is higher than awareness. Awareness is the seed of godliness in you. When it comes to its full growth, you have come to the fulfillment of your destiny. As your awareness goes deeper, your actions may not be efficient but they will have a new quality, the quality of grace, which is far more valuable. No machine can have the quality of grace. Your actions, your words will have a beauty of their own. The way a man of awareness lives, each moment is filled with tremendous grace and beauty. It is reflected in his actions, even in the smallest actions – just in the gesture of his hand or just the way he looks; in the depth of his eyes or the authority of his words or the music of his silence. His very presence is a celebration.In comparison to such a man, emperors are beggars; they have everything of the world, but inside they are empty. The temple may be made of gold, but inside the master of the temple is missing.Every day the disciple becomes more and more graceful, more and more alert; and with all these qualities, a deep gratefulness toward the master is a necessary outcome. It is not that you have to do it. If you do it, it is phony. If it comes on its own accord, then it has authenticity. And as your gratefulness grows, you become more available, more open. The master can pour his whole being into you, all his blessings, his whole benediction.Osho,I sense something wonderful, something incredible happening to you over there in your chair. And more and more over the years, I sense something really wonderful happening within me over here. For me, it is not enlightenment – I know that. But it is like a harmony with you.Osho, can you say something about how I can reach through the smoke of the mind to bring this wondrousness, this beautiful feeling of giftedness out into the open so that it can grow?The phenomenon of harmony is one of the most mysterious experiences possible. It means that two bodies are still two bodies, but the two souls within them are no more two. One soul within two bodies: that’s exactly the meaning of harmony. It is the most exquisite experience.Ordinarily we are living in conflict, in disharmony. The husband is living in disharmony with the wife – they call it living together. But unless this oneness arises, their togetherness is nothing but an underground conflict, erupting at any moment for any meaningless, silly reason. Both are sitting on volcanoes. Parents are feeling a generation gap between themselves and their own children. There seems to be no common ground of understanding; harmony is a faraway goal. They don’t even understand each other’s language – not that they speak different languages, but their visions are different, their attitudes are different, their approach toward life is different – and there seems to be no way to come to any conclusion. Parents and children are no longer on speaking terms because each time they speak it turns out to be a fight.The same thing happens with husbands and wives. When they are newly wed, things are hot: they fight, the wives throw things, break plates, cups and glasses, throw pillows. The husbands behave in the same way – they beat the same woman they used to think they could not live without. They not only beat her, they even imagine many times killing her; otherwise, the wife is going to kill him. It is only a question of who takes the initiative; it is a cold war. Slowly, slowly, things get cooler: no more pillow fights, no more breaking of cups and glasses and saucers. But that does not mean that they have come to a harmony. That simply means they have understood the stupidity of it all; it is better to be silent. The husband simply goes on reading the same newspaper. On Sunday it is a little difficult; they avoid each other, they don’t want to be left alone together.One of my friends – a very rich man – asked me when he became fifty, “I have enough money. I have only two girls, who are married. And it is very difficult because only my wife and I are left in the house.”But I said, “You should be happy. I thought this was a love marriage.”He said, “Now I don’t use that word love at all; it is that word that has destroyed my life. So just because of the wife, I continue with the business and the industries – just to avoid her, because otherwise there would be no need.”I said, “Then find a beautiful hill station, and move there and live peacefully.”He said, “But…alone with this woman on a hill station? You are suggesting a murder!”I said, “What are you talking about? Who is going to murder whom?”He said, “That depends on who takes the initiative first. With this woman alone – no! If you are willing to stay with us, I could be safe, I could go to any hill station. Without a friend, we don’t even go to see a movie. The friend has to sit between the two of us; otherwise, something…and anything is enough to begin a quarrel.”I said, “I never see you fighting.”He said, “That’s true; for years, everything has gone underground. But we are fighting. Inside myself, I am beating her; inside herself she is beating me – but not to make a show. What will people think, what will the servants think?”They were not sleeping in the same room. I asked the wife why. She said, “No, there is not much of a problem. It is because he snores.”I said, “I have slept in the same room with him many times. I have never heard him snoring.”I asked my friend, “What is the matter? Your wife says you snore.”He said, “Yes, I snore – just to keep her in the other room. I never snore in my sleep! That’s why you have not heard it. I have to make an effort to snore – it is a very difficult art, one has to learn it – just to give her an excuse. She wanted to sleep in the other room, but some excuse was needed. And it is perfectly peaceful to be here. She is there, and I lock the door from inside, because she may come in the middle of the night; some idea may come to her and a quarrel will start.”People are not living in harmony. Harmony is an empty word, and for most people, unfortunately, it remains empty. They know only fight, anger. Harmony means you are dropping your ego, you are saying, “I would like to be with you so deeply one, that this very idea of I is no longer needed.”A few people have lived in harmony; and particularly the master and the disciple cannot have any kind of relationship without harmony. The master is without ego; the disciple just has to drop his ego, and two consciousnesses become one, and a great music vibrates – in both persons, one music. It has happened in other relationships too, but very rarely. I am reminded of a strange book in Sanskrit. Its name is Bhamiti. It is a strange name because it is a commentary on one of the most philosophical treatises ever written, the Brahma Sutras of Badarayan.Badarayan is perhaps the greatest philosopher the world has produced, and he has written these small maxims, Brahma Sutras: maxims about the ultimate. There is no other book in the whole world on which so many commentaries have been written – thousands and thousands of commentaries, because the maxims are so small, so condensed that unless somebody opens them, explains them, interprets them, you will not be able to find their meaning.Brahma Sutra is a strange book. No other book has had the same fate as Badarayan’s Brahma Sutra. Commentaries have been written, but the commentaries were also very difficult to understand, so commentaries upon commentaries were written. But still these were not so simple either, so commentaries on those commentaries… This is the only book in which you will find a series of commentaries; the original is lost. And for thousands of years in India, people have been writing commentaries on the commentaries to bring its meaning to the masses.One of the commentaries, one of the best commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, is Bhamiti, and it is strange, because Bhamiti is a weird name for a commentary. Bhamiti is the name of a certain woman, and to give that name to the commentary… The commentary was written by a great philosopher, Vachaspati, whose wife’s name was Bhamiti. It took him twelve years to write the commentary, and he decided that the day the commentary was complete, he would renounce the world and go to the Himalayas. One day, in the middle of the night, the commentary was completed. He took the candle, in whose light he had been writing the commentary, to go to his room. And on the way there, he found a woman and he asked, “Who are you and what are you doing here?”She said, “My lord, you were so immersed in writing the commentary, you forgot completely that you had married me. I am your wife.”Vachaspati said, “I remember. And I also remember that every day… Just show me your hand, because I can recognize your hand. You were the one who put the candle by my side every day as the sun was setting. I know this hand. But it is too late; I have decided that the day the commentary is complete I will leave the house. You should have reminded me.”Bhamiti said, “It would have been very unloving to disturb you; I was waiting. And don’t be worried – if you have decided to leave, you can leave without any worry. I will not come as a hindrance to your decision. It is enough that I can see that you are worried for me. This will be enough for my whole life, that you had a certain love.”Vachaspati said, “You are a great woman. It is very rare to find such a woman. It is easy to find many commentators of my quality, but to find a woman of your quality – such love, such trust, such waiting, such patience. And such greatness of heart: just your concern that it is getting late is enough for you, as if there is no expectation. I will call my commentary Bhamiti, so that whoever reads this commentary is bound to be surprised by the name” – because it has no relevance; the commentary is on the Brahma Sutras – and, Bhamiti…?“But without you, and without your love, and without your patience, and without your silent waiting… You never came in front of me, and you are so beautiful that it is certain: if you had come in front of me, it would have been a disturbance. I might have forgotten about the commentary; I might have delayed completing it, just to remain with you.”But Bhamiti said, “I have received more than I deserve. You should not wait in the house any longer. Let me have the pride of having a husband who has followed his decision, even though now I can see you are hesitating. Don’t hesitate. I will not allow you to remain in the house; you have to go to the Himalayas, because if you remain in the house, I will not be able to give you the same respect.”This is a tremendous, unbelievable story. Vachaspati left for the Himalayas, but he could not forget Bhamiti – such a quality, such grace and such beauty, something beyond human qualities. Only such people have given proof that there is something more than human qualities, something which can only be called divine. Vachaspati remains a great scholar, but Bhamiti proves to be a far more divine personality.So once in a while there have been, in other relationships, people who have felt harmony with each other, but that is extremely rare, accidental and exceptional. But as far as the master and disciple relationship is concerned, it is a basic necessity; without it, there is no relationship. A musical oneness, such a deep love that it consumes your ego. There are not two persons in relationship but only a harmonious whole, an energy field. And once you have experienced it with a master, you can experience it in your other relationships too, because the principle is the same. And if you can experience it in all your relationships, many harmonies around you, your life becomes truly a divine gift, an orchestra. Then the master-discipleship was just the learning of a certain knack; you can use it with your wife, with your husband, with your children, with your parents, with your friends. You can spread it all over the world. You can feel it with the trees, with the stars; it is only a question of knowing the knack.The secret is how not to be, how to disappear as an ego. Then whatever you touch creates music, whatever you touch becomes gold.Osho,After leaving Rajneeshpuram in November last year, I experienced that it became nearly impossible for me to find out what I was going to do. In the beginning it was a bit frightening, but very soon I saw more and more that just waiting was enough, and many beautiful things started happening to me, without my going for it.Is this how being with you works?It is not only the way things happen around me, it is the way of the whole of existence. You just wait, and everything happens at its right moment. Wait and watch. Don’t fall asleep – because in waiting that is very natural, to fall asleep. Nothing to do one falls asleep. Then things will be happening but you will not know. So wait and watch.Life has been disturbed by the so-called do-gooders who, around the world, are continually preaching, “Do this, do that, do service to the poor.” Doing has been raised so high that we have completely forgotten the art of waiting. And, certainly, there are things which can happen only if you do them. For example, you cannot simply wait and grow rich. There are people who even teach that. One American thinker, Napoleon Hill, has written beautiful books, a master writer. I have always liked one of his books, Think And Grow Rich, although it is absolute nonsense. But he writes well. And there are people who believe that all that you have to do is simply wait; sow the seeds of thinking that a Cadillac car should come into your garage, and just wait. And one day, suddenly a Cadillac car comes, delivered to you. There are people who believe this – that thinking has so much power.In America there is still a Christian sect… Half a century ago it was very important because a large number of people believed in it. The sect calls itself “Christian Science.” And the science is that you need not do anything, you have just to think. God is the doer. You think, pray, wait; just give time to God. And what do you think, that a Cadillac is a bigger thing than the whole universe. God can create the whole universe and he cannot create a Cadillac car.I have heard a story that a young man was going to college and was met by an old woman. She asked, “What happened to your father? He is not coming to our Sunday meetings.” They were Christian Scientists.The boy said, “He is sick.”The old woman laughed. She said, “Nonsense, he must be thinking he is sick. It is thinking that matters. Just tell that old man, that ‘For your whole life you have been a member of Christian Science and still you have not understood a simple thing. Stop thinking that you are sick, and you will not be sick.’”The boy said, “I will deliver the message.”After a week, again the old woman met the boy and said, “What happened? – because he has not come even this week to the weekly meeting of the Christian Scientists.”The boy said, “Madam, now he thinks he is dead. And not only does he think he is dead, the whole neighborhood thinks he is dead, so they have put him in the grave. I tried to persuade them, ‘Wait! He may be thinking’ – but they think that I am mad.”There are things which will go on happening without your doing; you just have to wait – and there are things which you have to do, only then will they happen. And slowly, slowly, the things that happen by doing have become more important: they are your material possessions, your money, your power, your prestige, your palaces, your empires. They won’t happen just by waiting. By waiting, you will not become Alexander the Great. So, because things which happen only by doing became important, humanity has completely forgotten the whole area of things which happen.Love happens, you cannot do it – although all over the world people have been trying to do that. And it is so strange that the world has not yet recognized the utter failure… Parents, for centuries, have been arranging marriages for their children. Astrologers are asked, palmists are asked, everything else is inquired about – the family, the wealth, the character of the people – but nobody asks the boy and the girl whether they love each other. Love is not a subject of inquiry at all. It is taken for granted that once they are married, they will love. For thousands of years humanity has been doing that, and certainly when a small boy and girl are married, they start being like brothers and sisters also – fighting, playing with each other, quarreling. They never come to know what love is; they think this is love. They produce children, they buy ornaments for their wives, the wives try to make the life of the husband as difficult as possible – in every way they help each other.It is only just in this century that people started saying, “Unless we are in love, we will not marry” – and that, too, only in a few advanced countries. But love is a question about which you cannot do anything. Either it happens or it does not happen. It is not within your control. Love marriage came into existence but is not going to survive, for the simple reason that love comes, happens, and one day suddenly goes. It was not in your hands to bring it; neither is it in your hands to keep it.The arranged marriage failed because the insistence was that you should love your wife, you should love your husband. It was a “should.” And you could not even conceive how you could love; at the most you could pretend, you could act. But love is not a pretension, is not acting. You cannot do anything. You are absolutely powerless as far as love is concerned. The old marriage has failed. The new marriage is failing because the new marriage is simply a reaction to the old marriage. It is not out of understanding, but only out of reaction, revolt – “love marriage.”You don’t know what love is. You simply see some beautiful face, you see some beautiful body and you think, “My God, I am in love!” This love is not going to last, because after two days, seeing the same face for twenty-four hours a day, you will get bored. The same body… You have explored the whole topography, now there is nothing to explore. Exploring the same geography again and again, you feel like an idiot. What is the point?This love affair, this love marriage is failing, it has already failed. The reason is that you don’t know how to wait so that love can happen. You have to learn a meditative state of waiting. Then love is not a passion, it is not a desire. Then love is not sexual; then love is a feeling of two hearts beating in the same rhythm. It is not a question of beautiful faces or beautiful bodies. It is something very deep, a question of harmony. If love arises out of harmony, then only will we know a successful life, a life of fulfillment in which love goes on deepening because it does not depend on anything outer; it depends on something inner. It does not depend on the nose and the length of the nose; it depends on an inner feeling of two hearts beating in the same rhythm. That rhythm can go on growing, can have new depths, newer spaces. Sex can be a part of it, but it is not sexual. Sex may come into it, may disappear in it. It is far greater than sex. So whether the person you love is young or old does not matter. Every woman has thought once in a while… Many women have been asking their lovers, “Will you also love me when I become old?”I know about one of my friends – he asked me, that’s why I know – that the girl he loves is continually asking him, “Will you love me when I am old?” He asked me, “What should I say?”I said, “Why are you bringing me unnecessarily into this trouble? This is your business. You say anything. What do you feel?”He said, “If she becomes like her mother, I cannot love her. And most probably she will become like her, so that is the only fear.”So I said, “Say it clearly, that ‘Your old age is not the question; but if you become like your mother then just forgive me, I will not be able to love you.’”He said, “But then everything will be finished, because then her mother will be angry, and the whole thing depends on her. I am persuading her mother. The father is dead; she is the only one to decide about the marriage. Secondly, the girl will also get angry, because she also knows that she will become like her mother. All the symptoms are there.”I said, “Then keep quiet. Then when the difficult times come, see me again.”He said, “But that girl is so insistent. She wants to know before marriage.”I said, “It is simple. You start asking her, ‘When I become old, will you love me?’”He said, “That’s good, because I am going to become old just like my father, and she hates my father just like I hate her mother. That’s absolutely right.”And he told her, and she said, “Never! If you become like your own father, I am not going to love you. I will divorce you immediately.”The boy said, “Then when the difficult times come, we will see what to do.”Why bring in these questions from the very beginning? But all your love is dependent on such small things – the size of the nose, the eyes, the color of the hair, the proportions of the body. These things have nothing to do with love. Love is a feeling of harmony with an individual, of accordance.So it is not only with the relationship of the master and the disciple; in all your relationships, if you wait and watch for a harmonious moment with existence, you will find that things are happening that you could never have been able to do. Many flowers are possible, many poems and songs are possible. Many stars are born out of harmony, waiting, and being alert. Things are happening, but you have to be conscious. Many times things are happening but you are not conscious. You miss what was your very right, just by being sleepy.My teaching is basically of let-go. Things that happen only by doing are mundane. I am not against them, but they are not the essential part of your life. If you want to have a beautiful house, you will have to build it; it is not going to happen. Whether you are a Christian Scientist or you believe in Think And Grow Rich, nothing is going to help. But these are non-essential things. Essential things: love, joy, cheerfulness, a sense of humor, peace that passeth understanding, an inward journey to find yourself, these are the essential things which you cannot do, which you have to learn to allow to happen.So keep a clear-cut idea: what has to be done should be done, and what has to be allowed to happen should be allowed to happen; never interfere with it. And also remember, the essential is that which happens on its own, and the non-essential is that which you do. Your doing cannot be anything sacred. That’s why I say that all the temples and all the churches, all the statues of God made by man are mundane. Whatever is made by man cannot be higher than man.It is a simple arithmetic: What is higher than man always happens, it is beyond your doing. You are always at the receiving end. You have to be just open, receptive, grateful to existence.Osho,Being with you in discourse, I feel so nourished, and have finally found the rest I had longed for.Being in the west, I didn't even feel how much I was missing being in your presence. How could I forget the beauty of being with you?Please comment.Man’s memory is not very great. He forgets easily.Just a few examples will help you. You all have been children. How much do you remember the innocence that you had? In fact, a strange fact has been discovered by the psychologists: that if you go backward trying to remember, you reach only to the age of four, at the most to the age of three. But those three or four years in the very beginning were the best – no responsibility, no worry, no tension. Life was simply a romance, a sheer joy, but people don’t remember it.And it is very strange that everybody’s memory stops nearabout the age of three or four. It seems the best in us is not recorded. Perhaps it is a biological strategy that you should forget it; if you remember it, then for your whole life you will feel you are missing. You are missing because you have seen the most beautiful moments, and now everything will be dull, pale, dead. It will not have that luster, that joy, that liveliness. Perhaps it is a strategy of biology not to record those beautiful moments.Even in later life… You will be surprised to know that the mind functions in a very strange way: it records everything that is miserable very quickly. Somebody has insulted you – you will never forget it for your whole life. So many people have respected you, you have forgotten. One person has insulted you and you cannot forget. It seems that the ugly, the dark, the humiliating, the tragic have a priority as far as remembrance is concerned. All that is good, all that is beautiful is simply forgotten; they leave no marks on your memory.Politicians have been using it, priests have been using it in exploiting humanity from the very beginning. They say that in a democracy two parties are needed. Democracy has nothing to do with two parties. Two parties are needed for a totally different reason, which is psychological. One party is in power for five years; in those five years everybody goes against that party – because it has promised paradise and you are living in hell, and it has forgotten all those promises. The opposition party goes on provoking you: “What happened to the promises of these people? We could have fulfilled your promises.” In the next election, those who were in power lose power and the other party that was powerless comes into power. In five years’ time, they are finished. But in five years, people have forgotten the first party, and the first party is again promising a paradise, and they are listening to them and believing them.It has been found that the masses have a memory of five years at the most. That’s why elections have to be decided every five years; there is no other reason. So in five years’ time the masses forget the first party’s crimes, the first party’s stupidities, the first party’s lies; they all become saints again. That’s why two parties are needed. One party will be in difficulty, because if they are continuously in power you cannot forgive them. People will start revolting, killing those who are in power. So this is a very psychological way of keeping people satisfied: “Don’t be worried, it is only a question of two years more. Then these people will be gone and the good people will be coming” – and they all belong to the same category.I have never voted in my life for the simple reason that I could not see any difference between two idiots, who is a lesser idiot. I could not find a way, so I thought it was better not to get involved in it. At least nobody can blame me: “You have chosen this idiot.” I have never chosen anybody. Choose anyone and you have chosen the wrong person. Just look forty years back in India: whoever you choose, you always choose the wrong person, and whoever you choose again you will choose the wrong person – because they are the same people. It is just like a football match: two parties, two groups are playing football, and you are the football. You are going to get kicks from everywhere. Wherever you go, you will get a good kick.You are asking me why we tend to forget the beautiful moments. It is natural, because the mind is not interested in taking note of the flowers, it is interested in taking note of the thorns. Anything that hurts, it immediately takes note of. Who cares about a flower? You remember your enemies better than your friends. Just watch your mind and you will be surprised that you remember your enemy more than you remember your friends. You can forget your friends, but you cannot forget your enemies. This is your insane mind.A saner mind will look at things from just the opposite direction; it will count the blessings, it will count all that is beautiful, it will keep note of all it has to be grateful for. And then, naturally the life of such a person will become a life of blessings, surrounded by all beautiful experiences.It is only a question of changing a small structure in your mind.I have always loved a story:It happened in a synagogue which was also a monastery for the Jews, and the chief rabbi was a very strict person. Two young Jews were walking in the garden of the monastery. They used to get one hour in the morning, and one hour in the evening to go into the garden. Other times, they had to study the scriptures and do other disciplines. They both were thinking, “Should we ask the chief if we can smoke while we are in the garden?” Both were chain smokers, but in the monastery, inside the synagogue, smoking was impossible. It was a crime. They were suffering, so both decided that although it was putting your hand in the lion’s mouth, the effort should be made: “That chief rabbi is a dangerous man; how he will react, only God knows.”The next day, one of the two was coming out of the synagogue with tears in his eyes, both angry and sad. And then he saw the other fellow, who was sitting by the side of a beautiful rose bush – smoking! He said, “My God, have you started without asking?”The other man said, “No, I have asked.”He said, “What kind of man is this? I asked him also, and he shouted at me so loudly: ‘You rascal! What do you think – this is a synagogue or hell? If you want to smoke cigarettes, go to hell!’ So how is it that he allowed you?’”The other man smiled and he said, “What was your way of asking?”He said, “What has that to do with it?”The other man said, “Just tell me, how did you ask?”He said, “I simply asked…” Because these two hours were called hours of prayer, they were allowed to go into the garden for two hours of prayer.So he answered, “I simply asked, ‘Can I smoke while praying?’ And he shouted so loudly and it seemed he was going to hit me!”The other man said, “Calm down. You asked in the wrong way. I asked him also; I asked him, ‘Sir, can I pray while smoking?’ and he said, ‘That’s perfectly good, there is no harm in that.’”Just a slight change, but it makes lot of difference.Start collecting all that is happening to you that is beautiful. And it is happening to everybody. And anything that is not beautiful is not worth remembering, not worth collecting. Why make yourself burdened with rubbish when you can be full of flowers and fragrance? You have to make a little change in your natural biological mind.Meditation can do it very easily. One of the essential parts of meditation is to look at the good side of things, to look at the good side of people, to look at the good side of incidents, so that you are surrounded with everything good. Surrounded with all beautiful things, your growth is easier.But people are strange. You may do one thousand favors for a person and just do one unfavorable thing; he will forget the one thousand favors and he will remember that one unfavorable thing that you did. That he will carry for his whole life. This is how people are living: in revenge, in anger, in despair, feeling rejected by life, feeling like outcasts of existence.But the whole thing is that you are collecting the wrong things. Life is full of both. You can see that one day is sandwiched between two nights, and you can also see two beautiful days sandwiching one small night. Choose how you want to feel – to be in heaven or hell. It is your choice.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 12 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Is it true that to be in communion with the master is the initiation?The word initiation is very significant and profound. There are three initiations: first, when a student becomes a disciple; second, when a disciple becomes a devotee; and third, when the devotee disappears in the master. To understand the whole process, all three steps have to be understood.Everyone begins as a student, as an inquirer into what this life is all about, with a curiosity to know the mysteries that surround us. But the desire is for knowledge, and hence is superficial. Because the desire is for knowledge, it is of the mind. And mind is the periphery of our being, the most superficial part of our individuality.The student has questions, but he has no quest. His questions are easily answerable, he is easily satisfied – just borrowed knowledge is enough for him. He does not yet need a master; he only needs a teacher. He accumulates answers, becomes an intellectual, but does not become intelligent. The accumulation of answers happens in the memory part of the mind, and the part that functions in accumulation is mechanical, it has nothing to do with intelligence. It is possible to find very educated, cultured, sophisticated intellectuals behaving in life in a very unintelligent way. They are very efficient whenever some question is asked for which they are already prepared. But if life raises a new question for which they are not prepared, they are completely at a loss, they are as ignorant as one can be. And the problem is, life goes on posing new questions, new challenges.Memory is good in the marketplace; memory is not good as a lifestyle. And all your universities only teach you how to memorize. It has been found that the people of very great memory are generally unintelligent people. In the life of one of the British viceroys, Curzon, there is mention of a very significant incident – and it is a historical fact. Curzon had heard that there was a man in Rajputana whose memory was just unbelievable. The man knew only his local dialect, Rajasthani, a dialect of Hindi; he did not know any other language. But that did not prevent him from memorizing any statement in any language, and in such a way that it seemed almost superhuman. He was called to the court of the Viceroy Curzon; a special meeting was arranged. Thirty scholars, knowing thirty languages, were to examine the man and his memory. Among those thirty scholars, there was not a single one who understood the man’s mother tongue, and all those thirty languages were foreign languages for the man.And the arrangement was so strange – it had never been made before and I don’t think it will ever be made again. The arrangement was such that each of those thirty scholars was to deliver one sentence in his own language to the poor villager from Rajasthan. But the sentence was not to be delivered to him in one piece. The villager would go to one person who would give him the first word of his sentence. Then a bell would be rung. Then the villager would move to the next person, who would give him his first word. In this way he would go round and round. After thirty persons, he would come again to the first person to get the second word of his sentence, and after each word a big bell would ring to confuse him.The scholars were not certain that they would be able to remember their whole sentence for the whole time, because it was going to take so much time. They all had their sentences written in front of them, and they were marking off each word they had given. And this man went on and on, round and round, taking their words, and accumulating in his memory system the sentences which were given to him in pieces. After all the scholars had given their sentences, he repeated thirty statements in thirty languages, of which he knew nothing. He knew nothing about what they meant. He was so correct that all the intellectuals were puzzled. They could not remember their own sentences, they had had to write them down. They could not remember whether they had given the fifth word or the sixth – they had had to mark it. And this man was uneducated – he could not even write.Curzon was amazed. He praised the man, and rewarded him. But it was found by talking with his fellow villagers that he was an idiot. Just as far as his memory was concerned, he was simply great – but any simple question in life, any simple situation in life, and he was not able to solve it, he was not able to answer it. They said, “He is known in our village as ‘the great intellectual idiot.’”It is a well-known fact that a student is interested in collecting knowledge. His questions are easily satisfied. His mind functions like a computer. But once in a while, a student falls into the trap of a master. He is not in search of a master, he does not know any difference between the words master and teacher. In the dictionaries both words mean the same. But in actual life, a teacher simply transfers knowledge from one generation to another generation – it is not his own experience. The master does not transfer knowledge from one generation to another generation; what he gives out is his own realization.But if the student is caught in the trap of a master, then it is very difficult to get out of it because soon it becomes clear that knowledge and knowing are two different things; questions and quest are two different things. Questions are simply curiosities; quest is a risk, is a pilgrimage, is a search.A question is easily satisfied by any logical, rational answer. The quest is not satisfied by logical or rational answers; the quest is like thirst. You can go on repeating that, scientifically, H2O means water, but that is not going to quench the thirst. It is an answer, and a perfectly good answer. If somebody is asking what water is, as a question, it is very simple to answer it. But if somebody is asking about water because he is thirsty, then H2O is not going to help. Then, only real water will do. Quest means thirst, hunger. No borrowed knowledge can satisfy it. And the master slowly makes the student aware that if you are really a man, then just to be curious is childish. Maturity demands that you should go on a quest, that you should not ask only for knowledge, you should ask for ways and means and methods so that you can know – not knowledge that has passed from generation to generation. No one knows whether somebody invented it, whether it is fiction, whether somebody realized it or not, how much is lost in transferring it, how much is added, how much is edited out. Knowing means “I want a personal experience.”A genuine seeker has no questions, but a tremendous thirst.This is the first initiation: when the master changes the student’s focus from knowledge toward knowing, from memory toward intelligence. And it is not an ordinary phenomenon, it happens to only a very few fortunate ones. Millions of people simply remain curious, childish, immature for their whole life.Once the emphasis has moved from knowledge to knowing, your concern is no longer with the past; your concern is with the present. Your concern is no longer with the great philosophers, wise people; your concern is about your own consciousness. For the first time you become interested not in objects but in your subjectivity, not about other things but about the one who wants to know: who is this who wants to know?This is the first initiation: the student dies, and the disciple is born. The second initiation is when the disciple also disappears – into a devotee. A disciple is still interested in gaining methods, disciplines, ways to know himself. The master has to be used; hence, he is grateful. But he is the end, and the master is the means; he is using the master for his own ends. As he comes closer to the master, the master takes him into the second initiation. And the second initiation is that unless you drop this obsession with yourself you will never know yourself. It appears contradictory; it is not. Your very obsession is preventing you; it is egoistic. You drop the ego, surrender the ego; you forget yourself, and in the very moment you forget yourself you will find yourself.From knowledge to knowing, the student was never interested in himself. He was interested in things, objects, the whole world. The first initiation brought him into a new world of interest about himself. The second initiation takes away the ego; the second initiation teaches him love. If you can love, you will know yourself without any difficulty, because knowing oneself is a byproduct.Only in loving light does the darkness within you disappear. Love is light, and the flame of love has to be taught.The master loves; his presence is love. His very presence is magnetic. Without saying a word… Just to be close to him, you will feel a certain pull, a certain love, a trust. And you don’t know the man, you don’t know whether he is trustworthy or not. But you are ready to risk. The presence of the master is so convincing that there is no need of any argument to prove it.I was a teacher in the university, and each year on Teacher’s Day the university professors used to have an intimate meeting to discuss problems that they were facing. And every year the basic and the most troublesome problem was that the students didn’t respect them. When I joined their meeting for the first time it was my first year in the university. They were all condemning the students, they were condemning modern society, the Western world, because these have taken away all respect. One of the professors – an old man, a very respected professor, he was the dean of the faculty of arts – said, “It is so shameful, particularly in a country where there have been students like Ekalavya.” I will have to tell you the story so you can understand. It is an ancient Indian story.There was a great master archer, Dronacharya. Princes, rich people, high caste Hindus and warriors used to come to him from faraway places to learn archery.The Hindu society is divided into four classes. It is the ugliest division that exists in the whole world, and it has existed for five thousand years. A fourth of Hindu society are not treated like human beings; they are called sudras, untouchables. They are not even worthy to be touched. If by accident you touch a sudra, you have to immediately take a shower to clean yourself. Not only the sudra, even the shadow of the sudra is untouchable. If a sudra passes by and his shadow touches you, you have to take a bath.This young man, Ekalavya, was born a sudra. But he wanted to become an archer, and he started learning archery on his own. He knew perfectly well – his elders told him – “No teacher is going to accept you.”He said, “Before I go to any teacher, I will learn so much that it will be almost impossible for him to reject me.” And he disciplined himself, and when he thought that now he knew enough, he went to the greatest archer of those days, Dronacharya.Dronacharya was amazed, seeing that the young man had learned on his own tremendously well. But still, Dronacharya was a brahmin, the highest Hindu caste, and it was impossible to accept Ekalavya as a disciple. He rejected him.But Ekalavya was made of a different kind of mettle than ordinary human beings are made of. He went into the forest and made a statue of Dronacharya. And just in front of the statue, he continued learning on his own. Soon the word started spreading all over the country that Ekalavya had become a master archer, just by the side of the statue of Dronacharya.Dronacharya had an ambition, and that ambition was that one prince who was his disciple, Arjuna – and he was a great archer – should become the greatest archer in the history of man. But this Ekalavya was disturbing everything, he was becoming more famous.Dronacharya went into the forest… And this is the point to be noted – that’s why the dean of the faculty of arts had quoted the name of Ekalavya.Ekalavya had been rejected by Dronacharya. Any ordinary human being would have felt insulted, humiliated. But on the contrary, he made a statue of Dronacharya – because he has chosen him as his master. It does not matter whether Dronacharya accepts him as his disciple or not – he will have to accept him. What matters is how deep his acceptance is of Dronacharya as his master.And when Dronacharya came, he fell at his feet. And Dronacharya saw what he had learned. Certainly he was far ahead of Arjuna, and Arjuna was not going to be the greatest archer, which was the deep ambition of Dronacharya. This man had rejected Ekalavya, and now he said to him, “You have been learning here in front of my statue. You have accepted me as your master.”Ekalavya said, “I have always thought of you as my master, even when you rejected me. I have not taken any note of your rejection.”Dronacharya said, “I accept you as my disciple, but then you will have to pay the fee. Every disciple has to pay the fee to the master – and you have not given even the entrance fee, and you have already become such a great archer.”Poor Ekalavya said, “Whatever you ask, if I have it I will give it to you. I can give my life. You are my master; just say it. But I am a poor man, so just ask for that which I have.”Dronacharya said, “Yes, I will ask only that which you have. I want your right-hand thumb. You cut it off, and give it to me.”This is an ugly story. The strategy is that once his right-hand thumb is cut off, his archery will be finished, he would no longer be a competitor to Arjuna. Dronacharya accepted him as his disciple just to get his thumb.And Ekalavya, without saying a word, simply took his sword and cut off his thumb. He gave it to the master and said, “If you want anything more, just tell me.”This story, you have to remember in the background. The dean was saying: “This country, which has produced students like Ekalavya – who respected a master like Dronacharya who rejected him, insulted him – has fallen so low that students are not respecting teachers at all. Something has to be done.”I was very new. It was my first meeting with all the professors from all the departments. I had to stand up, and I said to the old man, “You have raised a few questions. One: this is certainly the country of students like Ekalavya, but this is also the country of teachers like Dronacharya – ugly, cunning, inhuman. Why do you go on forgetting about him? – who has behaved in the most inhuman way possible: first, you are rejecting a poor young man because he is condemned by you as an untouchable. Secondly, when he achieves on his own, you are willing to accept him as your disciple – in the forest, where nobody knows what is happening. And that too for a certain reason, so that you can cripple his right hand to destroy his archery, so that your ambition of making Arjuna the greatest archer in the world can be fulfilled.I said, “You should not forget that it is because of teachers like Dronacharya that teachers in India have lost their respect. You represent Dronacharya – on what grounds do you want students to respect you? And you are not even conscious of the fact you are mentioning Ekalavya. As far as I am concerned, I don’t see… I also have students, and I am a new professor. I have not seen a single student being disrespectful toward me. I love them; I respect them. Love resonates love in the other, respect creates respect in the other – these are resonances. If I had been in the place of Ekalavya, I would have cut off the head of Dronacharya! That’s exactly what he deserved.”The old man was in such a shock and so shattered he was almost trembling. I said, “Sit down because you are trembling, and if a heart attack or something happens I will be responsible for it. Please sit down. I am not going to cut your head off; although you also need to be treated in the same way. You want students to be Ekalavyas – what about the teachers?”The master is not a teacher. He loves; it will be better to say he is love. He respects; it will be better to say he is respectfulness. Naturally he creates a gravitational field of love, respect, gratitude. In this gravitational field, the second initiation happens. The disciple is no longer interested in knowing about himself. His only interest is in how to be dissolved into the master, how to be in harmony with the master. And the day the harmony comes to its peak, the disciple disappears; the devotee is born.The devotee is miles away from the student. The whole journey has taken such revolutionary changes. The devotee is on the verge…the life of the devotee is not long. The longest life is that of the student. In the middle is the disciple. And the life span of the devotee is very small. It is something like a dewdrop on a lotus petal in the early morning sun, slipping slowly, slowly toward the sun into the ocean. The dewdrop is just that small fragment of time that it takes to slip from the lotus leaf into the ocean.The devotee’s life is not long, it is very short – because once you have tasted the harmony you cannot wait to taste oneness. It is impossible to wait. The dewdrop runs fast, drops into the ocean, becomes one with the ocean.There are two ways to say it. Kabir, one of the great mystics of India, is the only one who has used both ways. When for the first time he slipped into the ocean, he wrote a small statement in which he said, “I had been searching for myself, but, my friend, instead of finding myself, I have disappeared into the ocean. The dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean.”After almost twenty years, when he was on his deathbed, he asked his son, Kamal, “Bring the notes you have been taking of my statements. Before I die, I have to correct one thing.” He said, “I said in one place that the dewdrop has disappeared into the ocean. Change it. Write down, ‘The ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop.’”His own words are tremendously beautiful. The first words are: Herat herat hey sakhi rahya kabir herai, bund samani samund mein so kat heri jai. And the second: Herat herat hey sakhi rahya kabir herai, samund samana bund mein so kat hero jai. In the first, the dewdrop has disappeared in the ocean. In the second, the ocean has disappeared into the dewdrop – perhaps two sides of the same coin.This is the third initiation, and only after the third initiation is there communion – because there is union, there is no longer separation, there is at-oneness.The path of a mystic begins as a student, ends as a master, begins as a dewdrop, ends as an ocean.Osho,The closer I am to you physically, the more I get lost in your presence and forget about the person that I think I am. It feels as if magnetic energy is coming from you that pulls me strongly toward you.What is happening?That which should be happening is happening. You are coming closer to my presence. You cannot keep your person intact. You cannot have both my presence and your person. If you want your person, you will have to lose my presence; if you want my presence, you will have to lose your person, they cannot coexist.But what is your person? Have you ever thought about it? It consists of all your miseries, anxieties, despairs, nightmares; it is your hell. Have you ever given thought to a simple phenomenon? Since the very beginnings of man, why have human beings been so much interested in intoxicating drugs? In Rig Veda, the oldest book in the world…even the so-called seers of the Vedas are interested in a certain drug called soma.One of the most intelligent persons of this century, Aldous Huxley – who was very well acquainted with the East, particularly eastern mystics – finally ended up experimenting with LSD. He wrote that in the coming century, the finest form of LSD will be called soma, in remembrance of the Rig Vedas’ soma. He was absolutely convinced that LSD had come very close to soma. And perhaps he is right, because the rishis, the seers of the Vedas, after drinking somrasa, the juice of a plant called som, have described their experiences and what happens to them – how much peace, how much serenity, how much joy. All their experiences are exactly the same as those Aldous Huxley described when he came out of his first LSD trip.All the cultures, all the religions have been condemning alcohol, opium, hashish, marijuana, but their condemnation seems to have no effect. Humanity goes on taking drugs, and nobody bothers to ask: “If so many wise people are against it, why are people taking these drugs?” And the strange thing is that so many of these wise people who are against it are taking drugs themselves – perhaps in different ways.In one country, marijuana may be illegal, hashish may be illegal, LSD may be illegal, but alcohol is not. And alcohol is more dangerous than any of the other three. Why isn’t alcohol illegal? – because Jesus used to drink it. Christianity cannot make it illegal; otherwise Jesus would be proved a criminal – and not an ordinary criminal – because he was even turning water into alcohol.And the countries that have tried… For example, India, which is not a Christian country, has tried hard to prohibit alcohol, but has failed. Prohibition makes things even worse. People start making alcohol on their own, in their own homes. And thousands of people have died from poisoning because they don’t know what they are drinking. It is being sold underground, and they don’t know how it is being prepared. And finally those prohibitions had to be withdrawn.One thing that I want to make clear to you is that all the people who have been against the laws and governments and religions and who are still going for drugs have a certain argument. And that is that they want their personality to be forgotten. Their person is so painful, so ugly, that they are ready to commit any illegal act, just to forget it for a few hours. The influence of intoxicating drugs proves only one thing: man, in his ordinary personality, is living in despair. He wants, for a few hours at least, to forget all about the worries and the problems and the anxieties, and there seems to be no other way.What do you want to protect your person for? Your person is your problem.And if you are intelligent enough, and you can find some presence where your person starts melting and disappearing – without any intoxication, without any drugs – then can you conceive of a greater blessing? Let the person disappear; it is simply a burden, a torture, a pain in the neck for which there is no medicine. What do you think, Amrito – is there any medicine for a pain in the neck? I have never heard of it. I am asking my physician, and he is a knowledgeable physician, he is a member of the Royal Society of England.Let the person disappear, evaporate.The disappearance of your person is not your disappearance, remember; on the contrary, it is your appearance. As your person disappears, your personality falls away, your individuality, your individual arises. To have a personality is hypocrisy. To be an individual is your birthright. And the function of the master is to take away everything that is not you, and leave only that which is essentially yours, given by existence itself.I can understand, there arises a fear. You have lived with the person for so long, you have become identified with it. When it starts disappearing, a fear arises: “What is happening? Am I going to disappear?” Now, what is true is not going to disappear, and what is untrue needs to disappear. So be courageous.And when your personality leaves you, say good-bye to it forever: “Don’t come back. Find somebody else; there are so many people all around” – because there are people who are not so poor as to have only one personality. They are rich people, they have many personalities: when they are with their wife they have one personality, when they are with their girlfriend they have another personality – the same personality won’t do. They go on changing constantly. It becomes almost an autonomous process.George Gurdjieff, one of the great masters of this age, used a few techniques. One of the techniques was to make you aware of your personalities. He himself was such an expert that you could be sitting on his left side and your friend could be sitting on his right side, and to one he would show an angry face and to the other his face would appear really blissful, peaceful, very loving. And when they meet, one will say, “What a man! I was so afraid; he was so angry the whole time.” And the other will say, “What are you saying? He was so loving, and smiling.” And only later on would you discover that he had been playing a game. He had learned the art of changing personalities to such an extent that he could use two personalities at the same time. Gurdjieff could show half of the personality to the wife, and half to the girlfriend!But a long training… There is no need. Whether you have one personality or many, they are all junk. Just leave them, just be simply yourself. In the beginning it may feel a little awkward, as if you are naked – in a certain way it is a kind of nakedness. But soon you will understand the beauty and innocence of simply being yourself.My grandfather died. We were great friends; in my whole family, we were the only friends. No one was at ease with me, and no one was at ease with him. He was very old, but a troublemaker. But with me he was perfectly happy. We used to go together to the river, to the temple, to public meetings, and he would tell me, “Create trouble. Ask some question just to make that leader feel embarrassed.”He was a nice, beautiful man. He died. So the whole family was sad, people were crying. I went to a nearby sweet shop, and I said to the owner, “Give me all the beautiful sweets that you have prepared today – the whole lot.”He said, “Are you mad? Your grandfather has died. Haven’t you heard?”I said, “That’s why! In death – celebration! We were great friends, you know?”He said, “I know, but your father, your uncle and the others will kill me. They will say, ‘He is a rascal, but you… Why did you give him sweets? Is this a time for celebration?’”I said, “Are you going to give them to me, or should I create some trouble?”He said, “No, I don’t want any trouble. You can take them, but it is your responsibility.”I said, “I always do everything on my own responsibility.”By that time a few people had gathered. I said, “All these people are witnesses; I am taking these sweets on my responsibility. This man is absolutely innocent. In fact, he has been trying to prevent me because he does not understand at all that my grandfather has gone to heaven and this is a time to celebrate.”And I sat in front of my house distributing sweets. My whole family gathered and they said, “What are you doing?”I said, “Simply celebrating.”They said, “Is this a time for celebration?”I said, “To be sincere, you are all feeling good that the old fellow is dead. Except me, nobody is sad. But you are all hypocrites.”My father said to them, “Don’t talk so loudly, you will gather a crowd; and if you gather a crowd, he is always the winner.” He told me, “Do whatsoever you want to do. He was your grandfather, and if you want to celebrate, celebrate.”But whoever I gave the sweets to would say, “But this is not the time.”I said, “This is the time, because my whole family is celebrating except me – and they are all sitting sad, with crocodile tears. That is all nonsense. I know them, and because they have to hold on to their hypocrisy they cannot celebrate. So I have to do this job – although I am the only person who is sad, because he was my friend. And everybody is saying that he has gone to heaven – then why not make it a celebration? If he had gone to hell, then it would be perfectly okay. Sit with long faces and tears, and don’t eat for two or three days, and make as much fuss as you can. But if he has gone to heaven, then why are you feeling jealous? Just celebrate, enjoy.”Late in the night my father told me, “The whole day I have been thinking that perhaps you were right. We were not sincere. We were all feeling relieved because he was always a trouble – in everything he created trouble.”In the shop they avoided him. He would come into the shop, and they would send him somewhere else because he would tell the customers, “He is cheating you” – his own son – “He is cheating you. That cloth is not worth twelve rupees, it is just worth eight rupees. If you wait a little, I will give it to you for eight rupees. Otherwise, it is…if you have too much money to throw away, throw it.”So in the shop, all my uncles, my father, everybody tried to get rid of him: “Customers are coming, send him away – anywhere, whatever he wants to do. But if he stands here, he will tell the truth.”And if I was there, I would tell the customers, “Just wait a little, my grandfather is coming. Then you will get the same thing for four or five rupees less.”So not only were they getting rid of him, as I would enter the shop they would tell me, “Just go to the post office.”I said, “You harass me unnecessarily. Collect all your post in the evening and I will go every day. But I cannot do this the whole day long. Whenever I come: ‘Go to the post office, just one postcard…drop it at the post office.’ And this is just a trick, nothing else. I will go only when my grandfather is in the shop. At least one of us has to be here; otherwise the customers are going to be cheated, exploited.”So my father said, “You were right. We were all feeling relieved, and all our tears were false. But you made it too open a secret, distributing sweets to the whole town and telling people that ‘My whole family is celebrating.’”I said, “If I was right, then you should drop these masks. Even at the death of your own father, you cannot drop your false faces. When are you going to be true?”All your personalities are absolute cover-ups, hiding your individuality. So it is perfectly good if it is happening that you are coming closer and you feel a magnetic pull. Don’t resist; help it. Let those personalities die. Their death is going to become your new life, a life which will be a joy, an innocence, a luminosity, a constant dance of the heart. Just a little courage… Don’t ask what is happening. Let it happen, and see. What I am saying is nothing; what will happen will be a thousandfold more.Osho,I love you so much, and still – how can it be that so many questions, which come to my mind, are reflecting the dark side of me? I am afraid to bore you, but somehow these questions often feel as if they are the most honest and authentic to me.Please comment.One thing to be constantly remembered is not to judge what is dark and what is light, what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is evil – because the moment you judge, you start repressing. You don’t want to show anything that you judge as dark, as evil, as bad. Then you have chosen only half of yourself; it is as if you have chosen only the day and you have denied the night. But the night has its own beauties. Its darkness is also a beauty – it has a depth, a silence, a serenity, the stars. If the day has its beauty, the night has its own beauty; they are both unique and they are complementary.What you have been doing is to ask questions which look good, and you repress those questions which you feel and judge to be bad. Naturally, your so-called good side is exhausted by and by, and only the side, which according to you is bad, remains inside. Then you are boiling with all that is black. Days are finished; only nights remain, and now you feel very much afraid to open yourself because anybody will see simply darkness and nothing else. And at the same time, you feel that it is absolutely sincere, it is part of you. It is not something insincere, but the whole problem begins in your judgment. Judgment is one of the crimes.We go on judging other people, and we do the same with ourselves. We go on judging our thoughts, our actions, what is good, what is bad, what should have been done, what should not have been done; and we are constantly creating conflict and duality.Here with me you have to create a oneness, a beautiful harmony between day and night, between life and death. You have to create wholeness between any things that seem to be polar opposites. And then you will not feel, bringing out anything, that it will expose you; it will simply show your wholeness. Just think of a rosebush. If the rosebush starts worrying about the thorns and starts suppressing them, the whole energy of the rosebush will be involved in suppressing the thorns. It may not be able to bring roses – or even if it does they may not be worth bringing – they may be crippled, almost dying from the very beginning.But once you accept that thorns are part of the rosebush, as roses are… From my very childhood I have seen thorns in the rosebushes as the bodyguards of the roses. And they are bodyguards; they protect them. They come from the same roots; they are part of the same bush, they live on the same juice. They are brothers and sisters; they live in deep harmony, there is no conflict. Have you seen the thorns and roses fighting with each other? Have you seen any rosebush being embarrassed that it has thorns? Thorns have their own beauty.The mind that continuously goes on judging creates anguish in you. But we are taught to judge. Even those with whom we have no concern, we go on judging: this man is good, that man is bad. What business is it, what concern is it of yours? And if you knew the whole story of the man, perhaps you would have said that this act you had thought was bad was absolutely inevitable. Without this act there would have remained something incomplete in the whole story. You know only parts – as if you take out a page from a novel, and you judge the whole novel from the page. It is sheer stupidity. First, go through the whole novel.And as far as human life is concerned, nobody can go through the whole of a single human life. It is so vast, compressed in such a small time, seventy or eighty years, with so many complexities, complications that if you could see it as a whole you would not say that something was bad; it fits perfectly in the whole pattern of the person’s life.And anyway, who are we? Who has made us judges? Once the mind learns the trick of judging, it goes on. Then you are continually judging inside: this is good, this is bad. Then you show always the good side, and keep the bad side to yourself. Slowly, slowly, the good side is shown so much everybody is bored with it. You are bored with it. And you cannot show the bad side, because it is bad.Show your wholeness; just your good side is bound to be boring, too flat. With your black parts it becomes juicy; it becomes more interesting.It is said that “a good man has no life” – and I agree with this statement, whoever made it. What can a good man have? A bad man has a life! If you are whole, you will have more alive expressions – not flat, not boring, but always full of surprises. Not only surprising others but even surprising yourself: “My God, I was able to do this too?”Life should be lived with as much wholeness as possible. That’s the only way to live, to love, and to have a good laugh in the end. And don’t be worried about what is right and what is wrong. Just for example, God created the world. Of course, if there was no Devil, there would have been nothing at all in the world. Although the whole credit goes to God, it should go to the Devil, who persuaded Adam and Eve to eat the fruit from the tree of knowledge. He is the first revolutionary, the first rebel, the first man to bring some aliveness into the world; otherwise, Adam and Eve would still be chewing grass. In the Garden of Eden what else will you do? God has said not to eat from the tree of knowledge, not to eat from the tree of eternal life – what is left? Knowing is prohibited, living is prohibited – just sit silently like buffaloes and chew grass.It is by the mercy of the Devil that you see this whole world. God has not created it. God created a world which consisted of Adam and Eve just like animals. This whole humanity, these great people – Gautam the Buddha, Jesus Christ and Moses, Mohammed and Mahavira – you would never have heard of them; they’re all because of the Devil.It is significant to remember: devil comes from a Sanskrit root which means divine. It comes from dev – from the same root comes divine, from the same root comes devil.The Devil has done such divine work. This whole creation is a deep partnership between God and the Devil. Neither can God do it alone, – because he can only create flat things, – nor can the Devil do it alone, because he can only revolt, he is a revolutionary. First something has to be there to be revolutionary against. God is needed for the Devil to revolt against, and then the dynamics start turning, and the wheel of life and death, day and night, good and bad…Remember, life consists of opposites.And don’t try to judge; just live the whole, whatever it is. I teach you wholeness, and you go on judging parts. Parts are not of any use. It is the whole, where parts lose their personalities and function in the way an orchestra functions. I myself have never thought that anything is good or anything is bad. Not for a single moment have I thought that anything is bad or good; they are both together and they can exist only together. If you want to live, live them in their togetherness.The people who are afraid of their togetherness started teaching, “Renounce life, escape from life, because here you cannot avoid the bad. Whatever you do, even if you do good, you cannot avoid the bad.”You will be surprised to know that in India, Jainism has a sect called Terapanth. Mumbai has many followers of the Terapanth. It is a very logical but very strange ideology. It says that if somebody falls into a well you should not take him out. He may be shouting and you are by the side of the well and there is nobody else there – you simply go on as you are, unconcerned. It seems strange. A philosophy of non-violence, and a man is dying and they are saying that you go on, unconcerned. But their reasoning is worth noting: they say you can save the man but if tomorrow he murders somebody, then you will be responsible too. And what is the guarantee about his tomorrow? It is better not to get involved. In the first place he has fallen in the well. It must be because of some evil act in his past life; otherwise why should he fall into the well? Now, he is receiving the punishment for his action, and you interfere in it, you interfere in the great law of action. Secondly, if he murders somebody tomorrow, then you will share the evil act. It is better to move on silently, not to bother about what is happening to him.These are the people who have been judging. Now, judgment has gone to the extreme. Somebody is thirsty; don’t give him water. Somebody is hungry; don’t give him food – because you don’t know what he is going to do. You get involved in his life by giving him water; otherwise he may have died. By giving him water you keep him alive. Now whatever he does, you are going to share in it. You have not done a bad act, but life is not so simple – it may turn into a bad act. It looks very logical, but very inhuman; it looks very rational but very uncompassionate, without any love. But this is the logical end of judging things.I want you to drop judgment and live a life without judgment, in its wholeness. And you will be surprised that wholeness is neither good nor bad.Wholeness is transcendental; it is beyond good and evil.There is only one man in the whole history of humanity, Friedrich Nietzsche, who has written a book, Beyond Good And Evil. And my insight and understanding is that he is the only man who has seen judgment to its logical end.An authentic person should live beyond good and evil. He does not care what is good, what is bad. He lives with intensity and totality, and whatever the moment allows him and he feels to do, he does it. But all the religions and all the theologians and all the saints are sitting and thinking about whether this is right or wrong. And if you listen to them, you will find it impossible to live; everything seems to be wrong.I have looked into all the scriptures of the world just trying to find out: perhaps there may be one thing which is not condemned by somebody. But there is not, somebody or other is against everything. And there are things that somebody or other is for. There is no ultimate criterion to decide what is right and what is wrong.As far as I am concerned and my people are concerned, they should live wholeheartedly – live the day and live the night too. Don’t miss anything. Make your life such a complementary whole that everything fits together and makes it a piece of art, a beautiful phenomenon.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 13 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,When I close my eyes, I feel such an enormous presence, such a vast isness, such a beatitude. But it is a fullness not an emptiness.Could you please say something about the difference between this fullness, and the emptiness or nothingness, which you are speaking of?The fullness that you are experiencing and the nothingness that I have been speaking about are just two names for the same thing seen from two different perspectives. If you look at it from the world of miseries, anxieties, darkness and death, it is nothingness – because all these things are absent. Your whole so-called world and its experiences are no more in it. But if you look at what is left, or at what is revealed because of the absence of misery and darkness, then you are full of blissfulness, full of light, of enormous presence and beatitude, a great benediction. It is fullness. It is empty of the world and full of godliness, it is empty of all your falsities and full of your essential reality. Those two words are not contradictory; they are indicating the same experience from two different perspectives.It is significant to understand that there is only one person, Gautam Buddha, who has used nothingness, emptiness, for the ultimate experience. All other mystics of the world have used fullness, wholeness, as the expression, the indication of the ultimate experience.Why did Gautam Buddha have to choose a negative term? It is significant to understand – for your own spiritual growth, not for any philosophical reasons. I do not speak for philosophical reasons. I speak only when I see there is some existential relevance. The idea of fullness, the idea of God, the idea of perfection, the idea of the absolute, the ultimate – all are positive terms. And Gautam Buddha was amazed to see the cunningness of human mind.The innocent mystics have simply used the positive words because that was their experience. Why bother about the misery which is no longer? Why not say something about that which is now? The innocent mystics have spoken out of their isness. But throughout the centuries the cunning minds of people around the world have taken advantage of it. To the cunning mind, the idea of fullness and the positive terms indicating it became an ego trip: “I have to become God. I have to attain the absolute, brahman: I have to achieve the ultimate liberation.” The “I” became the center of all our assertions. And the trouble is that you cannot make the ultimate experience a goal for the ego. Ego is the barrier; it cannot become the bridge.So all the positive terms have been misused. Rather than destroying the ego, they have become decorations for the ego. God has become a goal; you have to achieve the goal. You become greater than God. Remember, the goal cannot be greater than you. The achieved cannot be greater than the achiever. It is a very simple fact to understand. And all the religions have fallen because of this simple innocence of the mystics.Gautam Buddha was the most cultured and the most educated, the most sophisticated person ever to become a mystic. There is no comparison in the whole of history. He could see where the innocent mystics had unknowingly given chances for cunning minds to take advantage. He decided not to use any positive term for the ultimate goal, to destroy your ego and any possibility of your ego taking any advantage. He called the ultimate, nothingness, emptiness, shunyata, zero. Now, how can the ego make zero the goal? God can be made the goal, but not zero. Who wants to become zero? That is the fear; everybody is avoiding all possibilities of becoming zero, and Buddha made it an expression for the ultimate.His word is nirvana. He chose a tremendously beautiful word, but he shocked all the thinkers and philosophers by choosing the word nirvana as the most significant expression for the ultimate experience. Nirvana means blowing out the candle.The other mystics have said that you are filled with enormous light, as if thousands of suns together have suddenly risen inside you, as if the whole sky full of stars has descended within your heart. These ideas appeal to the ego. The ego would like to have all the stars, if not inside the chest then at least hanging on the coat outside the chest. Enormous light…the ego is very willing.To cut the very roots, Buddha said the experience is as if you were to blow out a candle. There was a small flame on the candle giving a small light – even that has gone, and you are surrounded with absolute darkness, abysmal darkness.People used to come to ask him, “If you go on teaching such things, nobody is going to follow you. Who wants darkness, enormous darkness? You are crazy. You say that the ultimate experience is ultimate death. People want eternal life, and you are talking about ultimate death.” But he was a very consistent man, and you can see that for forty-two years he hammered on the genius of the East without ever compromising with the ego.He also knew that what he called darkness was too much light; that’s why it looked like darkness. If one thousand suns rise in you, what do you think, that you will feel enormous light? You will feel immense darkness; it will be too dazzling. Just look at one sun for a few seconds and you will feel your eyes are going blind. If one thousand suns are within you, inside the mind, the experience will be of darkness, not of light. It will take a long time for you to get accustomed, for your eyes to become strong enough to see: slowly, slowly darkness turning into light, death turning into life, emptiness turning into fullness.But he never talked about those things. He never said that darkness would ever turn into light. And he never said that death would become a resurrection at some later point, because he knew how cunning your ego is. If that is said, the ego will say, “Then there is no problem. Our aim remains the same; it is just that we will have to pass through a little dark night of the soul. But finally, we will have enormous light, thousands of suns.”Gautam Buddha had to deny that God existed – not that he was against God, a man like Gautam Buddha could not be against God. And if Gautam Buddha was against God, then it was of no use for anybody to be in favor of God. His decision was decisive for the whole of humanity, he represents our very soul. But he was not against God. He was against your ego, and he was constantly careful not to give your ego any support to remain. If God can become a support, then there is no God.One thing becomes very clear: although he used, for the first time, all negative terms, the man must have had tremendous charismatic qualities. He influenced millions of people. His philosophy is such that anyone listening to him would freak out. What is the point of all the meditations and all the austerities, renouncing the world, eating one time a day – and ultimately you achieve nothingness, you become zero! We are already better – we may be miserable zeros, but at least we are. Certainly, when you are completely a zero there cannot be any misery; zeros are not known to be miserable – but what is the gain?But he convinced people, not through his philosophy, but through his individuality, through his presence. He gave people the experience itself, so that they could understand: it is emptiness as far as the world is concerned; it is emptiness for the ego. And it is fullness for the being.There are many reasons for the disappearance of Buddha’s thought from India, but this is one of the most significant. All other Indian mystics, philosophers, and seers used positive terms. And for centuries before Buddha, the whole of India was accustomed to thinking only in the positive; the negative was something unheard of. Under the influence of Gautam Buddha they followed him, but when he died his following started disappearing, because the following was not intellectually convinced; it was convinced because of his presence.Because of the eyes of Gautam Buddha they could see: “This man, if he is living in nothingness then there is no fear, we would love to be nothing. If this is where zero-ness leads, if by being nothing such lotuses bloom in the eyes and such grace flows, then we are ready to go with this man. The man has a magic.” But his philosophy alone will not convince you, because it has no appeal for the ego.And Buddhism survived in China, in Ceylon, in Burma, in Japan, in Korea, in Indochina, in Indonesia – in the whole of Asia except India – because the Buddhists who reached there dropped negative terms. They started speaking in positive terms; then the ultimate, the absolute, the perfect, the old terms, returned. This was the compromise. So as far as I am concerned, Buddhism died with Gautam Buddha. Whatever exists now as Buddhism has nothing to do with Buddha because it has dropped his basic contribution, and that was his negative approach.I am aware of both traditions. I am certainly in a better position than Gautam Buddha was. Gautam Buddha was aware of only one thing: that the ego can use the positive. And it is his great contribution, his courageous contribution, that he dropped the positive and insisted on the negative, emphasized the negative – knowing perfectly well that people were not going to follow this because it had no appeal for the ego. To me, now both traditions are available. I know what happened to the positive: the ego exploited it. I know what happened to the negative. After the death of Gautam Buddha, the disciples had to compromise, compromise with the same thing which Gautam Buddha was revolting against. So I am trying to explain to you both approaches together: emptiness as far as the world is concerned and fullness, wholeness as far as the inner experience is concerned. And this is a total approach, it takes note of both: that which has to be left behind, and that which is to be gained.I call my approach the only holy approach. All other approaches up to now have been half-half. Mahavira, Shankara, Moses, Mohammed, all used the positive. Gautam Buddha used the negative. I use both, and I don’t see any contradiction. If you understand me clearly, then you can enjoy the beauty of both viewpoints, and you need not be exploited by your ego or be afraid of death and darkness and nothingness. They are not two things. It is almost as if I were to put a glass of water in front of you, half full and half empty, and ask you whether the glass is empty or full. Either answer would be wrong, because the glass is both half full and half empty. From one side it is empty, from another side it is full.Half of your life is part of the mundane world, the other half is part of the sacred. And it is unfortunate, but there is no other way – we have to use the same language for both the mundane and the sacred. So one has to be very alert. To choose the mundane will be missing; if you think of the mundane, you will find the sacred life empty. If you think of the sacred, you will find it overflowingly full.Osho,As you were talking about Indian and western sannyasins, I felt what you were saying was true – sometimes the Indians are too much of the heart. It is hard to say no to them, yet you cannot say yes to their expectations and theories. They are deaf.Will you please explain why this is so?The question has many parts. The first part: that the Indians are sometimes too much of the heart, that statement is wrong. One can never be too much of the heart; that is existentially impossible. The heart and its qualities are such that you can always have more of them. And there is no limit – not even the sky is the limit. But I understand your problem. You are saying that you are finding it difficult in certain moments, the people of the East are much too loving; you cannot say no to them and you cannot say yes either.I am reminded of when I came to Mumbai for the first time, I was invited for lunch, I was new, and the people who had invited me here were new. None of us knew each other.The man had come to Mumbai just two or three days before. He is one of the most beautiful men I have met in my life. Along with me, he had invited at least twenty more people. It was beautiful food, but the way they were forcing everybody to eat was just unimaginable. They were three brothers; two of the brothers would hold the person, and the third one would force him: “One laddu more.”And the person would be trying to say, “I will die! Leave me!”They would say, “Just one.” And this was something unending.Even the women of the house were helping. People were trying to run out of the room and the women were standing in the doorway.I asked the man, “Your love is good, and your sweets are good, but there is a limit. That man is saying he will die – and you are not concerned about his death, you are concerned about forcing more food on him.”What he said to me I have not forgotten. He said, “If we don’t do this, my father’s soul will be very unhappy.”I said, “My God! Is your father’s soul also present here?”He said, “No, that is not the question. This is our heritage. In my father’s day, this was the routine: unless the guest starts fighting and beating you, don’t leave him alone. Things have to come to that end.”I said, “Listen, don’t do this thing to me – because I cannot beat you, and neither do I want to fight.”They said, “But our father’s soul…”I said, “You are idiots! Your father’s soul must have been born again by now. When did your father die?”They said, “It must be twenty years.”I said, “He must be in a college somewhere studying. Forget about him, he has nothing to do with it.”He said, “If you say so, but we will feel very guilty.”I said, “If you force anything on me, I am not going to come to Mumbai again.”With tears in his eyes, he took hold of my legs. He said, “That’s perfectly good. I will not force you. Just one laddu, no fight, but please continue to come. And promise me that at least whenever you come…one lunch at my house, and we will never force you. Just have one more laddu.”I said, “But you are forcing me! This is another strategy – tears, holding my leg; it is no different from holding my neck. It is even worse, because I feel that although it will create trouble for me – you have forced so many sweets on me – looking at your tears…”He said, “What can I do? Just thinking of my father’s soul…”I said, “Drop your father’s soul! Do you promise me that if I take this laddu you will not ask anything?”He said, “I absolutely promise.”But I was not aware of the strategy. It was one brother’s promise – they were three brothers, with three wives.I said, “My God, it seems soon my soul is going to meet your father’s soul! If you have any message, I will deliver it to him. And I will never come again.”And they were all sitting on the floor, holding my leg – “You have to come.”Love is one thing; this is not love, because love would take care of me, see that I don’t fall sick. They were taking care of their father’s soul; they were not concerned with me. So I can understand your question, that sometimes their love is too much, their heart is too much. You cannot say no and you cannot say yes either.But you have to be very clear with the people in the East. Accept their love, be grateful for their love, but when it goes against your reason, no is not something that cannot be said. It is not necessarily against love. You are simply protecting yourself, and you have the right to protect yourself. And if you cannot say yes, don’t say yes.And remember: what they are doing is not love, but some formality, some tradition, some convention. This is not part of love. They are fulfilling their own traditional, conventional, orthodox views. If it were love then food would not be forced; then the guest would be served and allowed to eat whatever he felt like eating, and however much he wanted to eat. Love will give that freedom.It is not heart. The dividing line is very fine – that’s why you cannot understand how to say no. The person is so loving that it seems better to suffer a little, but not to say no. But this is not his love. Love never enforces anything on anyone. Love never tries to dominate, to dictate. You call this love? – two persons are holding onto the man’s hands and the third person is forcing a laddu into his mouth, and the man is saying, “I will die! What are you doing? If you had told me that this was going to happen I would have never come.” But they have a certain idea. It has been happening in their family for centuries – unless a guest starts beating you, you are not a host, not worth the name. A strange idea!You have to say no. And if they need beating, then it is better that before they force the food, you start beating them. If that is the only thing that will stop them and satisfy them and their father’s soul, then beat them before they make you sick. Be alert, and understand clearly the idea of love. It is non-interfering. It is non-enforcing – about anything. Love is authentic only when it gives you freedom.I am reminded of a strange Eastern story that will show you what love is.A man is in great love with a woman. The woman says, “I am ready to marry you, but there is one condition.”If the man had been aware of a simple fact, that love never makes conditions, he would have said good-bye to the woman at that very point. But he was mad, really blindly in love. He was ready to do anything. He said, “Any condition, and I am ready to do it.”The woman said, “My condition is difficult.”The man said, “Whatever the condition is, don’t be worried. You just say it.”The woman said, “Go home and kill your mother. Bring her heart on a plate and present it to me. Only on this condition will I marry you, because only this will give me proof that you really love me.”Blind lovers can do anything. They are blind, not only in this story but all over the world. He went home, he killed his mother, and he put her heart on a plate. He rushed. He was in such a hurry to reach the woman that he stumbled on the road and fell. The plate broke and the heart was all over the street in small pieces.And a voice came from those pieces: “My son, are you hurt? I am sorry, but it wasn’t my fault. Try to gather the pieces; go home and get another plate, and go to your sweetheart.”Listening to this, it was as if he suddenly awoke from a dream. What was he doing? What had he done? And his mother had not complained, was not even angry. On the contrary, she had inquired, “Are you hurt? – because you’ve fallen on the ground. I have always been telling you to go slowly, but you never listen to me. Now collect all the pieces and go back home.”He collected the pieces, went home, and forgot all about that woman.The woman waited and waited. One day passed, another day passed. She said, “What happened?” She went to the man’s house, found that he had killed his mother. She said, “What happened then? Where is the heart?”It was on a plate, in fragments. He said, “This is the heart, but something happened on the road that made me turn back. I knew for the first time what love means. I am grateful to you; otherwise I would have never understood that my mother was so concerned about my welfare. And I cannot forgive myself, that I killed the woman with my own hands. As for you, who asked such a condition…”Love makes no conditions. Love gives you freedom to be yourself, helps you to be yourself. Even if it goes against his own interest, still, a loving person will suffer himself, rather than make the loved one suffer.Another ancient story:A woman loved her husband, but the husband never paid any attention to her. He was in love with a prostitute, knowing perfectly well that prostitutes don’t love – because there were many other customers. He was only a customer, not a lover. And in his life he had seen that the day the customer’s money is finished, the prostitute’s door is closed for that man.He had destroyed his health, he had destroyed his money; now he was dying. Just as he was dying, his wife asked him, “If you have any last wish so that you can die contented…”He said, “Yes, I have a wish, but I am ashamed to say it to you.”She said, “Don’t be ashamed. This is not the time to be ashamed. I love you as you are, there is no question of feeling ashamed.”He said, “My only wish is to see the prostitute just once more before I die.”The woman said, “There is no problem.”He had lost all their money; there was no money in the house. She had to carry the dying man on her shoulders to the prostitute’s house. She knocked on the door.The prostitute opened the door and could not believe it. She said, “Am I hallucinating? Is this real? You are the wife of the man…”The wife said, “Yes, I am the wife and also the lover of the man.”The prostitute said, “Then why have you brought him here? He destroyed your life, he spent all your money and he was mad after me. And to me, once the money is finished, all relationship is finished. He was only a customer. This is a marketplace and he knows it. You are a strange woman.”She said, “But this was his dying wish. He wanted to see you, and I love him so much that I could not say no. In his happiness is my happiness, and if he can die contented I will feel I have fulfilled my duty, my love.”No complaint about the man, about his whole behavior. No jealousy against the woman. Love knows no jealousy, love knows no complaint: love is a deep understanding. You love someone – that does not mean that the other should love you also. It is not a contract.Try to understand the meaning of love. You will not be able to understand the meaning of love by your so-called love affairs. Strangely enough, you will understand the meaning of love by going deep into meditation, by becoming more silent, more together, more at ease. You will start radiating a certain energy. You will become loving, and you will know the beautiful qualities of love. It knows to say yes, it also knows to say no. It is not blind. But it has to come out of your meditation – only then does love have eyes; otherwise love is blind.And unless love has eyes, it is worthless. It is going to create more and more trouble for you – because two blind persons with blind expectations are not only going to double the troubles of life, they are going to multiply the troubles of life.So be silent and be alert. Be loving.And you can say no with great love. No does not mean that you are un-loving; yes does not mean that you are loving. Sometimes yes may mean that you are simply afraid, it is out of fear. So it is not necessarily that love means yes and you cannot say no. Love with eyes knows when to say no, when to say yes. Love neither interferes in anybody’s life nor allows anybody else to interfere into one’s own life. Love gives individuality to others, but does not lose its own individuality.And it is not a question of Western or Eastern – what I am saying is applicable to all. Just because you have asked the question as if the problem is because you come from the West… It has to be understood well: it is not a question of your coming from the West; it is a problem because reason and heart are always in conflict. And the West is more rationalist, but the West has spread all over the world through its empires and through its educational systems. Now it is very difficult to find a purely Eastern man. The West has poisoned everybody. Reason has become supreme. So try to understand it in terms of reason and heart, not in terms of West and East. Because even in the East, for the people who are living in their reason – and all people who are cultured, educated, are living in their reason – the problem is the same.The heart has its own language, reason has its own language, and they are not necessarily always in agreement. Most probably they are in disagreement, because reason thinks in a different dimension.I am reminded of Albert Einstein and his wife, Frau Einstein.His wife was a poet. And he was just the wrong person to be married to: a mathematician, a physicist. In mathematics, one plus one is always two. In love, one plus one is always one. Languages are so different.And Frau Einstein was a talented woman; naturally she wanted to show a few of her poems to Albert Einstein, and would have enjoyed being appreciated by the world’s most famous mathematician, physicist, scientist. But she could not see any emotion moving on Albert Einstein’s face, or any changes in his eyes. He listened to her poems as if he were a stone statue.She had written a beautiful piece, talking about the beloved and comparing the face of the beloved with the moon. At that point, Einstein said, “Enough! Stop! This is too much. You don’t understand anything about the moon. Do you know its proportions? If a moon were put on a man’s body as a head, your beloved would not be found again, he would be crushed to pieces. And who told you that the moon is beautiful? It is a dead rock, with no water, no greenery, no flowers, no trees, no birds. Who told you that the moon is beautiful? What do you mean by beauty?”The wife was shocked, she could not believe that such a great scientist would talk in such a way. But he was not joking – that’s how reason thinks.Reason cannot understand poetry; it is not its way – it is very prose.Frau Einstein has written in her memoirs, “That was the first and the last time I ever mentioned poetry to him. It would be better to talk to a rock; perhaps the rock might respond better than this man.”The question is not of East and West. The question is between the heart and the reason. In the East, the heart has been predominant, but it has created a problem which nobody has discussed. I have been looking through ancient scriptures, literature, commentaries – has anybody ever thought about this problem or not? – because it is so significant it cannot be ignored. Because the East is leaning too much toward the heart, it has not developed rationality to its fullest – but still it goes on talking about theories, reincarnation, heaven and hell. If you were to say that these are mythological, there would be no problem, but people insist that these are rational hypotheses.And your question is relevant. It becomes so difficult to talk with the Eastern person because he goes on talking about theories which look absurd, stupid, illogical. But to him they seem absolutely valid because he has never been trained in reason. His validity is of the heart.I will give you few examples so you can understand: Jainas say that once a snake bit Mahavira on his foot, and instead of blood coming out, milk came out. Now, if you say it is a myth, a parable, a poetry, there is no problem.The first time I spoke in Mumbai, a Jaina monk, Chitrabhanu, had spoken ahead of me. And he mentioned this fact, and gave the reason why milk came out: because Mahavira is so full of love that even when a snake bites him, it is because of his love and compassion that milk comes out – just a little breakfast for the snake: no anger, no violence. And for twenty-five centuries Jainas have been writing in their books that this is factual.I was to speak after Chitrabhanu, and I said, “If it is factual then many things have to be explained: it means that Mahavira’s body was filled with milk instead of blood. And the snakebite happened when he was nearabout fifty, so for fifty years… All the milk would have certainly turned into curd. And he used to walk naked, on foot. In fifty years’ time, the curd would have turned into butter! And in such heat, in such a hot country, butter is going to become ghee.”So if ghee had come out of his foot instead of blood, there would be some rationality to it – but milk? And this is so stupid, that a man is full of curd, he would stink of curd! Fifty years filled with curd and butter and ghee – just think of that poor man. In the hot season, he wouldn’t perspire; he would start flowing with ghee!So I said, “This is nonsense. The only possibility is: milk comes out of a woman’s body, and she has a certain mechanism in her breast to transform the blood into milk. A rational mind could accept it, that Mahavira had the same mechanism in his feet. His feet were nothing but breasts. And strangely, was he expecting that the snake was going to bite him on the foot? Most probably he had breasts all over, so that wherever the snake bit, milk would come out.”And even a woman’s breast will not give milk unless she has given birth to a child. So I said, “This goes on and on into difficulties. It is better to accept that this is simply poetry. Don’t make it history. Don’t try to theorize it, don’t try to make it scientific. Simply say that it is a poetic way of saying that he was so loving… How to say it in poetry? – so we have expressed it by saying that milk came out, just as the milk comes out of the mother’s breast, in love.”Milk has a certain association with love, because the child receives the milk and love from the same breast – that is his first experience in the world. And that’s why humanity is so obsessed with the breast. Painters go on painting breasts and breasts, sculptors go on making breasts and breasts. Poets, novelists, all kinds of creative people are obsessed only with one object, and that is the woman’s breast. The reason is clear: it is the child’s first experience of love, of warmth, of the human body, of the other, of the world. It contains so much. So just to give expression to a feeling of love and warmth, milk has been used as a symbol.But no Jaina is going to agree with me, because then the miracle is lost. Poetry is not a miracle. The miracle is in the historicity of the fact. So you are right in questioning how to deal with these people. They are so loving, they are so full of heart, but they go on talking about such nonsense: esoteric, occult.And everybody in the East knows so much that it seems that all are realized souls! Where to stop these people, and where to say no to these people? You have to be very clear, very loving, but without any compromise. The moment you see that these people are going into fictions and creating stupid theories – and their scriptures are full of them – you have to stop them. That is one of the misfortunes of the East, that people have forgotten completely that poetry is not history, that poetry is far more significant than history. Then theorizations, rationalizations are meaningless, and the effort to prove them as if they are scientific truths makes the whole East a laughingstock.My own approach is very simple: you have to be alert not to allow the heart to start overpowering your reason, just as you have to be alert that your reason does not overpower your heart. Their functions are separate. Reason should function in the world of objects, and the heart should function in the world of human consciousness. And the moment they overlap, there is going to be a certain kind of mess.And whenever you feel it, that the man is so loving, how to say no to him? – don’t be worried. It has been my whole life’s difficulty – because everybody in India is so full of knowledge, and all that knowledge is simply holy cow dung, there is nothing in it. But these people are good; this is the problem. The people are good: very generous, very loving, very helpful. Only their hearts have overrun their heads, so whatsoever they are saying, you have to be a little alert.And when you say no to them, they feel hurt; they think their love is rejected. So you have to be very careful and very articulate. It is a difficult task – it was for me, because with my family, my teachers, my professors, everywhere I was in difficulty. Because I could not see how a well-educated professor could be talking such nonsense, without even being aware at all that what he is saying is nonsense. And he was a good man, there was no doubt about his sincerity. It was simply that his reason was retarded. Only the heart had grown, and it had its beauty. But the heart was leading the reason, so they were talking all kinds of nonsense.I had to stop them – “Wait a minute. You cannot say this rationally. Either accept it as a poetry or withdraw it.”But the result was that I was expelled from this college, from that university – and they had no reason. The vice-chancellor said to me, “We don’t have any reason to expel you, you have not done anything that demands such punishment as to expel you. But you should understand our difficulty: you are creating such trouble to so many professors that they are threatening to resign if you don’t leave this university. And we cannot afford it, those are our very respected professors.”And I said, “First you should call them and ask them what the problem is, why they are so angry with me.”And the professors said, “It is not a question of being angry with you. You simply raise questions which make us feel embarrassed before the whole class. And people laugh, and we cannot answer. You are destroying the respectability we have established over thirty years, forty years – you, within half an hour, destroy the whole of it. People lose all respect for us.”And I said, “Have I ever shown any disrespect to you?”They said, “You never show any disrespect. That is not the question, the question is that we cannot change now. Our whole lives we have lived with certain theories. And we have believed them to be scientific; we have never suspected them. Suddenly you come here, and on each point you create a question and we are at a loss.”One of the professors was a celibate, and he was continually preaching celibacy, that the only spirituality is to be celibate.I asked him, “I have been in your home, and I see Rama there with Sita, the Hindu god Rama standing with his wife, Sita. What kind of celibacy is this fellow following? And out of this celibacy two children are born – you should throw this fellow out of your house! But you worship him, and in the university you talk about celibacy. Do you see the contradiction or not? All your Vedic seers were married people, all your Upanishadic seers were married people. You read Shrimad Bhagavadgita every day, and this fellow Shri Krishna had sixteen thousand wives – what kind of celibacy is this?”Now this man took my hand and told me, “Come with me to the vice-chancellor. This is too much – now either you are going to remain in the university or I am going to remain in the university.”But I said, “I have simply asked a question. You can satisfy me by giving a satisfactory answer. Or, you can say that you are greater than all these people because you are celibate and they were not. But why are you worshipping them? They should worship you.”On the way, he asked me, “Should we go to the vice-chancellor or not?”I said, “It is up to you. Because the whole question will be discussed, and I will insist that the vice-chancellor have a look in your house. You have made a temple where Rama is standing with Sita and Krishna is standing with Rukmini – which is absolute hypocrisy; he was married to this woman Rukmini but he never lived with her. How could he manage it? Sixteen thousand wives stolen from other people’s houses…he was married to only one woman; the remaining ones were all stolen, forcibly taken. Whenever he saw a beautiful woman, his soldiers would take her – no consideration of the husband or the children or the old parents, no consideration at all. And still, the hypocrisy is that you are putting poor Rukmini next to Krishna. I will take the vice-chancellor to have a look in your house and things can be decided then and there.”I said, “There is no need for you to resign. Simply don’t be celibate, get married! The problem will be solved – neither I will have to be expelled from the university nor will you have to resign. And if you feel shy, I will find a good wife for you.”He said, “Stop! Don’t talk like this, you are almost persuading me. This is seduction.”I said, “Then come on and see the vice-chancellor.”And we went, and the vice-chancellor listened, and he told me, “You are not wrong, but what can we do? As far as Indian logic is concerned, this man is the best in the whole of India. We cannot…”I said, “Just think – this man is absolutely illogical. How can he be an expert in Indian logic? His behavior is so illogical: a celibate worshipping married people.”But the vice-chancellor said, “You had better choose some other university. I will recommend you. I will not expel you, I will recommend you as highly as possible.” But no university was ready to accept me, because my fame had reached ahead of me already: that fellow is coming to be admitted to the university or the college.In India it is a problem – people are not rational. Even those who pretend to be rational, their behavior is very irrational. They will be very loving, but don’t allow them to destroy your reason. The heart has to grow, reason has to become sharp – because both have to fulfill their functions in the totality of your growth.A man with a great heart and a great intelligence without any conflict between them, is truly a genius. And everybody has the possibility, but everybody is either dominated by logic or dominated by the heart. Everybody is living a lopsided life.Have you seen any advertisements for circuses? When a circus comes to a town – I have seen it in many towns – they have bicycles, with one wheel small and one wheel big. And the big wheel’s center is not in the center; it is off-center. So the man riding on the bicycle comes up, goes down, comes up, goes down – naturally he attracts everybody’s attention: “What is happening?” A man suddenly comes up and goes down, and he is a joker, wearing the joker’s dress and the name of the circus, and the timings and the tickets and everything. A single man will attract everybody: a simple device.But seeing that kind of advertisement, I saw that this is the situation of almost every man. You have two wheels, the reason and the heart. Somebody’s heart is big and their reason is small – then he goes up and down. Somebody’s reason is big and his heart is small – then he goes up and down. Everybody is going up and down – and for whom are you advertising? And it is not easy to sit on that bicycle; I have tried it. It is a very difficult job. But people are living this way – unbalanced.You need a balanced life in which reason and heart move in harmony, supporting each other, helping each other. So whenever you see that anybody – either from the East or from the West – is disturbing your harmony, stop him. Stop him lovingly, there is no need to be rude. But don’t be silent, because to be silent is to be rude. You have allowed that man to move in a wrong way, you were not compassionate enough.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 14 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,You heard my prayer and called me to you on the 8th of August.As I entered your room, I experienced you as a large ocean, an emptiness that I have never experienced before. I saw your beautiful being, and I was immersed in that emptiness and beauty. I felt that the ocean's emptiness was flowing into me from you.After that day, new songs and melodies are coming from that emptiness of yours, and I don't know anything.Osho, please explain how this can happen so easily in the master's presence. Is it so simple? It doesn't feel possible for me to exist in this life without having had that meeting – is that so? I feel that such a feeling might not have otherwise happened to me for many lives.Please explain the meeting of the master and the disciple.The most obvious in life seems to be the most difficult; the most simple seems to be the most complicated.The reason why it happens so is because the mind is not interested in the obvious. It wants the challenge of the impossible; only with the challenge of the impossible can the mind fulfill its ego. With the obvious, there is no space for the ego to grow or even to exist. The obvious is the grave of the ego. The simple we take for granted because it is so simple. Only the far away, the distant, catches our eye, invites us for a journey. Because of this, people have gone around the earth – people like Columbus. People have gone to the moon, people are trying to go to Mars, people are thinking to reach some day to the most distant stars. Nobody bothers to enter into himself, and to see the most miraculous, the most mysterious, the most fundamental principle of life, the very source of life – it is so close, so obvious, so simple.People may not find anything on the moon; they have not found anything, but they have become great historical figures. Edmund Hillary has not found anything on Everest, but his name will remain a landmark forever. I have always been surprised that for at least one hundred years people from all the Western countries have been coming to climb the highest peak of the Himalayas: Everest. No Indian has bothered about it; for the Indian it is so obvious. The more difficult a thing is, the more attractive it is; the more unattainable, the more mind becomes obsessed.I have heard…A great psychologist was visiting a madhouse. The superintendent of the madhouse was taking him on a tour, satisfying his curiosities and questions about the inmates. He became immensely interested in one inmate; behind the bars, in his cell, he was standing naked. On the wall there was a small picture of an ordinary woman, and he was standing in a worshipful mood, tears flowing from his eyes. The psychologist asked, “What is the matter with this man?”The superintendent said, “Don’t disturb him,” took him a little way away, and said, “He does not like to be disturbed in his prayers, and he is praying almost the whole day.”The psychologist said, “Whose picture is that?”The superintendent started laughing. He said, “It is nobody, it is just an ordinary woman. He was in love, but because they belonged to different castes, the father of the woman refused; he became mad and the woman became a goddess. Unattainable, one ordinary woman became a goddess. Now he worships and prays, ‘What has not happened in this life, perhaps through prayer and worship may happen in the next.’”The psychologist said, “I have never come across such a case.”The superintendent said, “Just wait a little more.”In the next cell there was another man who was hitting his head against the wall, and two guards were holding him. The psychologist said, “What has happened to him? Why does he want to hit his head on the wall?”The superintendent said, “He has gone mad. He wants to commit suicide, and it is such a problem to watch him continuously – he hurts himself.”“But what is the cause of his madness?”The superintendent said, “That’s why I was telling you to just wait a little. He got married, and the marriage has been such a disaster that he is in the madhouse. He wants to commit suicide. Because sooner or later he will be sent out of the madhouse, and again be in the hands of that woman. But it is the same woman! And to avoid her, he wants to commit suicide.”The psychologist said, “My God, it is the same woman the other man is praying to get in his next life, because he missed the train this time! And this poor fellow did not miss this time – now he wants to jump out of the train. He can’t even wait for the station to come.”Logic is a complicated phenomenon Life is not logic. Life is closer to music than to mathematics, because mathematics is of the mind, and life throbs in your heartbeats. Life is love.Love is simple, innocent communion.Ashok Bharti, you love me and that opens the door for all the mysteries possible. People say love is blind because they do not know what love is. I say unto you, only love has eyes; other than love, everything is blind. Once your eyes of love are opened, things which you have never dreamed of start becoming realities; new songs that you had never thought yourself capable of, new poetries, with such insights that you cannot believe that you have written them.This is the reason why all the ancient scriptures don’t have the names of their authors – because the authors could not believe that they were the writers of the Upanishads, of the Vedas. They could not believe it. At the most, they have been vehicles; they were possessed. Some universal energy has taken possession of them, and what they have written has nothing to do with them. They have not signed the scriptures that they have written.It is very difficult to find out who are the sculptors of the most beautiful ancient statues of Gautam Buddha, which have never again been equaled. The grand architecture of the caves of Ajanta, Ellora… It seems almost superhuman work, and the people have not even signed their names because they never believed that they were doing it. They experienced that existence was using them as instruments, and they were blessed and grateful that they had been chosen to be instrumental. Existence had been compassionate toward them; they were rewarded enough.Ashok Bharti is a poor man, but has a very rich heart; and to have a rich heart is the only real richness in the world. He has the potentiality of becoming a great singer, a great poet, a great composer, but he was not aware of it. He had come just to see me; he’s my old sannyasin. And knowing that to me, religion means celebration, he brought his khanjhari – just to sing a song to me, what else to bring as an offering? He was very shy in asking, “Can I sing a song in your presence?”I said, “This is the most beautiful present anyone could have brought to me. You can sing every day.” And I have been watching him for almost one month – the depth, the significance, the meaning of his songs has been deepening. His courage is growing, he is no longer hesitant, he is not worried that so many people are watching. He is not a public singer. He’s just like everybody else, a bathroom singer.It is strange: in bathrooms you will find the great singers of the world, but the moment you bring them out of the bathroom they become dumb. Everybody is a good conversationalist. The whole world is agog with people talking to each other, but just put somebody on a pedestal, and he looks at the crowd watching him and his heart starts sinking. These are the same people he has been talking to separately, privately. But to be observed by thousands of eyes, a fear arises, “If something goes wrong, I will become a laughingstock before so many people.”I have been watching Ashok. The first day there was that fear. Slowly, slowly, the fear has disappeared, on the contrary, a fearlessness, a strength… And he has been creating his own songs, tremendously beautiful – not composed by the mind, but arising out of his love and out of his heart. They have a totally different beauty. It is true, that if you love me you will feel in my presence as if you are disappearing into a vast emptiness or into a vast fullness. Beyond the human mind, emptiness and fullness mean the same thing. Love makes you empty – empty of jealousy, empty of power trips, empty of anger, empty of competitiveness, empty of your ego and all its garbage. But love also makes you full of things which are unknown to you right now; it makes you full of fragrance, full of light, full of joy.An ancient story is:A king is getting old; he has three sons, and all are intelligent. They are triplets, born together, so there is no question of who is the eldest. Otherwise, there would have been no problem; the eldest son would have been the successor. The problem was, who out of the three is going to be the successor? They are all of the same age. In horse riding they are all of equal efficiency; in archery they are equally great. In every field it is impossible to decide who is the best of the three.He asked his master, an old wise man living in the forest, “I am getting old, and somebody has to succeed me and take care of the kingdom. And I am in great difficulty; can you give me some idea how to choose the right person?” And the wise man gave him some advice.The king came back, and he gave an equal amount of money to all three sons and told them – because they all had their own palaces – “With this money, you have to manage to fill your palaces completely. And after seven days I will come to see. Whoever succeeds in filling his house totally, better than the other two, is going to succeed me as the king of the kingdom.”They were puzzled, because the money was not that great. They thought of many things, but the palaces were big – how to fill them completely? The first prince went to the municipal corporation and asked, “From today, all the trucks that throw the garbage of the town outside the city should throw it into my palace – because with that money this is the only possible way to fill the palace completely.”He filled the palace completely. The whole neighborhood was angry; even the traffic on the road stopped – because it was stinking. But they could not do anything – he was the prince, and it was a question of a certain test. The king himself has asked.The second prince was very worried, asked many people… But they said, “With such a small amount of money it is very difficult. What your brother has done… He has filled the house; you can do something similar. Just purchase cheap grass…fill the house.” He purchased the cheapest quality of grass, which even animals were not ready to eat, but still the house was not full; it was only half full.They were both worried about what the third brother was doing, because he looked absolutely unconcerned. Six days had passed and he had not done anything. And the seventh day came, and by the evening, as the sun set the king came with the wise old man.It was impossible to come close to the first son’s house. The king said, “This idiot, he has really filled the house – but with garbage! It is disgusting, I am feeling sick.”But the old man said, “You had asked…and we have to go and see. Just have a little patience. You need not stay long; just have a look to see whether he has filled the house or not.”They saw it.They went to the second son’s house. It was not better, but it was not worse either. It was rotten grass, but the house was only half full.The king was very disappointed – so much so that he thought that it would be better not to go to the house of the third prince, because these idiots… What they have done is not worth seeing.But the wise man said, “You have to go, because the decision has to be taken.”They went to the house of the third young man. They entered the house, and they were puzzled – because it was absolutely empty. He had even removed the furniture, the paintings, the statues, other things of the house; everything had been removed. The house was utterly empty.They asked the son, “What have you done?”He said to the father, “Just see, it is full.”The father looked around. He said, “It is absolutely empty, you are befooling us.”The wise old man said, “Don’t be angry with him; it is full, but it is full with something that you are not acquainted with. What he has done is that he has just purchased candles and put the candles all over the house – it is full of light.”Light is not material; it is not objective. The word objective is beautiful, it means that which objects to you. You want to go through the wall. The wall will object, will prevent you; the wall is objective. Light is immaterial. It is a strange phenomenon on the earth. In a sense it is outside you, can be called objective, but in another sense it is not creating any objection – you can pass through it, it is immaterial.It was thought for centuries that light had no weight; just recently they have discovered that it has weight, but it is almost negligible. When the sky is without clouds and the sun is burning hot, all the rays that fall on five square miles will have some weight that can be detected. If we could collect all those rays, they would give you a little sense of weight. So in a way, light is part of the objective world, and in a way it is part of the non-objective world.The old man said, “You don’t understand the boy.”And the boy returned most of the money. He said, “This was too much. I could have filled the house in many other dimensions also. I could have brought music into the house, which has no weight. I could have brought incense into the house – the fragrance has no weight, and it would fill the house. But I thought that would be doing too much. This is enough. And why waste your money? Take your money back; a small part of your money was enough.”When you are in love, in a way you feel as if you are disappearing into emptiness as far as the material world is concerned. But on the other hand, you are entering a new kind of fullness: immaterial, spiritual, not of this world. But this is not the only world. Something transcendental, something from the beyond…And I can see your love. This whole month it has been growing, as if spring has come to you, new green leaves, new flowers, a new perfume, and your heart is full of new visions. Just continue dissolving into love.That’s the meaning of disciplehood: dissolving into the love, dissolving into the presence of the master, just becoming one with his heartbeats. And songs will shower on you, and flowers of unknown, inexperienced fragrances will grow in you. You are on the right track. Just don’t look back – and don’t stop anywhere, because this is a journey that only begins but never ends.Osho,I wonder whether as your disciple I can be utterly selfish, to find my way to enlightenment whatever I am doing, or do I have to fulfill a certain function for you to spread your vision?It has to be understood very clearly that nobody has a duty to spread my vision, my message, to the people. I hate the very word missionary. They are the ugliest creatures on the earth. I don’t want to create missionaries.You have to be utterly selfish, concentrated on only one aim: becoming enlightened. Of course, as you become enlightened, your light will start reaching to others. My message will start vibrating through you, through your love, without any effort on your part. It has never been said: “Be utterly selfish.” All the religions of the world have been teaching, “Be altruistic,” and they all have failed, because their very foundation was wrong. You don’t know what truth is, and you start spreading the message about truth. You are lying.I have asked Christian missionaries, “What is your experience?” They don’t have any experience. What they have are degrees from theological colleges. Somebody is a DD, a doctor of divinity. Because he has written a thesis, he has become a doctor of divinity – and he knows nothing about divineness, he has never tasted anything that he can call divine. He has never had a single moment in his life when he has touched the beyond; he had no time – he was reading books and writing his doctoral thesis. He was concerned with words, not with experiences.I lived in Jabalpur for at least twenty years, and Jabalpur has Asia’s biggest Christian theological college. It prepares missionaries – that’s its function.The principal was very interested in me. I asked him, “Be sincere, do you really feel that you have something more than the body and the mind? Have you experienced anything of the soul?”He said, “I have read about it, and I trust that the people who have written about it are not lying.”I said, “It is possible they were also in the same position as you are, that they had read other people whom they believed could not lie – but you cannot be certain unless you experience. And what about your professors? And you are preparing three thousand missionaries per year; you are giving them degrees to go all over Asia to convert other people to Christianity. This whole game is hypocrisy. None of your teachers, none of your students has any taste of meditation; none of them has encountered God. And I think none of them is ready to be crucified like Jesus Christ.”I asked him, “Are you ready to be crucified like Jesus Christ?”He said, “What kind of question are you asking? I have children, I have my wife, I have my old parents.”I said, “Jesus also had his old parents. And you are almost sixty; he was only thirty-three. Then why are you hanging a golden cross on a golden chain around your neck? Because as far as I understand, the neck has to be put on the cross – not that the cross is golden, hanging around your neck on a gold chain.”He said, “I was thinking that one day I would ask you to speak to my college students” – they had almost five thousand students – “but now, I have dropped that idea. You can disturb the whole thing.”And the same question, you are asking me. I am not converting you. I am trying to explain to you how to transform yourself, how to become more luminous, how to become more alert, more conscious. And if that consciousness brings you experiences which are not available ordinarily, and those experiences have an intrinsic quality that they have to be shared, then share them. But don’t try to impose any ideology on anyone.You love me. Naturally the desire arises that others should also love me. But the only right way is that you should come to a state that others start loving you. I can be connected through you to others, not by your words, but by your life. You are not to be a missionary. You have to become a message yourself. People should ask you, “What has happened to you? Why do we feel such a magnetic attraction toward you? Why do we feel that you are hiding some treasure from us? Why do we feel that you have moved far above our ordinary visions?”Then share your experience; there is no need to convert anybody. And when somebody comes on his own accord to be transformed, to learn the whole science of living in a new way, it is totally different. When you go to people to somehow convince their minds that your ideology is better than their ideology, it is possible that you may convince a few people with your ideology, but it is not conversion. They remain the same. The Catholic, the Protestant, the Hindu, the Mohammedan, the Jew, the communist – what is the difference in their lifestyle? If you insult any of them, they are going to react in the same way.I am reminded of a beautiful story…Gautam Buddha is passing near a village, which consists only of high caste brahmins. They are very much against Gautam Buddha; they have all gathered outside the village to condemn him, to abuse him. He stands there listening to their abuse, their allegations, their lies. Even Ananda, who has been with him all these years, feels angry because they were born into a royal family; they were warriors, their whole training was to fight. But because Gautam Buddha is present, he controls himself; otherwise he would have killed one or two people then and there.Gautam Buddha said to them, “You see that the sun is going to set soon, and we have to reach the other village before the sun sets. If you have not finished all that you wanted to say to me, I will make a point that when I return I set aside enough time to listen to you again. And in two days, I will be returning along the same route. So it will be very kind of you if you can wait just two days.”One man from the crowd said, “You don’t seem to be disturbed at all. And we are not just saying things to you, we are abusing you, insulting you.”Gautam Buddha said, “You have come a little late. If you had come ten years before, you would not have gone back alive. I am also a warrior. There would have been bloodshed here; not a single man in this crowd would have gone back alive. But you have come a little late.“In the village just before this village, people came with sweets and fruits. And we said, ‘We eat only once a day, and we have taken our food, so it would be very kind if you would take these things back with you. We are grateful.’ What do you think they did with those sweets and those fruits?”Somebody said, “They must have distributed them among themselves; they must have eaten them.”Buddha said, “You are intelligent. Do the same: whatever you have brought, I don’t accept; take it back. Because unless I accept your insult, you cannot insult me; it is a two-way affair. It is your mouth, you can say anything – but unless I accept it, you are just talking into the air. Just go home and say all these things to each other – enjoy. And I will be coming again after two days, so be ready.”They were shocked, and they could not believe: what kind of man is this? When they moved on, Ananda said to Buddha, “This is too much. There were moments when I was going to jump and hit the man. Just because of you, I tried to control my temptation.”Buddha said – and remember it – he said: “What those people were saying has not hurt me. What you are saying hurts me. You have been with me for so many years, and yet you are not aware enough to know what to take and what not to take? Can’t you discriminate?”I want you not to become missionaries. I want you to become messages.And that is possible only if you are utterly selfish, so that before you start helping others, you have helped yourself; before you start enlightening other people, you are enlightened yourself. That’s what I mean by being selfish. Whatever you want to spread must be your living experience.Osho,These days here with you are certainly the most beautiful. Doing nothing, so much time to sit silently in the garden, in my room, and watch the trees dancing in the wind, sparkling in the sun. So much beauty.My mind is finally getting used to the idea of being turned off. I am so peaceful, so happy. Now, today, again going inside on this path of silence, with thoughts drifting away and emptiness surrounding me, I am aware of a tension inside me as if I am holding on to something.Osho, what am I holding on to, and how do I let go?It is not difficult to find out what you are holding on to, what your subtle tension is inside. You are feeling peaceful, you are feeling silent, you are feeling blissful as you have never felt. Hence, side by side, a fear must be lurking inside that soon you will be going from here and will this peace, this silence, this blissfulness remain a part of you? Or the moment you are away from me, will it disappear? This fear is not only within you, it is in every disciple’s mind, that when you are here it is one thing and when you go back to the marketplace, into the world, you will find it more miserable, more saddening than before because now you have something to compare it with.Have you seen…? By the side of the road you are standing in darkness, and a car passes with its headlights on. The darkness disappears for a moment. The car has gone, but strangely enough after the car has gone the darkness is greater than it was before the car had come. You have seen the light; now there is a comparison.This fear is natural. Only one thing can be done about it, and that is not to repress it but let it surface. You are repressing; that’s why you are not finding what it is that is troubling you somewhere inside. Allow it to surface. Experience that fear also. Accept the fear, and accept the challenge of the fear. Tell your mind, “It does not matter where I am. Whatever I have experienced, it is my experience and I can create it again.” It may have been triggered in my presence, but it is not my experience, it is your experience. Let it be deeply settled in you that it is your experience, it has nothing to do with me. I may have been a catalytic agent, but the experience is yours. And now, once it has happened, you can create it again anywhere in the world. Maybe in the beginning you will find it a little difficult, because you have become accustomed, and associated it with my presence. But it is not dependent on my presence.It is just as if you light a candle with another candle – but once the candle is lit, it has its own flame. Perhaps in the beginning it needed to be close enough to another flame, but once it catches the flame, it has its own; it is no longer dependent. And when you go away, you will experience what I am saying – but give it a chance. Don’t decide that “Now it cannot happen because the master is not here.”The master was needed to make you aware that it is something within you. Now you have seen it. Close your eyes anywhere, and you can recreate the silence, the beauty, the bliss. You can even recreate the presence of the master – that is the most difficult part, but not impossible. It depends on how intense is your love, how deep is your trust.But no need to try it; first try those things which you can create within yourself. And once you have created all those things then you can try the tremendously beautiful experiment of creating the presence of the master.So don’t be worried; just bring your fear to the surface. And it is not only in you; it is in everyone. It is something in the nature of things. So don’t give it too much importance either; just accept it as a natural phenomenon which will disappear by your little experiments away from me.I guarantee it will disappear, because I have guaranteed it to thousands of my sannyasins and it has disappeared from their lives. There is no reason why it should not disappear from your life. The principles are the same; there are no exceptions.Osho,I seem to be so unconscious so much of the time, so very unaware and just simply involved in life and loving living it.When you speak about the totality and intensity of the search, and how nothing else really matters, and how important it is to let nothing become a distraction, I fear I will never manage it.In my heart I feel nothing else does matter, yet I am not living in this awareness all the time and in every situation.Would it be good for me to try to bring this awareness to each and every moment, even if it requires intense effort? If you feel this is good for me, I will try it even though I am afraid I may lose some of the fun and spontaneity and ease of just living, and even though I don't know if I can manage it.The question is significant for everybody. Because I am speaking to so many people – not only those who are present here, but also to those millions who are not present here but will be hearing my words or reading my words. It becomes a very difficult affair, because people are different in many ways. And certainly no two persons are the same. And the danger is that you may start doing something which is not meant for you.A simple criterion should be remembered: whatever feels good for you – blissful, peaceful, spontaneous, happening on its own accord – that is your path.But I have to speak also to those people for whom nothing is spontaneous, for whom the most difficult thing is to relax, for whom the most impossible thing is just to sit and not to do anything. They also need every help. To them I say, “Live with total intensity, with total effort” – because that is the easiest thing for them. And whatever is easy is close to truth.Maitri, for you that would not be the easiest thing. You would have to make effort against yourself; it would not be natural, it would not be spontaneous. You would be forcing yourself, and this will destroy the whole beauty and the peace and the silence that you are already feeling. If you are feeling silence, peace, a beautiful energy through spontaneity, through relaxation, through let-go, then that is your way.Everybody has to find out what is close to his heart. I am speaking for many people of many types. You have to find out what is right for you. If you start doing everything that I am saying, you will get in a mess. You simply do that which your heart supports. And remember, the heart is never wrong. The mind can be right, can be wrong. The heart is always right, there is no question of its being wrong. So whenever your heart feels at ease with something, then go with it – root and all. Then don’t look back and don’t bother about what others are doing. Let them do their thing; you do your thing.Because the religions of the past emphasized only one method, naturally that religion became only for one type of people. It is because of this that there are three hundred religions on the earth. And I want only one religiousness. All those three hundred religions have some kind of truth and some kind of validity to them. But they are specializations of a certain method, applicable to certain people – and that has made the whole world irreligious.For example, effort is the way for Mahavira. Even to mention the word let-go is to support laziness. Mahavira is not his name; his name was Vardhamana. He is called Mahavira because his attitude and approach is that truth has to be conquered. It is not a love affair; it is a war. And Mahavira has won the war; that is why he is called the great warrior. Mahavira means the great warrior.Now, it creates trouble. His method is suitable only to a certain type of person, the warrior type. But because of his own teaching, his followers – who all came from the kshatriyas, the warrior race in India – had to drop their profession of being warriors, because that is violence. Now they were in trouble – what to do? They could not be brahmins because a brahmin is only born. You cannot become a brahmin by studying or by doing anything, there is no way. A brahmin is only born, you cannot be converted into a brahmin. So these people could not be brahmins. These people could not be sudras, untouchables, because they were high caste Hindus, second only to brahmins. They had their own pride. The only way for them was to become businessmen. So all the Jainas in India are businessmen. They could not become cultivators, gardeners, because in cultivation or gardening you will have to cut trees, and that is violence, because trees have life. So all other areas are rejected.And these business people are not trained like Mahavira. He was trained in his youth as a warrior, as a fighter, and he brought his fighting qualities to his search for truth. Now, these business people are not trained for fighting. If somebody comes and says that truth can be purchased, they will be ready. But “truth has to be conquered”? – that just seems to be out of reach. Conquered – that is beyond their scope. All they can do is worship Mahavira. Twenty-five centuries have passed, and Jainas have not been able to produce another man of the same caliber as Mahavira. What is the reason?He represented one type, and he preached for one type, but it was an accident that the people who followed him were not of that type and cannot be of that type. So they have remained in a limbo, they cannot move anywhere. Business they can do, and they have created the most beautiful temples in India, the most beautiful statues. Worship they can do. But fighting – that is simply not possible.So a strange phenomenon… The teacher they followed was of a different type. They were impressed by his unique quality; he was a man of steel. But his followers can only praise him; they cannot do what their teacher has done. And this is not only with Jainas, this is the situation with every religion.And there is no necessity that your child will be of the same type as you are. But by a certain calamity we have accepted the idea that religion comes by birth. This is simply stupid. It is as if a doctor’s son becomes a doctor because he is born to a doctor. He need not go to the medical college – what is the need? And if he is the son of a doctor whose wife is also a doctor, then there is no question – in his very blood and bones he is a born doctor, he needs no certificate.It is good that we don’t do this. But in religion we have been doing it. I have seen people who were born into a religion where devotion is not allowed. It is not for the devotional type, but the person is of the devotional type. Somebody is the type who can easily move with a negative approach, and for somebody else a negative approach is simply impossible; unless something positive is there, he cannot take a single step.My own suggestion is that religion should not be something decided by birth. A religion should be decided by the person himself, according to his feelings. Wherever he feels good, growing, wherever he feels joyous, wherever he feels a certain magnetic attraction, that is his path. It does not matter whether that is the religion he is born into or not; that is the religion he is born for. But that is possible only if everybody is freed from religious slavery, and we allow our children to be acquainted with all kinds of religions, all kinds of methods. And if we tell them to feel, to move with different kinds of people: “Go to different temples, go to different schools, go to different masters, and feel your way.” And wherever he feels that this is his nourishment, then the parents have to bless him to go on that way.It does not matter if you feel nourished in the company of a Mohammedan Sufi, it does not matter if you feel nourished in the company of a Buddhist monk; the whole question should be decided by your own heart. And the heart never leads you wrongly. If you allow it, it will give you clear-cut indications that you are on the right path. Peace, silence, bliss, benediction – all will be coming more and more, and the scope will become wider and wider.Osho,Who is the blessed one?The one who is asleep in you is the blessed one, but unfortunately he is sleeping and snoring. He has to be awakened, and the moment your sleeping consciousness becomes wakeful you start feeling blissfulness. The highest peak of your bliss makes you feel to go beyond humanity. That is the moment of being the blessed one; you have become part of the universal blissfulness. But people are so asleep.I have suffered so much from people’s sleep because I used to travel continually in India. Mostly I was in an air-conditioned coupe, but sometimes there was another person in the coupe also. And sometimes a coupe was not available so there were four persons. Once it happened, I was coming from Calcutta in a four-person room. And I have seen many snoring people, but I will not forget those three fellows. They had a certain harmony: one would snore and the other two would remain silent, and then as he would stop, the second would snore louder than the first and the other two would remain silent. Then as the second would stop the third would snore loudest of all, and the other two would remain silent. And the circle went on.I heard this for one hour and then I said, “This is impossible. I don’t want to interfere in anybody’s life, but these three people are interfering in my life.” So as the third stopped, I snored so loudly that all three became awake. And they saw me snoring with open eyes, so they could not believe it. They looked at each other like: “What kind of man is this? His eyes are open.” And I was not blinking my eyes. All three got up from their seats and came close to me.I said, “Listen, if you want to sleep, stop this harmony that is going on. Otherwise, I will not allow any of you to sleep.”One said, “But you are awake and you are snoring?”I said, “What else to do? – because I cannot sleep, so the question of sleeping and then snoring does not arise. You don’t allow me to sleep. First let me sleep. Then perhaps I may fall into the harmony, something may happen, but first let me sleep. And how are you managing it?”They said, “We three are brothers.”I said, “You are great brothers.”They said, “What to do? It is such a difficult matter, even in our family. Our wives don’t sleep in our rooms; we three brothers have to sleep in one room. So, slowly, slowly, a certain harmony has arisen.”I said, “That’s perfectly good, but in just one night it will be very difficult for me to get into the harmony. Something has to be done.”So we had to come to a conclusion that those three fellows would play cards while I slept for a few hours, and then they would have their harmony and I would sit and listen. But listening to them was also beautiful, because how were they managing any sleep?Everybody is carrying the blessed one, but it needs to be awakened.The blessed one is not a certain talent. It is not like being a musician. A few people are musicians but not everybody can be; a few people are painters but not everybody can be; a few people are poets, dancers, actors, writers – these are talents.The blessed one is not a question of talent. It is your very nature. It is your self-nature; it is your intrinsic quality.It is up to you how long you want to be miserable and asleep – you are free. The moment you decide that enough is enough, you will have the same experiences as any Gautam Buddha or Ramakrishna or Raman Maharshi – these are not talented people. Kabir or Raidas or Farid – these are not talented people, they are just ordinary human beings. But as far as their blissfulness is concerned, they have reached to the same peak as Gautam Buddha.It is your birthright.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 15 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Every time when people ask me, “What is Osho in your life?” – I answer that you are my master. But the people don't understand, even if I try to explain. What is the reason for it? Why can't I explain it with success?Life is beautiful because there is so much which cannot be explained. It would have been a disaster if life consisted only of things which can be explained. Just think for a moment, if everything could be explained, then there would be no mystery, then there would be no poetry, then there would be no secret. Then everything would be utterly flat and boring. Life is not boredom because there are dimensions in it that you can go on exploring, yet you can never come to explanations. You can experience much, yet that which you have experienced cannot be translated into words.You fall in love. Since the very first man, millions of people must have fallen in love, yet love is still a mystery, you cannot reduce it to knowledge. The moment you try to reduce it to knowledge, it slips out of your hands. And it is good that it is so miraculous that generation after generation, millions of people go through the experience; they know what it is yet they cannot say what it is.All that can be experienced is not necessarily explainable, and all that can be explained is not necessarily experienceable. Mathematics can be explained easily, but there is no corresponding experience. Science can be explained easily, but even the greatest scientist is not transformed by his knowledge. But an anonymous poet not only gives birth to poetry, he also goes through a deep revolution, a rebirth. His poetry is not just a composition of words; it is the juice of his very life. The greatest poets have not been able to explain their own poetry.Once Coleridge was asked by a professor of literature… The professor was teaching at the university and he came across a point in one of Coleridge’s poems where he was doubtful about the meaning. He was a sincere man. He told the students, “You will have to wait at least one day. Coleridge lives in my neighborhood; I can ask him exactly what he means.”The professor went to Coleridge that evening. Coleridge said, “You have come a little late.”He said, “What do you mean – a little late? You are still alive.”Coleridge said, “It is not a question of my being alive or not. When I wrote these lines, two persons knew the meaning; now only one knows.”Naturally, the professor inferred that the one person could not be anyone else but Coleridge. He said, “So I have not come too late. Tell me what the meaning is.”Coleridge said, “You have not yet got the point. When I wrote those lines, two persons knew the meaning: Coleridge and God. Now only God knows!“I myself have been wondering. Many times I have read it and wondered: what is the meaning? It is groovy – but very slippery. You feel that you are just about to catch it and it has gone just like a breeze. I am sorry. I have certainly written these lines, and I know there is some meaning, and I feel it, but you will have to forgive me. I cannot even explain it to myself, how can I explain it to you?”It is not only so about poetry. Anything significant in life…Picasso used to get very angry whenever anybody would ask the meaning of his paintings. And he was not an angry man. He was a very beautiful, loving person. But the moment you ask the meaning of his painting, you have touched him from the wrong side. He would immediately get very angry. He would say, “This is strange. Nobody asks a roseflower what its meaning is. Nobody asks the stars what their meaning is. Nobody asks a bird on the wing what its meaning is. Nobody asks a sunrise or a sunset what its meaning is. People simply enjoy the beauty; nobody bothers about the meaning. Why are people after me? I am a poor painter. All that I can say is that it is beautiful. But that is not its meaning; it is its impact on a sensitive being.”Meaning is rational, and the experience of mystery is supra-rational.Your question is significant, and it must be the question of many other disciples. People ask you what the relationship is between you and me. Just to say that I am your master neither satisfies them nor satisfies you. How can it satisfy them when it does not even satisfy you? – because it is not just a relationship like somebody is your father and somebody is your mother and somebody is your brother. Once you have said that somebody is your father, everything is explained. Nobody bothers you anymore that, “What do you mean by father?” and…The relationship with the master is not of the same category as all other relationships. It is intrinsically different. It is love, but not only love. It is love with a center of trust. Love alone is unexplainable, and now it has joined hands with an even greater mystery. Trust is absolutely something of another world.In this world, there is distrust in everybody. Even in people who love each other, there is no trust. There are friends who can, if there is need, die for each other – but there is no trust.In the Middle Ages it used to happen:A very strange and ugly thing was in existence in Europe. Whenever a warrior would go to war, he would put a lock on his wife so that she could not make love to anybody, and take the key with him. A strange device it was – those locks are still exhibited in the museums of Europe. You cannot even trust your wife! And if you cannot trust your wife, do you think a master key cannot be found? The goldsmiths who made the locks also made extra keys.One prince was going to war. His only fear was about his beautiful wife. He was afraid that if the key were lost in the war then for the rest of his life he wouldn’t be able to make love to his own wife. So he thought it would be better to give the key to one of his best friends. They were so close that they would have died for each other, so there was no question of distrust.He gave his friend the key and told him, “When I come back I will take it back. So keep it safe.”He had gone not more than half a mile out of the town on his horse, when he heard a fast horse approaching him from behind. He looked back, and his friend was coming, shouting, “Wait!”He said, “What has happened?” Just five minutes ago he had left him perfectly healthy, and there had been no problem. The friend said, “You gave me the wrong key!”In this world, there is no trust at all. When love is joined with trust, it becomes even more difficult to explain it. It becomes more mysterious. And thirdly, as love and trust grow to their optimum, something comes which can only be called surrender. It is not a good word, but there is no other word as a substitute.Surrender makes the whole thing absolutely not of this world. You cannot give any reason; you cannot give any explanation. The only way is: whoever asks, tell him that it is something like a thirsty man finding water in the desert. His every fiber is just thirst, and the water quenches all thirst. A great peace descends. The master is not a person. The master is only a presence. If you are thirsty enough for the unknown, you can drink out of this presence and be quenched.Anybody who asks you the question, tell him, “Come with me. There are a few things which cannot be explained, but I can take you to the place where perhaps you may also experience them. Your question itself shows that there is some interest in you – perhaps a deep, hidden desire. Who knows? – it may become aflame in the presence of the master. Who knows? – surrounded by disciples and their love and their trust and their surrender, and the presence of the master, something may transpire in you. One thing is certain: if something transpires in you, you will become dumb the way I am dumb.”Accept your dumbness, but create a quest in the person who is asking only for a verbal answer. Use that situation. A verbal answer is of no use. Just say, “I have experienced something which is untranslatable into any language, but I can take you to the river. You yourself can drink. Your experience will be the only explanation.”And I repeat again: Life is beautiful because there are so many unexplainable dimensions to it. That is its richness. If everything is explained, all juice will be lost; you will be fed up, bored to death with a life, which is explained. What transpires between a master and a disciple is one of the peaks of unexplainable experiences. Don’t destroy it with any explanation. It is a crime to destroy the unexplainable by bringing it to the level of explanations, because you have killed. It is almost like a bird on the wing in the sky – it is so beautiful in its freedom; the whole sky belongs to him, all the stars belong to him: no limits, no barriers. You can catch hold of the bird; you can make a beautiful golden cage and you can put the bird in the cage. But remember, it is not the same bird that was flying in freedom in the sky under the stars. Factually it is the same bird, but spiritually no – because where is the freedom and where are the stars? Where is the sky? Your golden cage cannot replace what you have taken away from the bird. It has lost its soul.The same happens when you try to explain something which is unexplainable. You bring it into the cage of language, of words – beautiful words, but the soul has disappeared.Don’t do it. I know it feels a little awkward when somebody asks and you cannot answer – you feel embarrassed. It is better to feel embarrassed. But don’t commit a crime against the mysteries of life. Tell the person, “I am feeling embarrassed because I cannot say it. Not that I don’t want to say it – I would have loved to say it to you but I cannot, because saying it means killing it. I can take you to the window from where you can see the open sky; I can take you to the man. Perhaps your heart will start dancing in the same way my heart dances within me, and in deep silence, you will understand what it means to me. But only when it starts to mean something to you.”People will be asking you many questions. Use their questions to invite them toward the same light, toward the same bliss, toward the same truth. Don’t answer – because you cannot answer, and whatever you say will fall flat. Resist the temptation of being knowledgeable. Accept your inarticulateness. But invite the person. Perhaps out of ten, one may turn up. And one never knows – by coming here, he may turn on!Osho,I am old, and had been a Buddhist for over thirty years before I came to Pune. But still I feel as if I am at the beginning, confused with lots of doubts.On the other hand, something inside me knows about your silence, and that “something” is not irritated at all. It is like a robe of trust, but I am not able to believe.Could you please say something about the difference between trust and belief?Trust and belief have a very similar appearance, but they are diametrically opposite realities.Belief is a false coin. It pretends to be real; it tries to play the role of trust. Millions of people are caught in the net of belief, because it is cheap. Trust is costly, very costly. Trust is costly because it is risky; it is dangerous. It means you are opening yourself, becoming vulnerable to somebody who can do you harm. You are dropping all your defense measures. You will be defenseless – you can be exploited, cheated, destroyed.Everybody has a defense system around himself, just to protect himself from others. Life is competitive. Everybody is running after the same goals, and you cannot remain loving, compassionate, kind, in a competitive world or you are going to be a failure. In this competitive world, the people who succeed are the people who are ready to sacrifice anybody, to destroy anybody. They go on climbing on people as if people were stepping-stones. They care about only one thing, and that is success. Naturally, everybody has to be ready not to be trampled, killed. Trust means going against the current of the competitive world. In the competitive world, trust is simply impossible.Machiavelli wrote one of the most significant treatises on diplomacy, The Prince. Strangely enough, his great, great granddaughter is a sannyasin – Machiavelli would have never dreamed that his blood would one day trust somebody. Machiavelli has written in The Prince – it is a small treatise for every politician – maxims to be followed if you want to succeed: Don’t trust anybody, but let everybody believe that you trust them. Don’t say anything to a friend that you would not say to an enemy – because no one knows, the friend may turn into your enemy tomorrow. Don’t say anything against your enemy that you would not say against your friend – because in this competitive world, the person who is an enemy may become a friend, the person who is a friend may become an enemy. Basically, keep yourself completely closed and secretive. If you say something, say it in such a way that it can be interpreted either way, for or against. Don’t say anything which has only a single meaning, because every day you will have to face a new reality and you will have to change your meaning.Machiavelli is the real leader of the world – not Jesus Christ or Gautam Buddha. It is a strange world. Here, the real leaders are not worshipped, but they are followed. Here, the unreal leaders are worshipped – but not followed.When love and trust meet, their ultimate byproduct is surrender. You relax into the master, into his being, without holding anything. It is certainly only for those who are ready to take a risk.But belief is very cheap. Everybody is a believer – somebody is a Hindu, somebody is a Mohammedan, somebody is a Christian. Belief comes in all sizes, all shapes, all colors – you can choose. And you don’t have to pay anything for it. Generally you get it with your mother’s milk, free of charge.Secondly, belief is always in an idea, and trust is always in a presence.That is a very delicate difference. Belief is theoretical; trust is existential.You can change your belief without any trouble; it is just like changing your clothes. From a Hindu, you can become a Christian; from a Christian, you can become a Mohammedan; from a Mohammedan, you can become a communist. There is no problem, because belief is only of the mind. If anything is more convincing, more logical, you can change it. It has no roots in your heart. Belief is like plastic flowers, which look like flowers from far away. They don’t have any roots, they don’t need any care – no manure, no chemicals, no watering, no gardening, nothing is needed. And they are permanent “people,” they can remain with you your whole life long – because they were never born, so they will never die. They are manufactured. Unless you destroy them, they will remain.Trust is a real rose. It has roots, and roots go deep into your heart and into your being. Belief is just in the head. Trust is in the heart, in your deeper world of being. To change trust is almost impossible – it has never happened, it is not known to have happened in the whole of history. If you trust, you trust; there is no possibility of its changing. And it goes on growing because it has roots. It never remains static; it is dynamic, it is a living force. It goes on growing new foliage, new flowers, new branches. Belief is a dead thing, a plastic flower; it never grows.Hindus may have believed in a certain thing for ten thousand years – it is still there, the same; it never grows. “The cow is the mother” – Hindus have believed it for ten thousand years. The belief has not grown even to include the fact that the bull is your father! It is static. And if you mention to any Hindu that the bull is his father then he will become a bull, and prove that certainly the bull is his father! But he will not believe it; he will behave exactly like a bull, but he will not accept the fact.All beliefs are old; all beliefs are dead. No belief grows even a single leaf. Belief is ideological, philosophical, but it is not a force that transforms your being. It can make you a great scholar, it can make you a great philosopher, theologian, but it can never make you a new man, young and fresh; it cannot give you any experience. It can bring you degrees from the universities and awards and Nobel Prizes. It can do everything, but it will not change anything in your interior, that will remain empty.The question is even more important because it is coming from a person who has been a Buddhist for thirty years. After being a Buddhist for thirty years, the person comes to me, feels a certain trust in me, falls in love. Naturally, there is a conflict, which is bound to happen. His mind is full of thirty years of Buddhist ideology – that is the belief system – and the heart is growing fresh sprouts of trust. The person is bound to be in great difficulty. The beliefs are pulling in one direction and the trust is moving in another direction. The beliefs have a certain weight because they are thirty years old, but the trust, although it is new, has a force of its own because it is alive. The beliefs are thirty-year-old corpses. They have weight, but they don’t have any force. The person is bound to be split.Things can be solved very easily. The first thing to remember is: if Buddhism was enough, there would have been no need to come to me. Being a Buddhist for thirty years has not done anything to you. You can be a Buddhist for thirty lives, but a belief never changes your reality. The length of time makes no difference. So the first question you have to ask yourself is why, after thirty years, you had to seek and search for some new source, for some new light, for some new indication. If you are courageous, you need not get into a conflict; you can simply see that those thirty years have gone to waste. But what is gone is gone; now don’t waste any more time on it.And remember, I am not saying that Buddha is wrong. I am simply saying that Buddha was right only for those people who could drink out of his presence, for whom he was a master. But for you, he is only a belief.It is better to get rid of those thirty years and whatever information you have collected in you, because that is a burden and a hindrance to your spiritual growth. If you can dare not to be a Buddhist, I promise you that there is a possibility of your being a buddha. Why be a Buddhist when there is a possibility of being a buddha? Why settle for such dead theories when living waters are available? To be a buddha is beautiful. To be a Buddhist is stupidity.Buddha was not a Buddhist; remember, he never heard the word. Nobody called him a Buddhist. Jesus was never a Christian. So one thing is certain, that no Christian remaining a Christian can find the experience that Jesus found. If any Christian wants to experience what Jesus experienced, the first thing to do is to get rid of Christianity – because Jesus was not a Christian.Your belief system has to be completely thrown out, so that your juices are not divided and your whole energy moves into your trust. Your trust is growing, but under a heavy burden, under a tension. It can grow in a relaxed way, under open sky. Just say good-bye to those beliefs that you have been carrying, and let your trust grow.What Buddha has been to his disciples, his theories cannot be. Theories are mere words. They don’t have the charm and the grace and the charisma; they don’t have that magnetism.And when you are here and the possibility is available for you to become awakened, to become a buddha, I don’t think that it is a bad bargain: dropping Buddhist theories in favor of becoming Gautam Buddha himself. In twenty-five centuries, how many buddhas have been produced by the Buddhists?One English Buddhist – Bhikku Dharm Rakshita, a very devoted man – dropped Christianity, was converted to Buddhism and became one of the topmost scholars of Buddhist literature. He had an ashram in Kalimpong. He used to go once in a while to attend Buddhist conferences, and he made it a point that whenever he came down from the Himalayas he would find me and come to be with me for a day or two.He was an internationally known Buddhist scholar. His books are rare as far as the accuracy of his translations is concerned. I used to ask him, “Dharm Rakshita, you have devoted almost fifty years to learning Buddhist theology, translating Buddhist literature – but have you got any taste of buddhahood?”And tears would come to his eyes. He would say, “Please, don’t ask that question. You are the only person who asks that. Nobody else seems to be interested. They ask about literature, they ask about principles, philosophies and everything, but nobody asks, ‘Has fifty years’ concentrated effort brought anything to your being – or has it brought only a dozen books and world fame? Are you satisfied?’”One night he said to me, “You met me too late. I am old, I have wasted my whole life. And now it is very difficult for me to drop all that garbage that I learned with great effort, and to begin from ABC, from complete scratch. But whenever I can manage it, I just come to be near you. And whenever I am near you… I don’t know how it would have been to be with Gautam Buddha, but I feel it must have been something like this, the same taste. It is too late for me to change now, but at least at the very end of my life I will not be dying just a scholar, I will be dying as a seeker. I could not do it in this life, but you have created a thirst. Perhaps in my next life I may not get lost in the jungle of theories, and I may try to enter into myself.”You have a rare opportunity here. Nothing like this has ever existed in the world before. Because I don’t have any prejudice – you can become a Christ here, you can become a Buddha here, you can become a Mahavira, you can become a Lao Tzu. I don’t have any prejudice because I know these are only different names. Behind them is the same universal consciousness.So don’t be bothered about your beliefs; just drop them. Trust is enough, more than enough. It is enough nourishment for your pilgrimage.Osho,Inside of me there seem to be so many questions, but when I try to ask you one of them, they all seem to have gone, and I don't know even if I really wanted to ask you something. But still the feeling of question remains.Please, can you explain where this feeling comes from?It is very simple. You don’t have a question; you have a quest. And you are not aware of the distinction. Your quest is not clear to you; it is clouded. You think perhaps there is some question, so you make many questions and they disappear but you are left with a vague feeling that something similar to a question is still there. What is it? All questions are like leaves. The quest is like the roots.You are fortunate, because at first people have to ask thousands of questions; then, by and by, one by one, the leaves disappear. Then branches come, then the trunk, and then finally they realize that the real thing is the quest. You are fortunate that you have only roots. But with roots the difficulty is that they are always underground, so you don’t see where they are. You try somehow to make questions, but they disappear because they are not connected to your roots.A quest is the most significant thing for a seeker. A quest means you want to know, you want to experience, you want to be the truth itself. A question wants to be answered. A quest wants to become the answer itself. Questions are many; the answer is one. And you are in a position that if you simply meditate, you will not come across a question, you will come across the answer. And the answer is not something separate from you. You are the answer.Just go to your very center. It is there for you, waiting for thousands of lives. Don’t let it wait any longer. Sometimes it also gets impatient. Because of that impatience, it starts creating questions. Questions only show impatience.But your position is very clear; you don’t need to ask anything, you simply have to go deeper and deeper into silence, and you will find it.Osho,Before coming into contact with you, professor Joshi of Kathmandu was spiritually guided by a buddhist lama. This lama left his family and village when he was young and traveled for forty years in Tibet, Burma and Thailand, meditating and seeking truth. At the age of sixty, one evening the lama quietly returned to his village and joined the family and his old life. But his grace and silence attracted many seekers, and now he is famous as an Avatari Lama. The professor was highly impressed by the lama, and out of love presented him with your book, Anta Yantra. The lama could not read Hindi or English, so he requested Mr. Joshi to read some passages to him and to show him your picture.When he saw your picture, the lama said: “Osho comes from the land where I go every day in my meditation. This time he has come with full glory, (sixteen kalas) – which happens only in the incarnation of Krishna or Buddha. Now there is no need to come to me for guidance; follow Osho, he is the right master.”Osho, how can people see so much just in your picture, which we disciples cannot realize even after such a long association?It is not a question of long association. It is a question of deep insight. You don’t have that meditative perspective. You can see only what the ordinary eyes can see. But as a person becomes more meditative, he starts growing his sensitivities to such depth and such height that he is able to see things which are invisible to us. Life is not only what is available to our five senses.Just think, for example, if you were all blind, you would never come to know that there is something like light – although the light will be all around you. But just the existence of light is not enough; you need something to perceive it.One fact scientists have been concerned about is that on at least fifty thousand planets there is a possibility of life. One thing is certain: that on these different planets, life must have grown in different ways, because the climate would be different, the whole situation would be different. It is possible that on some planet there may be animals that have more than five senses. Right now it is only a hypothetical question, but it is significant; the possibility is there. If there are animals on some planets that have seven senses or eight senses, then they must be able to perceive two or three things more than we can perceive. And we cannot even imagine what those things might be, because even in imagination, we can only imagine that which we have seen. We cannot even dream about it, because our dreams are only reflections. You cannot be so creative in your dreams as to create something new. All that will be reflected are those five senses. Before x-rays were developed, we had no idea that there are rays which can enter into your body and photograph your insides.The people who have been working on meditation for centuries have come to know many things, but because they are not scientists they have never tried to prove them objectively. For example, in the East it has been known for centuries that a man of meditation can see if somebody is going to die within six months or not. And the thing is so simple that it need not be even a question of meditation; you yourself can know whether you are going to die within six months or not. The day you stop seeing the tip of your nose, that means only six months are left – because at the time a person dies, his eyes turn up, and they start turning up six months before that, very slowly, very slowly. From six months beforehand till his death, he cannot see the tip of his nose. That is known to villagers, who have no meditation or meditative understanding. The lama has been meditating for forty years; he can see in my picture things which you cannot see.I am reminded of Ramakrishna. A painter made his portrait, and he brought the painting to show Ramakrishna, to see whether he liked it or not. The disciples were also gathered there.Ramakrishna looked at the painting and touched the feet of the painting. His disciples – Vivekananda and others – felt embarrassed: “What to do with our master? – because he does such things that even we look like fools. Now it is his own picture, and he is touching its feet. We had no idea that he would do this; otherwise we would have prevented him. And now he has done it, and people are laughing and smiling and looking at each other.”There were many observers there who were not disciples. They asked, “They think this man is a realized soul? He seems to be insane! Even an insane person will not touch his own feet; at least he will recognize that ‘This is my own portrait; I cannot touch its feet.’”The painter was also shocked, but he was not a disciple. So he gathered courage and said to Ramakrishna, “I cannot believe my eyes. This is your own portrait and you are touching your own feet! It looks a little awkward.”And Ramakrishna’s eyes were full of tears of joy. He said, “It is my picture, I know, but I am not touching the feet because it is my picture. I am touching the feet because you have caught my state of samadhi in the picture. And when I see a picture of someone in samadhi… It does not matter whether that picture is of me or somebody else, that is irrelevant. What matters is that the picture is of a self-realized consciousness; then I have to touch its feet. And I cannot see why you are all looking so embarrassed.”Now they all felt more embarrassed: “We are such idiots. We don’t understand; we should at least keep quiet. If we don’t understand, then it is better not to show any emotion. He has done something which nobody has done before, but his reason is so valid.”The lama must be doing well in his meditations. If he can see what he has seen in my picture, that validates that he is on the right path, that his meditation is bringing flowers, that he is very close to the home.Osho,I have heard you saying, “I love”: I have heard you saying “I hate.” What do you mean?Osho, tell me the truth, for my feeling is that there is nothing up there – not even love, not even compassion.Do I have to tell you the truth? It is a little bit difficult for me because it is not my habit – but the truth is there is no love, no hate.Up there is absolute silence.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 16 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I'm experiencing more and more a harmony, a quietness, an ease, an abundance in myself, moments in which I feel so vast and rich, like the universe, and so close to you. I dive into it and disappear, and see that this again was just an opening, a door to another dimension on this ongoing, never-ending journey you are taking me on, my beloved master.And I can find no words to express how much I feel, that I can be with you.Being together with a man I find these most beautiful and precious moments so rarely; it seems most of the time is wasted in loving, and finding ourselves and each other. Why is it so difficult for me to be in this harmony together with a man, and even take him with me into this unknown?Or is it something which can happen just between you and me?There are a few very fundamental things to be understood: first, a man and a woman are on the one hand halves of the other, and on the other hand, opposite polarities. Their being opposites attracts them to each other. The farther away they are, the deeper will be the attraction; the more different from each other they are, the more will be the charm and beauty and attraction. But there lies the whole problem.When they come close, they want to come closer, they want to merge into each other, they want to become one, a harmonious whole – but their whole attraction depends on opposition, and the harmony will depend on dissolving the opposition. Unless a love affair is very conscious, it is going to create great anguish, great trouble. All lovers are in trouble. The trouble is not personal; it is in the very nature of things.They would not have been attracted to each other… They call it falling in love. They cannot give any reason why they have such a tremendous pull toward each other. They are not even conscious of the underlying causes; hence a strange thing happens: the happiest lovers are those who never meet. Once they meet, the same opposition that created the attraction becomes a conflict. On each small point, their attitudes are different; their approaches are different. Although they speak the same language, they cannot understand each other.One of my friends was talking to me about his wife and their continuous conflict. I said, “It seems you cannot understand each other.”He said, “What to say about understanding her, I cannot even stand her!” And it was a love marriage. The parents of both were opposed to it; they belonged to two different religions, their societies were opposed. But they fought against everybody and got married – just to find that they had entered into a constant struggle.The way a man looks at the world is different from a woman. For example, a man is interested in faraway things – in the future of humanity, in the faraway stars, whether there are living beings on other planets or not. A woman simply giggles at the whole nonsense. She is only interested in a very small, closed circle – in the neighbors, in the family, in who is cheating his wife, whose wife has fallen in love with the chauffeur. Her interest is very local and very human. She is not worried about reincarnation; neither is she concerned about life after death. Her concern is more pragmatic. She is concerned with the present, here and now. Man is never here and now. He is always somewhere else. He has strange preoccupations: reincarnation, life after death.If both partners are conscious of the fact that it is a meeting of opposites, that there is no need to make it a conflict, then it is a great opportunity to understand the totally opposite point of view and absorb it. Then the life of a man and woman together can become a beautiful harmony. Otherwise, it is continuous fight. There are holidays. One cannot continue to fight twenty-four hours a day; one needs a little rest too – a rest to get ready for a new fight.But it is one of the strangest phenomena that for thousands of years, men and women have been living together, yet they are strangers. They go on giving birth to children, but still they remain strangers. The feminine approach and the masculine approach are so opposed to each other that unless a conscious effort is made, unless it becomes your meditation, there is no hope of having a peaceful life.It is one of my deep concerns: how to make love and meditation so involved in each other that each love affair automatically becomes a partnership in meditation – and each meditation makes you so conscious that you need not fall in love, you can rise in love. You can find a friend consciously, deliberately. You feel a deep harmony with me, moments of peace, love and silence, and naturally the question has arisen in you that if this is possible with me, why is it not possible with the man you love?The difference has to be understood. You love me, but you don’t love me in the same way you love your husband, your wife. Your love toward me is not biological; with me your love is a totally different phenomenon – it is of the spirit, not of the body. And secondly, you are connected with me because of your search for truth. My relationship with you is that of meditation. Meditation is the only bridge between me and you. Your love will deepen as your meditation deepens, and vice-versa: as your meditation blossoms, your love will also blossom. But it is on a totally different level.With your husband, you are not connected in meditation. You never sit silently for one hour together just to feel each other’s consciousness. Either you are fighting or you are making love, but in both cases, you are related with the body, the physical part, the biology, the hormones. You are not related with the innermost core of the other. Your souls remain separate. In the temples and in the churches and in the courts, only your bodies are married. Your souls are miles apart.While you are making love to your man – even in those moments – neither are you there, nor is your man there. Perhaps he is thinking of Cleopatra, Noorjahan, Mumtaj Mahal. You are also thinking… And perhaps that’s why every woman keeps her eyes closed – not to see her husband’s face, not to get disturbed. She is thinking of Alexander the Great, Ivan the Terrible. And looking at her husband, everything falls apart. He looks just like a mouse.Mulla Nasruddin and his wife were quarreling one morning. She said, “Outside the house you walk as if you are a lion, and inside the house you look just like a mouse.”Mulla Nasruddin said, “That is absolutely wrong. Put yourself right. I am not a mouse, I am a mousetrap. You are a mouse. Mousetraps don’t run after mice to catch hold of them. The mice themselves come and get caught, and that’s how it happened with us.”Mulla Nasruddin was not courageous enough to approach this woman. He was afraid from the very beginning. Every man is afraid because he has seen what has happened to his father, what has happened to his grandfather. He has seen what is happening to every neighbor. Every man is afraid. Mulla was very much afraid; he never approached any woman. It was this woman who caught him. So he said, “Remember, I am a mousetrap, that is true, but I was just sitting in my place. You got into me, it is your responsibility.”But it does not matter who catches who, who takes the initiative. Even in those beautiful moments which should be sacred, meditative, of deep silence – even then you are not alone with your beloved – there is a crowd. Your mind is thinking of somebody else, your wife’s mind is thinking of somebody else. Then what you are doing is just robot-like, mechanical. Some biological force is enslaving you, and you call it love.I have heard that early in the morning, a drunkard on the beach saw a man doing pushups. The drunkard walked around him, looked very closely from here and from there, and finally said, “I should not interfere in such an intimate affair, but I have to tell you that your girlfriend has gone. Now don’t exercise unnecessarily – first get up and find where she is!”That seems to be the situation. When you are making love, is your woman really there? Is your man really there? Or are you just doing a ritual – something which has to be done, a duty to be fulfilled? If you want a harmonious relationship with your man, you will have to learn to be more meditative. Love alone is not enough. Love alone is blind; meditation gives it eyes. Meditation gives it understanding. And once your love is both love and meditation, you become fellow travelers. Then it is no longer an ordinary relationship between husband and wife. Then it becomes friendliness on the path toward discovering the mysteries of life.Man alone, woman alone, will find the journey very tedious and very long, as they have found it in the past. Because seeing this continuous conflict, all the religions decided that those who wanted to seek should renounce the other – the monks should be celibate, the nuns should be celibate. But in five thousand years of history, how many monks and how many nuns have become realized souls? You cannot even give me names enough to count on ten fingers. And millions of monks and nuns of all religions – Buddhist, Hindu, Christian, Mohammedan… What has happened? The path is not so long. The goal is not that far away. But even if you want to go to your neighbor’s house, you will need both your legs. Just jumping on one leg, how far can you go?I am introducing a totally new vision: men and women together in deep friendship, in a loving, meditative relationship, as organic wholes, can reach the goal any moment they want. Because the goal is not outside you, it is the center of the cyclone; it is the innermost part of your being. But you can find it only when you are whole, and you cannot be whole without the other.Man and woman are two parts of one whole.So, rather than wasting time in fighting, try to understand each other. Try to put yourself in the place of the other – try to see as a man sees, try to see as a woman sees. And four eyes are always better than two eyes; you have a full view all four directions are available to you.But one thing has to be remembered: that without meditation, love is destined to fail; there is no possibility of its being a success. You can pretend and you can deceive others, but you cannot deceive yourself. You know deep down that all the promises love had given to you have remained unfulfilled. Only with meditation does love start taking on new colors, new music, new songs, new dances – because meditation gives you the insight to understand the polar opposite, and in that very understanding the conflict disappears.All the conflict in the world is because of misunderstanding. You say something; your wife understands something else. Your wife says something; you understand something else. I have seen couples who have lived together for thirty or forty years; still, they seem to be as immature as they were on their first day together. Still the same complaint: “She doesn’t understand what I am saying.” Forty years being together and you have not been able to figure out some way that your wife can understand exactly what you are saying, and you can understand exactly what she is saying.But I think there is no possibility for it to happen except through meditation, because meditation gives you the qualities of silence, awareness, a patient listening, a capacity to put yourself in the other’s position. It is possible with me; I am not concerned with the trivia of your life. You are here basically to listen and understand. You are here to grow spiritually. Naturally there is no question of conflict, and the harmony arises without any effort. You can love me with totality, because with me your relationship is of meditation. With any other man or with any other woman, if you want to live in harmony you will have to bring the same atmosphere and the same climate that you have brought here.Things are not impossible, but we have not tried the right medicine. I would like you to be reminded that the word medicine comes from the same root as meditation. Medicine cures your body; meditation cures your soul. Medicine heals the material part of you; meditation heals the spiritual part of you. People are living together and their spirits are full of wounds; hence, small things hurt them so much.Mulla Nasruddin was asking me, “What to do? Whatever I say I am misunderstood, and immediately there is trouble.”I said, “Try one thing: just sit silently, don’t say anything.”The next day, I saw him in more despair than ever. I said, “What happened?”He said, “I should not ask you for advice. Every day we used to fight and quarrel, but it was just verbal. Yesterday, because of your advice, I got beaten!”I said, “What happened?”He said, “I just sat there silent. She asked many questions, but I was determined to remain silent. She said, ‘So you are not going to speak?’ I remained silent. So she started hitting me with things! And she was very angry. She said, ‘Things have gone from bad to worse. At least we used to talk to each other; now even we are not on speaking terms!’”I said, “This is really bad.”He said, “You are saying bad? The whole neighborhood gathered, and they all started asking, ‘What happened? Why aren’t you speaking?’ And somebody suggested: ‘It seems he is possessed by some evil spirit.’“I thought, my God, now they are going to take me to some idiot who will beat me and try to drive the evil spirit out. I said, ‘Wait! I’m not possessed by any evil spirit, I’m simply not speaking because to say anything triggers a fight: I say something, then she has to say something, and then I have to say something, and nobody knows where it is going to end.’ I was simply meditating silently, doing no harm to anybody – and suddenly the whole neighborhood was against me.”People are living without any understanding. Hence, whatsoever they do is going to end in disaster.If you love a man, meditation will be the best present that you can give to him. If you love a woman, then the Kohinoor is nothing; meditation will be a far more precious gift – and it will make your life sheer joy. We are potentially capable of sheer joy, but we don’t know how to manage it.Alone, we are at the most, sad. Together, it becomes really hell. Even a man like Jean-Paul Sartre, a man of great intelligence, has to say that the other is hell, that to be alone is better; you cannot make it with the other. He became so pessimistic that he said, “It is impossible to make it with the other, the other is hell”. Ordinarily, he is right. With meditation the other becomes your heaven. But Jean-Paul Sartre had no idea of meditation.That is the misery of Western man. Western man is missing the flowering of life because he knows nothing about meditation, and Eastern man is missing because he knows nothing of love. And to me, just as man and woman are halves of one whole, so are love and meditation. Meditation is man; love is woman. In the meeting of meditation and love is the meeting of man and woman. And in that meeting, we create the transcendental human being – which is neither man nor woman.Unless we create the transcendental man on the earth, there is not much hope, but I feel my people are capable of doing the apparently impossible.Osho,Even in my childhood I never rebelled when something wasn't authentic. I learned to wear a mask. I learned it so well that it is very difficult for me to see whether I'm authentic or phony.Tomorrow I am going to take sannyas.Is it alright with you to have a disciple who has so little authenticity and who hardly knows what love is?The question is such: it is as if you are sick and you go to a physician and ask him, “Is it all right for you to accept a sick man as a patient, or do you accept only the healthy people?” My whole business is to accept all kinds of people – hypocrites with all kinds of masks – insincere, obedient against their own intelligence. But these are the people who need me, and these are the people I need too.Bring all your sicknesses. Don’t be worried, I have even initiated a few dead people in the hope that resurrection is possible!Osho,Sometimes life seems to be such a drag that I would rather like to die. Any advice?There are many methods to die, but one thing: anybody who really wants to die never asks for advice. Living may be a drag, but death is very quick. All around you, there are so many ways… But you don’t want to die. In fact, even the people who commit suicide don’t want to commit suicide. They commit suicide because they expected too much from life and they could not get it. The failure was so great, that to live shamefully became difficult. They committed suicide not against life; they committed suicide because they could not manage to learn the art of life. They wanted life to be a great benediction, and it was a drag.It seems to be a fallacy all over the world that just because you are born, you know how to live. This is not right. To be born is one thing. To know the art of living and of living fully is totally different. Birth is only an opportunity – you can make it or mar it. Birth is not equivalent to life. Almost everybody thinks that birth is equivalent to life, so it is bound to become a drag – just breathing, eating every day, going to sleep, waking up in the morning, going to the same office, the same files and the same routine. For idiots it is perfectly okay, but for anybody who has some intelligence it is bound to become a drag. Because he can see: what is the point? Why after all am I living? If tomorrow is again going to be just a repetition of today, as today has been a repetition of yesterday, then why go on living? What is the point of unnecessarily repeating the same circle, the same routine, the same happenings?But the fallacy is in the fact that you have accepted a wrong concept, that birth is life. Birth is only an opportunity. Either you can learn to live a beautiful life or you can just drag yourself toward the graveyard. It is up to you. There are people for whom life is a drag, and there are people for whom even death is a dance.I want to say to you that if you make your life an art, your death will be the culmination of the art – the highest peak, a beauty in itself.There are millions who are in the same position with the same question. They don’t know why they are living and they don’t know if there is any point in dying either. Life is futile – how can death appear to be significant? So they are afraid of suicide also, because if life is such – just a dark hole – death is going to be even worse.One day I saw Mulla Nasruddin with his gun, a rope, and a tin of kerosene oil. I said, “Where are you going, Mulla?”He said, “Enough is enough. I was just coming to say good-bye to you. I am going to commit suicide.”I said, “But so many arrangements?”He said, “You know me, I am a perfectionist. I don’t take chances. I have made every arrangement.”I said, “Can I come just to watch, and just to wave when you are disappearing in smoke?”He said, “You can come.”So I went with him and sat on a rock by the side of a river. He made the arrangements very efficiently. On a branch of a tree, which was hanging over the river, he tied the rope by which he was going to hang himself.I said, “Mulla, that’s enough.”He said, “I don’t believe it. Unless I have done everything, no loopholes should be left.”He put his neck into the rope, poured the kerosene oil over himself.I said, “Mulla, is it going to be real?”He said, “What do you think?”He lit a match, set fire to himself, and before jumping from the tree, he fired the gun – the last resort – at his head. But that’s where everything went wrong – the gun missed the mark and cut the rope and he fell into the river. Naturally, the fire was finished, and he started swimming!I said, “Mulla, what are you doing?”He said, “What to do? I know how to swim.”I said, “This is strange. You arranged everything so well, but still there was a loophole, the swimming. You should not have started to swim. You should have remained there and died.”He said, “That’s just it – dying is not so easy. When I saw the gun had misfired, when I saw the water had put the fire out, it became clear: God wants me to live. And moreover, I know how to swim! It is impossible when you know swimming not to swim. Next time, some other arrangement…”Nobody wants to die. And it is true that life is a drag. But it is not life that is a drag, it is you – you have not learned the art of making life a joy, a thing of beauty, a piece of art. Unless a man is creative, he cannot find much joy in life.So the first principle is: Be creative.Don’t bother whether you become a world-famous artist or not; that is not the significant thing. But create something: a beautiful song, a little music, a dance, a painting, a garden. And when the roses blossom… You cannot say that life is a drag with so many roses blossoming. A beautiful painting… You cannot say life is a drag, because this painting has been created for the first time in the world and for the last time. Nobody has done it before, and nobody will do it again; only you were capable of doing it.Express your uniqueness in whatsoever you do. Express your individuality. Let existence be proud of you. Life will not be felt like a drag; it will become a fragrance. Not only will life be a joy and a dance – for a creative person, for a meditative person, even death will be transformed.I have always loved a story about Bokuju, a Zen master…He was ninety years old when he died. Three days before, he informed all his disciples: “If you want to come for the last good-bye, then come. In three days’ time I am going to leave the world.”So thousands of his disciples came – and he was one of the most unique masters Zen has produced. On the third day, in the morning there was a great gathering in his garden, and he was lying under his most beautiful tree.He suddenly asked, “Just tell me one thing: in what way should I die? – because I don’t want to die like everybody else. Ninety-nine percent of people die in their beds.” He said, “That is out of the question. Remove the bed from here!”The bed is the most dangerous thing. Ninety-nine percent of people die there, and every night you go to bed without thinking of the danger. When the light is turned off, just put your mattress down on the floor. Then there is some chance of surviving – death may try to search for you on the bed and may not be able to find you.Bokuju said, “Take this bed away from here, and suggest something, something unique, worthy of Bokuju.”The disciples thought what to suggest. Somebody said that, “You can die sitting in a lotus posture. Many masters have died in the lotus posture.”But Bokuju said, “That is not very unique, because many people have died in that posture.”Somebody said, “You can die standing.”He said, “That seems to be appealing.”But one man objected, he said, “That’s not right, because I know of a Zen master who died standing. It will not be unique.”Bokuju said, “It is very difficult. Find out quickly because my time is running out, and I cannot delay any longer. So many idiots are here, and you cannot find just one unique way of dying for your beloved master?”One man suggested, “Nobody has ever died standing on his head. You can do a headstand and die.”Bokuju said, “Perfectly right!”He stood on his head and died.Now the problem was… The disciples said, “What to do?” – because they know what has to be done when a person dies in his bed. But what to do with this fellow who has died standing on his head?Somebody said, “His elder sister, who is also a great master, lives just close by. It is better to call her and not to interfere, because this is a strange thing. We will be condemned later on if we don’t do the right thing, so it is better to call somebody who can take responsibility.”The sister came and she said, “Bokuju! From your very childhood you have been mischievous – and this is no time to be mischievous! Just lie down!”And Bokuju laughed and said, “Okay sister – because I cannot disobey you. I was almost dead. I was just waiting to see what these people would do trying to work out what to do with me after death. But these idiots have brought you here! And you always were a killjoy. You’ve destroyed the whole fun! Now I will die in the ordinary, orthodox way.” And he died.And his sister did not even look back; she just went away. People said, “But he has died!”She said, “It was time. He was delaying it. And it is not right to play jokes on existence. At least at the time of death one should be serious. Now he is dead, you do whatever you want to do. Even if he is not dead, finish him off – his time is up.”Make your life; find out why you are feeling bored. Change! It is such a small life. Take risks, be a gambler – what can you lose? We come with empty hands; we go with empty hands. There is nothing to lose. Just a little time to be playful, to sing a beautiful song, and the time is gone. Each moment is so precious.If you are silent, if you are creative, if you are loving, if you are sensitive to beauty, if you are grateful to this vast universe… There are millions of stars, which are dead – and you are so small – yet you have the most precious thing in existence: life. And not only life, but the possibility of becoming a consciousness, of becoming enlightened, of coming to a space where death has never entered.If Bokuju is not serious, the reason is because he knows there is no death, it is only changing houses, or at the most changing clothes. It is excitement – even death is a great excitement and ecstasy.It is just your wrong approach. Drop it, and don’t drop it slowly, slowly, piece by piece. Drop it totally, instantly. When you go out of this place, go dancing and singing. Let the whole world think you are insane, that is far better.Osho,In 1980 you gave me sannyas. I was not even looking for a master. Since then I have experienced the joy and fun of being one of your disciples.But now I start feeling the pain: you are so vast – where is the way? Is there a way? Just to be true is so difficult.And is that all?You have asked three questions in one question First, you found me although you were not looking for a master. Let me make it clear to you that I was looking for a disciple, and that is far more important.Your looking for a master is not so important because you are asleep and dreaming. So whenever I see some sleepwalker passing by, and see some possibility that he can be awakened, I just turn his way – and he is a sleepwalker so there is no problem. It does not matter where he is going. I give him sannyas, he takes sannyas – because in sleep it does not matter. I create a beautiful dream for him. I am not a hard taskmaster. First I create a beautiful dream, and then slowly, slowly I take you out of it. Now you are out of the dream, so the second problem arises: where is the path? In fact, it is my doing. While you were asleep I was talking about the path…”the path…the mystic path…” to wake you up. Now you are awake so you are asking, “Where is the path?”There is no path. It was just a device to wake you up. You have not to go anywhere. You are exactly at the place where you have to reach. You are exactly that which you have to become. There is no path; there is no goal.Your isness is your realization.And thirdly: waking up, you see me vast like an ocean. While you were asleep, you were not aware of where I was leading you. Now you are fully awake, and you see the vast ocean. It is not me. It is the reality – and it is your reality. And the ocean that you see outside you will remain outside till your dewdrop disappears into it. And the dewdrop is slipping from the lotus leaf. Any moment it will be part of the ocean and you will know that no man is an island; we all belong to one reality, one consciousness, one continent. It is only in our sleep that we are separate. The moment we are awake we are one.There will be a little fear. It is said that even before a river falls into the ocean, it trembles with fear. It looks back at the whole journey, the peaks of the mountains, the long winding path through the forests, through the people, and it sees in front of it such a vast ocean that entering into it is nothing but disappearing forever. But there is no other way. The river cannot go back. Neither can you go back. Going back is impossible in existence; you can only go forward. The river has to take the risk and go into the ocean. And only when it enters the ocean will the fear disappear because only then will the river know that it is not disappearing into the ocean; rather, it is becoming the ocean. It is a disappearance from one side and it is a tremendous resurrection on the other side.So don’t be worried. Things are happening perfectly right for you. You had not come in search of a master, but what to do? A master was in search of you. And now there is no going back. Even if you try to close your eyes, that sleep in which you were living cannot be recalled. And the vastness is not something to be afraid of. It is very friendly; it is very loving. Disappearing into it is almost like finding the womb and its warmth and its nourishment again.Osho,Do you have any problem which you have not solved yet?I don’t have any problem. I used to have problems, but I never solved them. My procedure is totally different. I dissolve the problem; I never solve it, because solving does not help. You solve a problem, and you will find that ten other problems have arisen out of your solution. I have been dissolving, I have been getting rid of – because no problem is significant. All problems are barriers between you and existence.Now I have only mysteries – no problems, no questions. In that way I am a very poor man. No problem, no question; I am utterly silent. But silence has a richness that millions of problems cannot give to you. Silence has a richness that all the philosophies of the world and all the answers together cannot give you.When I answer your questions, it is not that I have got an answer and I simply give it to you. I don’t have any answer. I simply listen to your question and let my silence respond to it; hence, you can find many contradictions in my answers. But I am not responsible, because I have never answered. It is the silence that goes on responding at different moments in different times to different people in different ways. Just as you listen to the answer, I also listen to it. There is no speaker here. Here, there are only listeners.Osho,What is the last question we should ask you, Osho?There is not even a first question, so the question about the last question does not arise. You should learn to be silent, to be at ease with me, to be in tune with me. In that silent harmony all is achieved: all the treasures that existence has been keeping safe for you, so that when you wake up you can claim your portion. And everybody’s portion of the treasure is infinite. It is not that because it is a portion, it will be limited.The upanishadic seers have said: “You can take out even the whole from the whole, yet the whole remains behind”. Existence is such a mystery that it can give to each person infinite treasure, eternal life, unbounded beauty.So don’t be worried about the last question. There is not even a first question. Be innocent and silent, and just be open and receptive to my heartbeats. The moment your heartbeats are also dancing to the same tune, you have come home.In fact, you have never gone anywhere. You have just forgotten that this is your home.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 17 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Sri Aurobindo declared that there is something beyond that which Buddha calls enlightenment. His whole aspiration was dedicated toward opening a door for this new step in human evolution.Osho, what could not happen with Aurobindo, is it happening with you?Sri Aurobindo is a strange case. He knows everything about enlightenment, but he is not enlightened. He is one of the greatest scholars of this age, a genius; vast is his knowledge, but his knowing is nil. He knows about the scriptures, and he knows better than anybody else. His interpretation is profound, very logical, but heartless. It is dead; it is not coming out of his own realization.This is one of the great problems for all seekers of truth: one can get lost in knowledge without knowing anything about the reality. He knows all the theories, all the philosophies, but he is just a blind man who knows everything about light but has not seen the light himself. And it is possible to remain in a deception for your whole life because you know so much, and people start worshipping you, people start believing you. And belief has its own psychology, if many people believe in you, you are bound to believe in yourself.I have often told a small story about a great journalist who died and reached the doors of heaven.The doors of heaven and hell are not far apart; they are just opposite each other. The distance is not much, and naturally one would like to enter heaven. So he knocked on the door. The doorkeeper opened a small window in the door and asked, “What do you want?”He said, “I am a great journalist. I have just died, and I want to enter.”The doorkeeper said, “I am sorry but I have to refuse you because we have a quota; we can have only twelve journalists in heaven. That quota has been filled for centuries, for centuries no new journalist has entered. And anyway, even those twelve are utterly useless because nothing happens in heaven. They tried to publish a newspaper, but only one issue appeared because there are only saints here – no murder, no suicide, no crime, no politics, no struggle for power. No change ever happens; everything is eternally the same – from where can you get news?”“And,” the doorkeeper said, “you must have heard the definition of news: when a dog bites a man it is not news, but when a man bites a dog it is news. So nothing sensational happens here, no love affair. When people get bored, they read the first issue that was published centuries ago.“You should go to hell. Every moment tremendous things happen there. All the active people of the world, all the creative people of the world are there: painters, musicians, poets, actors, dancers, thieves, murderers, rapists, psychoanalysts, philosophers; you will find every variety.“Heaven is monotonous. Only dull, dead saints, skeletons… Their only quality is that they don’t do anything. So just go to hell and enjoy. You will find everything that you may have missed on earth, because for centuries upon centuries, all the juicy people have collected there. In fact, I myself want to go, but once you get into heaven, you cannot escape. So I am stuck here. My suggestion is that you just go.”But journalists are stubborn people. He said, “I have a suggestion, and I think you must be compassionate enough to do it for me. Just give me twenty-four hours’ entry. If I can convince one of the journalists inside to go to hell then you can put me in the quota; twelve journalists will remain twelve.”The gatekeeper said, “It is unheard of, there is no precedent. But I cannot say no to you. Go in, have a try. But remember, after twenty-four hours… I am taking a risk. After twenty-four hours, come back.”After twenty-four hours he came back. In those twenty-four hours he had created a rumor among all the journalists: “A big newspaper is going to be started in hell and there is great need for editors, sub-editors, story writers, all kinds of journalists. The salaries are great. So what are you doing here?”After twenty-four hours when the journalist came to the gate, the gatekeeper said, “Go back. You cannot go out now.”The journalist said, “Why not?”The gatekeeper said, “I have kept my word, and you have to keep your word. You were very convincing. All twelve journalists have gone. I tried hard to explain that ‘This is just a rumor; don’t spoil your heaven.’ But they wouldn’t listen.”The man himself had created the rumor, but he had started thinking perhaps there was something in it; otherwise twelve persons wouldn’t go to hell for no reason.He said, “Just open the door!” He was convinced by others being convinced.And this happens to millions of people. When you see that seven hundred million people are convinced that Catholic Christianity is the only religion, it is difficult to say that those seven hundred million people can be wrong. The sheer number has such weight. That’s why all the religions go on trying to increase their numbers. They have their methods to increase their numbers because the more you increase the numbers the more you convince those who are not in your fold that they are wrong and you are right. Your sheer majority is an argument; it validates anything you say.Sri Aurobindo was a great intellectual, a very convincing, rational philosophical genius. He convinced many people, and those many people convinced him that he was enlightened. He knows nothing of enlightenment. It is true that there is something more in existence than the enlightenment Gautam the Buddha achieved. But it is Gautam the Buddha himself who, for the first time in the world, indicated the possibility of the beyond. Naturally, nobody else can say that there is something beyond – unless they reach that boundary. So when Sri Aurobindo says there is something more than the enlightenment of Gautam Buddha, he is hiding the fact that it was Gautam Buddha himself who was the first man in the whole of history to say that “This is not all; there is something beyond.”Buddha says – and you can see the sincerity of the man – “A man who has entered the path, srotapanna, who has entered the stream that leads to the ocean, is millions of times more respectable than anybody else, just because he has entered the path in search of the truth. He has not found, but just the urge, just the effort, the first step, and he has become millions of times more honorable than all your respectable generals, kings, emperors and world conquerors. “The person who has reached the point from which he will not turn back, anagamin, is millions of times more honorable than the srotapanna, than the one who has entered the stream. And the man who has become enlightened, who has become a buddha, is millions of times more honorable than the person who has reached the point of no return.”The point of no return is something worth understanding. Many people start the search and then drop out. It is arduous, it is moving into the unknown; nobody knows whether there is anything like enlightenment or if it is just a fiction created by a few people like Gautam Buddha. Perhaps they are not lying, perhaps they themselves are deceived – who knows? There is no guarantee.So many start, but very few remain. Most of them return to the world sooner or later, finding that they are going into an unknown territory without a map, without any guide. They start feeling crazy because the whole world is going in a totally different direction, and they are left alone. Their whole strength was in the crowd. Alone, a thousand and one doubts arise. Alone, one starts feeling that millions of people cannot be wrong, “And I am alone, thinking that I am right – I must be getting crazy.”Anagamin is one who has come to a point from where he cannot return. He is not enlightened but he has seen, from far away, the possibility. He has not reached the peak; he is still in the dark valley. But he can see the sunlit peak; it is a reality, it is not a fiction. Now there is no force in the world, which can make him go back.Buddha says, “But the one who has become enlightened is millions of times more honorable than the person who has reached the point of no return.” And here is the sincerity of the man – he says: “The man who has transcended buddhahood, who has gone beyond enlightenment, is millions of times more honorable than anyone who is enlightened.” He is not claiming that he has gone beyond; he is simply saying “I can see from my place that faraway star.”And he was the first to see that faraway star: beyond enlightenment.Sri Aurobindo is not sincere. He never quotes this passage, which was his duty to quote. He tries to convince his readers and followers that he is working to open the door beyond enlightenment. He is not even courageous enough to declare himself, to say that he is enlightened. He never declared that. But only indirectly… He is assuming that you will understand that he is enlightened because he is trying to open the door beyond enlightenment. Naturally he must be enlightened, but he is not saying it. To declare it needs courage, not scholarship.He gives a hint, as if he is enlightened and he is working for others so that they can also go beyond enlightenment. They have not even reached enlightenment. It is hilarious, the very idea that he is trying to open the door…his whole life’s aspiration. All his aspirations were stupid.They were stupid because others will need that door only if they have become enlightened. First help people to become enlightened, Rather than helping people to become enlightened, he was devoting his whole energy to opening the door beyond enlightenment. And it is not only on this point that he was talking nonsense; he was talking nonsense on many points. Another of his aspirations was physical immortality; he was working so that man can become physically immortal. Naturally you will think he has become physically immortal – these are natural assumptions. And his followers all over the world started spreading the great news, the good news, that Sri Aurobindo had become physically immortal: “Now he is trying to find the right techniques so that every human being can become physically immortal.” And then one day he died!One of my friends was living in Sri Aurobindo’s ashram. I phoned him immediately and asked him, “What happened?”But such is blindness. He said, “Here in the ashram everybody was shocked. But the mother of the ashram told us that he has simply gone into a long samadhi. He is not dead; it is part of his project to find immortality. He has found all, but just for the last missing link he has to go into deep samadhi, to dive deep into the ocean.” And he told me that everybody believed it.For three days they did not cremate his body or bury his body because they believed that he would be coming back. But in three days the body started stinking. Then they became afraid that if the news spread that the body was stinking…The man was dead; he was not going to come back. After three days they put his body into a marble grave. Still they did not burn his body because he might come back at any moment. The really faithful ones still believe that one day he will come back. And the whole belief shifted toward the mother – she was the co-partner in the business of finding immortality for humanity. And it looked as if she had found it, because she lived for almost a century. It seemed probable; perhaps she had found it. And she was saying that she was going to live forever.Now this is the beautiful thing about spirituality: I can say to you that I am going to live forever and tomorrow I can die – who are you going to argue with? And one day the mother died. Again the same thing: they waited for three days, and when the body started stinking, she was put into another marble grave next to Sri Aurobindo. And the faithful ones still sit beside the graves every day, waiting for them to return. Slowly, slowly, the number of faithful ones is lessening. The hope is turning into hopelessness, into despair. Perhaps they have not yet found the missing link together.It is enough that man has an immortal soul, an immortal consciousness, an immortal life principle. But Sri Aurobindo was obsessed with the idea that he had to bring some original contribution to the spiritual progress of humanity. That the human soul is immortal, is as ancient an experience as humanity itself. Even the Vedas, five thousand years old, declare man as amritasya putrah: “you are sons of immortality.” Something new, something original – and this was a great original idea, that your body can be immortal. One cannot conceive how intelligent people can get caught up in such absurd ideas.Sri Aurobindo was a child, he became a young man, he became old. If the human body is immortal, then you will have to say at what age it is going to be immortal: as a child, as a young man, as an old man, or as a dead man? The last seems to be the only possibility. As a dead man, the human body is immortal. And certainly it is, because all the elements of the human body disperse into nature. Nothing is going to die; everything is going to merge. The earth into earth, the water into water, the air into air; all the elements will go to their sources. In that sense the human body has always been immortal. Not only the human body: buffaloes, donkeys, monkeys, everybody is immortal. It does not need a Sri Aurobindo to declare that his body is immortal.Gautam Buddha is the rarest human being in that he recognizes that there is still something more, he has not reached the end of evolution. In Japan, they had a beautiful collection of paintings called Ten Zen Bulls.” It is a series of paintings depicting the whole story of the search.In the first, a man is looking here and there…his bull is lost. You see forest all around, ancient trees, and the puzzled man standing there looking, and he cannot see the bull.In the second painting, he looks a little happier because he has seen the bull’s footprints. It is the same painting, the same forest. Just one thing he has discovered in this painting and that is, he has seen the bull’s footprints, so he knows where he has gone.In the third painting he moves and sees the backside of the bull – because it is standing by the side of a tree, and the man is behind him – so he looks… And just the backside is shown in the painting.In the fourth he has reached the bull; he sees the whole bull.In the fifth he has caught hold of the bull by the horns.In the sixth he is riding on the bull. It is difficult; the bull is trying to throw him off.By the eighth he is returning home, the bull is conquered.In the ninth the bull is back in the stall and the man is playing on a flute.In the tenth, there is no question of the bull at all. The man is seen in the marketplace with a bottle of wine, drunk.Buddhists were very much embarrassed about the tenth painting. It does not seem to be Buddhist at all – and there is no connection, because nine seems to be perfect, there is no need for the tenth. So in the Middle Ages they dropped the tenth painting, and they started talking of the nine paintings. Only recently has the tenth painting been discovered again in the ancient scriptures with its description – because each painting has a description of what is happening. The bull is lost, your soul is lost; the bull represents your soul, your energy, your spirit. When the bull is found, you have become a realized soul. You are singing a song on the flute; that is the stage of enlightenment.What about the tenth? That is the stage when you go beyond enlightenment; you become ordinary again. Now there is no split between this world and that, now there is no split between good and bad. Now all opposites have joined together into one single harmony; that’s what is represented by the bottle of wine, a bottle of wine in the hands of a buddha.Sri Aurobindo never talked about the Ten Bulls because that again would have destroyed his originality. The paintings of the Ten Bulls are at least fifteen centuries old.The Buddhists in the Middle Ages were cowardly; they could not understand the tenth. But as far as I am concerned, I can see a natural growth from the ninth to the tenth, from enlightenment to beyond enlightenment.Enlightenment makes you special. That means something of the ego in some subtle form still remains. Others are ignorant, you are a knower; others are going toward hell, your paradise is guaranteed. These are the last remnants of a dying ego. And when this ego also dies the buddha becomes an ordinary human being, not knowing at all that he is holier than thou, higher than thou, special in any sense – so ordinary that even a bottle of wine is acceptable. The whole of life is acceptable; the days and the nights, the flowers and the thorns, the saints and the sinners – all are acceptable, with no discrimination at all.This ordinariness is really the greatest flowering of human reality.Sri Aurobindo will be remembered as a great philosopher – should be remembered as a great philosopher, a man of tremendous insight into words, scriptures, immensely articulate in bringing meanings, interpretations to them, novel, original – but he was not a man of realization. And he was not sincere, he was not an authentic man. He had a great desire to prove himself, to prove that he was greater than Gautam Buddha. That was his ego.To go beyond enlightenment is not to become greater than Gautam Buddha. To go beyond enlightenment is to become an ordinary human being: to forget all about enlightenment and all about great spiritual aspirations and to live simply, joyously, playfully. This ordinariness is the most extraordinary phenomenon in the world.But you will not be able to recognize him. Up to Gautam Buddha you will be able to recognize, but as a person moves beyond Gautam Buddha, he will start slipping out of your hands. Those who have recognized him as an enlightened being may remain aware of who he is, but those who come new will not be able to recognize him at all, because he will be simply a very innocent, ordinary human being – just like a child collecting seashells on the beach, running after butterflies, gathering flowers. No division of body and soul, no division of matter and spirit, no division of this life and that – all that is forgotten; one has relaxed totally.If Sri Aurobindo had known even the meaning of what it is to go beyond realization, beyond enlightenment, he would not have even thought about it. He was thinking that going beyond enlightenment is something greater than Gautam Buddha. He was continuously in an inner jealousy, and of course the jealousy was of Gautam Buddha. And he wanted to come up with some original ideas so that he could prove them, but he has not proved anything. I respect Sri Aurobindo as a scholar – but scholars are just scholars, a dollar a dozen.Osho,The other night you talked about the master and the mystic.My question is about the mystic and the skeptic. Is it possible for a skeptic to become a mystic? So much of the esoteric and mystical seems to be a process of autosuggestion, imagination and wishful thinking. I sometimes feel very discouraged and want to give it all up as nonsense. Yet there is also an inner voice leading me on. The biggest relief for me seems to be in your continual encouragement to let go and trust.Osho, do you see any possibility for a skeptic to get through this conglomeration of mind fabrications?The skeptical mind is one of the most beautiful things in the world.It has been condemned by the religions because they were not capable of answering skeptical questions. They wanted only believers, and the skeptical mind is just the opposite of the believer. I am all in favor of the skeptical mind.Do not believe anything unless you have experienced it. Do not believe anything – go on questioning, however long it takes. Truth is not cheap. It is not available to the believer; it is available only to the skeptical.Just remember one thing: don’t be skeptical halfheartedly. Be a total skeptic. When I say be a total skeptic, I mean that your skeptical ideas should also be put to the same test as anybody else’s beliefs. Skepticism, when it is total, burns itself out because you have to question and doubt your skepticism too. You cannot leave your skepticism without doubt; otherwise that is the standpoint of the believer.If you can doubt the skeptic in you, then the mystic is not far away.What is a mystic? – one who knows no answer, one who has asked every possible question and found that no question is answerable. Finding this, he has dropped questioning. Not that he has found the answer – he has simply found one thing, that there is no answer anywhere.Life is a mystery, not a question. Not a puzzle to be solved, not a question to be answered, but a mystery to be lived, a mystery to be loved, a mystery to be danced.A totally skeptical mind is bound to finally become a mystic; hence my doors are open for all. I accept the skeptic because I know how to turn him into a mystic. I invite the theist because I know how to destroy his theism. I invite the atheist because I know how to take away his atheism. My doors prevent nobody, because I am not giving you any belief. I am giving you only a methodology, a meditation to discover for yourself what in reality is the case.I have found that there is no answer. All questions are futile, and all answers are more futile. Questions have been asked by foolish people, and great philosophies have arisen because of their questions. These philosophies are created by the cunning and the shrewd. But if you want to have a rapport with reality, you have to be neither a fool nor shrewd; you have to be innocent.So whatever you bring – skepticism, atheism, theism, communism, fascism, any type of nonsense you can bring here – my medicine is the same. It does not matter what kind of nonsense your head is filled with when you come here. I will chop off your head without any distinction. What is in your head does not matter – my concern is chopping!I am just a woodcutter.Osho,I cannot find the question, but my heart needs an answer. What is it?It is a very profound inquiry. Anybody who is sincere will have the same inquiry. All questions are foolish, silly at the most. But still, there is some existential need for an answer. The question is not known.I have told you about one of the most beautiful woman poets, Gertrude Stein. She was dying, and a small circle of friends had gathered around her. Just before her death she opened her eyes and asked, “What is the answer?”They were all puzzled because this is not the way… First you have to ask the question. She is first asking what the answer is – answer to what? But you cannot be hard to a dying woman – and no ordinary woman, a really great poet. And even in this statement her greatness is absolutely present.For a few seconds there was silence. Then one person gathered courage and said, “Stein, you have not asked the question. This is strange that you are asking what the answer is.”So the dying woman opened her eyes and said, “Okay. So tell me what the question is.” And she died.This is something truly mystic. There is no question, but there is an existential thirst which appears to the mind as a search for an answer. But there is no answer.Existence is, and it is tremendously beautiful, psychedelically colorful. It is song and dance and celebration all over. But please don’t ask any question or any answer. It is a mystery. Mystery means there is no way to solve it; whatever you do is going to fail. Rather, live it, drop solving. Perhaps through living you will come to an understanding. But that will not be the answer, it will be more than the answer; it will be an alive experience. You will have become part of the mystery itself.Even the greatest philosophers have been behaving like children. They go on representing life as if it is a puzzle, a crossword puzzle. It is not a puzzle. It is simply an unanswerable but experience-able phenomenon. That’s what I mean by mysticism.Philosophers miss it completely because they try to find questions, and then answers. Questions are man-made. A rosebush never asks a question, a cloud never bothers about a question, a mountain never raises a question. It does not mean that they have the answer; it simply means they are beyond the question-answer game. And when I say going beyond enlightenment I am saying the same thing in other words – going beyond the question-answer game and just accepting reality as it is, whatsoever it is. Otherwise, there are troubles upon troubles. First you create the question, then you create the answer. Then the answer creates ten more questions; you create ten more answers and then each answer creates ten more questions. It is like a tree; it goes on growing and becoming bigger and bigger, and there is no end.Just live life simply, without putting a question mark behind every experience. People may think you are crazy, but if you are crazy then the whole of existence is crazy – what to do? It is out of our hands. Why does the sun rise in the morning every day? Not even a single day is a holiday. Not even for a single day does it rise from the West – just for a change: “I am getting tired of rising from the East… No, things are simply going so smoothly; only man is in trouble.The moment you also start living like a rosebush, rising like a sun, floating like a white cloud, you have come to a profound understanding of the mysterious, of the miraculous truth of existence.Osho,A woman friend of mine often uses the words male ego about me, which I feel is not true about me.From the very beginning I have been open and vulnerable to feminine energy, which is teaching me to become a disciple every day. Moreover, I have felt that when she used this word there was some kind of hatred toward men.Osho, can you explain what the male ego is, and what it means when a woman uses this expression about a man?The ego is simply the ego; it is neither male nor female. But man has been very inhuman toward women for centuries, continuously. And the strange thing is that the man has been so cruel and inhuman toward women because he feels a deep inferiority complex in comparison to them. The greatest problem has been that the woman is capable of becoming a mother; she is capable of giving birth to life, and man is not. That was the beginning of the feeling of inferiority: that nature depends on woman, not on man.Moreover, he has found that she is in many ways stronger than him. For example, for every one hundred and fifteen boys that are born, only one hundred girls are born, because fifteen boys will pop off by the time they become sexually mature, but the girls will remain; they have a certain stamina. Women fall sick less often than men. Women commit suicide less often than men – although they talk about suicide more, they simply talk. At the most they take sleeping pills, but always in such a small quantity that they never die. Men commit suicide in almost double the numbers. Women live five years longer than men.Women are more patient, more tolerant than men. Men are very impatient and very intolerant. Women are less violent than men. Women don’t commit murders; it is the man who commits murders, who wages crusades, who is always getting ready for war, who invents all kinds of deadly weapons, atomic bombs, nuclear weapons.The woman is completely out of this whole game of death.Hence it was no coincidence that man started feeling somehow inferior. And nobody wants to be inferior; the only way was to force the woman in artificial ways to become inferior. For example, not to allow her education, not to allow her economic freedom, not to allow her to move out of the house, but confine her to an imprisonment. It seems almost unbelievable what man has done to woman just to get rid of his inferiority. He has made the woman artificially inferior.In China, for five thousand years it was thought that women had no soul. Of course all the writers were men; they proposed the idea that a woman is only a machine, a reproductive machine. And the idea gained so much influence that it even entered the justice system of China. If a man murdered his wife, he was not a criminal, because he had simply broken a chair, a table, at the most a television. But it was his property, and he had the right to destroy it. So in China, thousands of women were killed by their husbands, but the husbands could not be punished by the government or the courts, because the basic principle that the woman had a soul was denied.In India for ten thousand years the woman was told that even to dream of some other man is a sin. The same was not said to the man. The woman had to live a very virtuous life while for the man there was freedom. Man created prostitutes for his freedom. And this possessiveness in India took on almost insane proportions. When a man died, his wife had to die with him. She had to jump alive onto the funeral pyre, and for ten thousand years that continued. If some woman was afraid – anybody would be afraid to jump alive into a funeral pyre – then she was condemned as immoral. The husband’s wish was that she should die with him because he could not trust her: when he has gone, she may start having some love affair with somebody else, and this cannot be tolerated. But the strange thing is that the same rule was not applicable to men: that when the wife dies the husband should jump into the funeral pyre. No, man was a higher quality of being.The way they used to do it brings tears, because to burn a woman alive is not an easy task. First they would make the funeral pyre, put the dead body of the husband on it, and force the woman to lie down next to the dead body. Then they would put more wood on top of both of them and pour refined butter all over the funeral pyre, so that the fire would get going fast, strong – and not only fast and strong, but it would create so much smoke that nobody could see what was happening there – because sometimes the woman would try to jump out of the funeral pyre.There were priests standing around the funeral pyre with burning torches in their hands. If the woman tried to jump out, they would force her, with the burning torches, back into the funeral pyre. Hence so much smoke was needed, so nobody could see what the priest was doing. The woman was bound to cry and scream. Her screams should not be heard, so there was an arrangement: behind the priests, there was another row of thousands of people playing music, dancing, singing, shouting as loudly as possible just to drown out the screams of the woman, coming from the funeral pyre. And they were celebrating, because one woman had proved her love, her trust, by committing suicide.She was forced; she did not come to do it willingly, she was brought there. And the same situation has happened all over the world. In different ways, they have been cutting woman’s wings, her abilities, her talents, her genius.It is not only a question for you. When your woman is telling you that you have a male ego, she is simply representing all women, and you are nothing but a representative of all men. Your forefathers have done so much harm that there is no way to come to a balance. So when your woman says that this is male ego, try to understand – perhaps she is right. Most probably she is right, because the male has accepted himself as superior for so long that he does not feel that it is his ego. It is the woman who feels it.Don’t deny her feeling. Be grateful to her, and ask her where she feels the ego so that you can drop it. Take her help. You are simply denying it, you don’t feel that you have any male ego. But it is simply a traditional heritage.Every small boy has a male ego – just a small boy. If he starts crying you immediately say, “Why are you crying like a girl? A girl is allowed to cry because she is subhuman. You are going to be a big male chauvinist; you are not supposed to cry or weep.” And small boys start stopping their tears. It is very rare to find men who are as ready to cry and allow tears to flow as women are.Remember, you both have the same size tear glands in your eyes, so nature does not make any difference. Listen to the woman. You have suppressed the woman and oppressed the woman so much, it is time that she should be listened to and things should be corrected. At least in your personal life do as much as you can to allow the woman as much freedom as possible – the same freedom that you allow yourself. Help her to stand up so that she can blossom again.We will have a more beautiful world if all women – and women are half of the world – are allowed to grow their talents, their genius. It is not a question at all. Nobody is higher; nobody is lower. Women are women, men are men; they have differences, but differences don’t make anybody higher or lower. Their differences create their attraction. Just think of a world where there are only men. It will be so ugly: everywhere Morarji Desai, Morarji Desai – all drinking their urine, nothing else to do.Life is rich because there are differences: different attitudes, different opinions. Nobody is superior; nobody is inferior. People are simply different. Accept this, and help your woman to be free from ten thousand years of repression. Be a friend to her. Much harm has been done; she has been wounded so much that if you can do some healing with your love, you will be contributing to the whole world, to the whole world consciousness.Don’t feel bad if your woman says, “This is male ego.” It is there in a subtle form, unrecognizable because it has been there for so long; you have forgotten that this is ego. Take her help so that you can recognize it and destroy it.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 18 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I am always afraid of being alone, because when I am alone I start to wonder who I am. It feels that if I inquire deeper, I will find out that I am not the person who I have believed I was for the past twenty-six years, but a being, present at the moment of birth and maybe also the moment before.For some reason, this scares me completely. It feels like a kind of insanity, and makes me lose myself in outside things in order to feel safer.Osho, who am I, and why the fear?It is not only your fear, it is everybody’s fear – because nobody is what he was supposed to be by existence. Society, culture, religion, education have all been conspiring against innocent children. They have all the power – the child is helpless and dependent. So whatsoever they want to make out of him, they manage to do it. They don’t allow any child to grow to his natural destiny. Their every effort is to make human beings into utilities.Who knows, if a child is left on his own to grow, whether he will be of any use to the vested interests or not? The society is not prepared to take the risk. It grabs the child and starts molding him into something that is needed by the society. In a certain sense, it kills the soul of the child and gives him a false identity, so that he never misses his soul, his being. The false identity is a substitute. But that substitute is useful only in the same crowd which has given it to you. The moment you are alone, the false starts falling apart and the repressed real starts expressing itself; hence the fear of being lonely.Nobody wants to be lonely. Everybody wants to belong to a crowd – not only one crowd but many crowds. A person belongs to a religious crowd, a political party, a rotary club, and there are many other small groups to belong to. One wants to be supported twenty-four hours a day because the false, without support, cannot stand. The moment one is alone, one starts feeling a strange craziness.That’s what you have been asking about – because for twenty-six years you believed yourself to be somebody, and then suddenly in a moment of loneliness you start feeling you are not that. It creates fear: then who are you? And twenty-six years of suppression… It will take some time for the real to express itself. The gap between the two has been called by the mystics “the dark night of the soul” – a very appropriate expression. You are no longer the false, and you are not yet the real. You are in a limbo, you don’t know who you are.Particularly in the West the problem is even more complicated because they have not developed any methodology to discover the real as soon as possible, so that the dark night of the soul can be shortened. The West knows nothing as far as meditation is concerned. And meditation is only a name for being alone, silent, waiting for the real to assert itself. It is not an act; it is a silent relaxation – because whatever you do will come out of your false personality. All your doing for twenty-six years has come out of it; it is an old habit and habits die hard.There was one great mystic in India, Eknath. He was going for a holy pilgrimage with all his disciples – it was almost a three to six months’ journey. One man came to him, fell at his feet and said, “I know I am not worthy. You know it too, everybody knows me. But I know your compassion is greater than my unworthiness. Please accept me also as one of the members of the group that is going on the holy pilgrimage.”Eknath said, “You are a thief – and not an ordinary thief, but a master thief. You have never been caught, and everybody knows that you are a thief. I certainly feel like taking you with me, but I also have to think about those fifty people who are going with me. You will have to give me a promise – and I am not asking for more, just for these three to six months’ time while we are on the pilgrimage – you will not steal. After that, it is up to you. Once we are back home, you are free from the promise.”The man said, “I am absolutely ready to promise, and I am tremendously grateful for your compassion.”The other fifty people were suspicious. To trust in a thief… But they could not say anything to Eknath. He was the master. The pilgrimage started, and from the very first night there was trouble. The next morning there was chaos – somebody’s coat was missing, somebody’s shirt was missing, somebody’s money had gone.And everybody was shouting, “Where is my money?” And they were all telling Eknath, “We were suspicious from the very beginning that you were taking this man with you. A lifelong habit…”But then they started looking, and they found that things were not stolen. Somebody’s money was missing, but it was found in somebody else’s bag. Somebody else’s coat was missing, but it was found in somebody else’s luggage. Everything was found, but it was an unnecessary trouble – every morning! And nobody could conceive… What can be the meaning of it? And now certainly it is not the thief, because nothing is stolen.The third night, Eknath remained awake to see what was going on. In the middle of the night, the thief – just out of habit – woke up, started taking things from one place to another place. Eknath stopped him and said, “What are you doing? Have you forgotten your promise?”He said, “No, I have not forgotten my promise. I am not stealing anything, but I have not promised that I will not change things from one place to another place. After six months I have to be a thief again; this is just practice. And you must understand, it is a lifelong habit; you cannot drop it just like that. Just give me time. You should understand my problem also. For three days I have not stolen a single thing – it is just like fasting! This is just a substitute; I am keeping myself busy. This is my business time, in the middle of the night, so it is very hard for me just to lie down on the bed awake. And so many idiots are sleeping, and I am not doing any harm to anybody. In the morning they will find their things.”Eknath said, “You are a strange man. You see that every morning there is such chaos, and one or two hours unnecessarily are wasted in finding things: where you have put them, whose thing has gone into whose luggage. Everybody has to open everything and ask everybody, ‘To whom does this belong?’”The thief said, “This much concession you have to give to me.”Twenty-six years of a false personality imposed by people who you loved, who you respected, and they were not intentionally doing anything bad to you. Their intentions were good, just their awareness was nil. They were not conscious people – your parents, your teachers, your priests, your politicians – they were not conscious people, they were unconscious. And even a good intention in the hands of an unconscious person turns out to be poisonous.So whenever you are alone…a deep fear, because suddenly the false starts disappearing. And the real will take a little time. You lost it twenty-six years ago. You will have to give some consideration to the fact that the twenty-six years’ gap has to be bridged.In fear that “I am losing myself, my senses, my sanity, my mind – everything” because the self that has been given to you by others consists of all these things, it looks like you will go insane. You immediately start doing something just to keep yourself engaged. If there are no people, at least there is some action. So the false remains engaged and does not start disappearing. Hence people find it the most difficult on holidays. For five days they work, hoping that on the weekend they are going to relax. But the weekend is the worst time in the whole world – more accidents happen on the weekend, more people commit suicide, more murders, more stealing, more rape. Strange! And these people were engaged for five days and there was no problem. But the weekend suddenly gives them a choice, either to be engaged in something or to relax – but relaxing is fearsome; the false personality disappears.Keep engaged, do anything stupid. People are running toward the beaches, bumper to bumper, miles-long traffic. And if you ask them where they are going, they are getting away from the crowd – and the whole crowd is going with them. They are going to find a solitary, silent space – all of them! In fact, if they had remained home it would have been more solitary and silent, because all the idiots have gone in search of a solitary place. And they are rushing like mad, because two days will be finished soon; they have to reach. Don’t ask where!And on the beaches, you see they are so crowded, not even marketplaces are so crowded. And strangely enough, people are feeling very much at ease, taking a sunbath. Ten thousand people on a small beach taking a sunbath, relaxing! The same person on the same beach alone will not be able to relax. But he knows thousands of other people are relaxing all around him. The same people were in the offices, the same people were in the streets, the same people were in the marketplace; now the same people are on the beach. The crowd is essential for the false self to exist. The moment it is lonely you start freaking out.This is where one should understand a little bit of meditation. Don’t be worried, because that which can disappear is worth disappearing. It is meaningless to cling to it – it is not yours, it is not you. You are the one when the false has gone and the fresh, the innocent, the unpolluted being arises in its place. Nobody else can answer your question “Who am I?” – but you will know it. All meditative techniques are a help to destroy the false. They don’t give you the real – the real cannot be given. That which can be given cannot be real. The real you have got already; just the false has to be taken away.It can be said in a different way: the master takes away things from you, which you don’t really have, and he gives you that which you really have.Meditation is just courage to be silent and alone. Slowly, slowly, you start feeling a new quality to yourself, a new aliveness, a new beauty, a new intelligence, which is not borrowed from anybody, which is growing within you. It has roots in your existence. And if you are not a coward, it will come to fruition, to flowering.Only the brave, the courageous, the people who have guts, can be religious. Not the churchgoers – they are the cowards. Not the Hindus, not the Mohammedans, not the Christians – they are against searching. The same crowd, they are trying to make their false identity more consolidated.You were born. You have come into the world with life, with consciousness, with tremendous sensitivity. Just look at a small child, look at his eyes, the freshness. All that has been covered by a false personality.There is no need to be afraid. You can lose only that which has to be lost. And it is good to lose it soon, because the longer it stays, the stronger it becomes. And one does not know anything about tomorrow. Don’t die before realizing your authentic being.Only those few people who have lived with authentic being and who have died with authentic being are fortunate, because they know that life is eternal, and death is a fiction.Osho,Is sitting silently, doing nothing, watching the grass grow – and maybe falling asleep – really enough?I once heard you say about Freud that he himself was probably not able to create. Or I heard you say that we create our own lives, our own hells and miseries, and that we are responsible.If sitting silently really is enough, where do the words effort or discipline come in? Then, if we are doing something, what are we doing? Can we do anything at all, or am I dreaming that I am doing something?Somewhere I am so tired of it. But then also am I going to end up in a state of lethargy and indifference, in which I cannot see any love or beauty?The people who have been exploiting humanity have created great philosophies, theologies, disciplines. Without the support of all this philosophical, theological, religious framework, it would be impossible to create the false personality.The word discipline comes from these people, and the word effort also comes from these people. They have created such a world emphasizing work, effort, endeavor, struggle, achievement; that they have turned almost everybody into a workaholic – which is worse than an alcoholic, because the alcoholic at least feels that he is doing something wrong. The workaholic feels he is doing the right thing, and those who are not workaholics are lazy people, worthless; they don’t even have any right to exist, because they are a burden.They have destroyed beautiful words, given them new connotations, new meanings. For example, discipline. Discipline does not mean what you have heard that it means. The word discipline comes from the same root as disciple. Its root meaning is: capacity to learn, learning to be more sensitive, to be more aware, to be more sincere, to be more authentic, to be more creative. Life is a beautiful journey if it is a process of constant learning, exploration. Then it is excitement every moment, because every moment you are opening a new door, every moment you are coming in contact with a new mystery.The word disciple means one who learns, and discipline means the process of learning. But the word has been prostituted. Discipline means obedience. They have turned the whole world into a camp of boy scouts. High above there is somebody who knows – you need not learn, you have simply to obey. They have turned the meaning of discipline into its very opposite. Learning automatically consists of doubting, of questioning, of being skeptical, of being curious, certainly not of being a believer, because a believer never learns. But they have used the word for thousands of years in this way. And it is not only one word that they have prostituted; they have prostituted many words. Beautiful words have become so ugly in the hands of the vested interests that you cannot even imagine the original meaning of the word…thousands of years of misuse.They want everybody to be disciplined the way people are disciplined in the army. You are ordered; you have to do it without asking why. This is not the way of learning. And even from the very beginning they have imposed stories on the minds of people, that the first sin committed was disobedience. Adam and Eve were expelled from the Garden of Eden because they disobeyed. I have tried in thousands of ways, but I don’t see that they have committed any sin or any crime. They were simply exploring. You are in a garden and you start exploring the fruits and flowers and what is edible and what is not edible.And God is responsible, because he prohibited them from two trees. He indicated the trees: “You should not approach these two trees. One is the tree of wisdom, and the other is the tree of eternal life.” Just think, if you were Adam and Eve was not God himself tempting you to go to those two trees? And those two trees were of wisdom and of eternal life. Why should God be against them? If he was really a father, one who loves you, he might have pointed to them, saying, “This is a poisonous tree, don’t eat from it” or, “This is the tree of death; if you eat anything, you will die.” But these two trees are perfectly fine – eat as much as you can, because to be wise and to have eternal life is absolutely right.Every father would wish his children to have wisdom and eternal life. This father seems to be absolutely loveless. Not only loveless, but as the Devil said to Eve, “He has prevented you from these two trees. Do you know the reason? The reason is that if you eat from these two trees you will be equal to him, and he is jealous. He does not want you to become divine. He does not want you to become gods, full of wisdom and eternal life.”I cannot see that the Devil’s argument has any flaw in it. It is absolutely right. In fact, he is the first benefactor of humanity. Without him, perhaps there would have been no humanity – no Gautam Buddha, no Kabir, no Christ, no Zarathustra, no Lao Tzu but just buffaloes, donkeys and Yankees, all eating grass, chewing grass contentedly. And God would have been very happy, that his children are very obedient. But this obedience is poison, pure poison. The Devil must be counted as the first revolutionary of the world, and the first man to think in terms of evolution, of wisdom, of eternal life.And God said – so the priests have been saying, the Jewish rabbis, Christian priests, Mohammedan maulvis, ayatollas, they all have been saying for centuries – that it was the original sin. Again, another prostitution of a beautiful word: the word sin in its roots means forgetfulness. It has nothing to do with sin as we have come to understand it. To forget yourself is the only sin. And to remember yourself is the only virtue. It has nothing to do with obedience, nothing to do with discipline. But the people who want to exploit – their very effort is that of a parasite, taking every drop of blood out of you – they say, “Work. Work hard, be disciplined, obey the orders; there is no need to question because the orders are coming from a higher intelligence than you have.” They are in such a mind that they don’t even want you to sleep.In the Soviet Union, they are now developing a whole educational system. Every child will be educated during the day in school – but why waste his whole night? People, after a while – twenty-five years – have to come out of the university and work in the world. But they work only five hours, six hours, and their whole night is sheer wastage; it can be used. Now they are developing methods and means to use it.For example, it can be used for teaching. The child’s ears are plugged with a very subtle mechanism controlled by a central system in the town, and what they call subliminal education… It does not disturb your sleep. Very slowly, so quietly that it cannot even be called whispering, because even whispering may disturb your sleep… Its range is lower than a whisper. And the strangest thing is – which was known long before about women, but it was not known that it could be used in such a way…It has been known for centuries about women, that if you want them to hear what you are saying, then whisper. If you just start whispering with someone, any woman around is going to hear exactly what you are saying. If you are talking loudly, nobody cares. Whispering means that you are trying to hide, something is secretive. The woman becomes alert with her more sensitive being, and she catches everything that you are saying. So if you want to say anything to any woman, just whisper it to somebody else and she will get the message absolutely correctly – and no argument!Subliminal education is a lower range whispering. They have found that it does not disturb sleep; it does not even disturb dreams. Dreams are there; sleep is lower than dreams, and subliminal whispering is lower than sleep – so it simply goes underground. For eight hours continuously in the night you can teach whatever you want to teach, and the most wonderful thing about it is that the child will remember everything – there is no need for him to memorize it, there is no need for him to do homework for it. It has simply entered into his memory system from an underground source. Now they have captured your twenty-four hours. Even freedom to dream may be taken away one day! It is possible that the government could decide for you, what to dream and what not to dream. Dreams could be projected just like projecting pictures on a screen, and you would not be able to tell the difference, whether you are dreaming or the government agency is projecting some idea. Subliminal teaching is really one of the most dangerous things discovered by the psychologists. It has been tried in many countries and found to work immensely well.For example, you go into a movie, you see advertisements – they work, but they need constant repetition. A certain brand of cigarette… You have to read it in the newspaper, you have to see it on television, you have to hear it on the radio, you have to see it on the street on the billboards, you have to see it in the movie house, it has to be repeated continually. A certain brand, you don’t take any note of it. You simply read it and you forget about it, but it is going to make a mark inside you. And when you go to purchase cigarettes, suddenly you will find yourself asking for that brand. But it is a long process. Up to now, advertising has been a lengthy process. With subliminal teaching, it becomes very shortcut and very dangerous.They have tried in a few movies, experimentally, between two frames. You are watching the movie and you will not be aware that something has happened; you will go on seeing the movie. The story is going on and in just a flash – so short that you will not be able to detect with your eyes that something has passed on the screen – you feel very thirsty and you need a Coca Cola. You have not read Coca Cola, but even though you have not read it, your memory has simply got the idea. And they found that on that night, in that movie house the sales of Coca Cola rose by seventy percent. The people who ask for Coca Cola don’t know why they are asking for Coca Cola – they feel thirsty. They are not really feeling thirsty, they don’t need Coca Cola, but a subliminal impact… This is dangerous. It is taking away your freedom. You are not even free to choose, you are simply being ordered, and in such a way that you are not even aware that you have been ordered to purchase Coca Cola.Political parties are going to use it: “Vote for Ronald Reagan.” There is no need to destroy all the walls and write everywhere “Vote for Ronald Reagan” – just subliminal, on television, in the movies.And in the Soviet Union, the educationalists are thinking that everybody’s night can be used for further training, refresher courses. For example, a doctor comes out of the university… But medical science goes on growing, and the doctor is always lagging far behind. He uses medicines which are no longer valid; science has gone farther ahead, has found better medicines. But the doctor has no opportunity to read all that literature – his night can be used. During the day he can look at the patients; at night he can be given the latest information. But that means you have made the man a robot, twenty-four hours a day geared to work, and geared to do whatever kind of work you want. It is not his free will. These people have brought these beautiful words like discipline, work, obedience, to such a distasteful state that it is better for a few days to abandon them completely.Work is beautiful if it comes out of your love, if it comes out of your creativity. Then work has some spiritual quality. Discipline is good if it comes out of your learning, your disciplehood, your dedication, your devotion, then it is something that is growing in you like a beautiful flame, directing your life in its light. If obedience comes out of trust – not that somebody is more powerful and if you don’t listen you will be punished… Even God could not forgive just one act of disobedience. The poor fellows Adam and Eve had eaten one apple!For five years continuously I lived on apples. My mother used to say, “You should think about it – just one apple and Adam and Eve were turned out of the Garden of Eden. And you are simply living on apples!” For five years I didn’t eat anything else.I said, “That’s what I want to see: where to… Now at the most he can drive me into the Garden of Eden. There are only two places: the Garden of Eden and the world. There is no other world he can drive me to.” Naturally God remained silent: “What to do now? He is committing sin from morning to night, sin upon sin” – because that was my whole food.God could not forgive a small thing. No, it is not the question that they had committed a great sin. The question is that God’s ego is hurt; it is revenge. With great vengeance… It is unbelievable that even now you are suffering because of the sin committed by Adam and Eve. We don’t know these people – when they existed, whether they existed or not; we have no part in their act – yet still we are suffering.Every human child is going to suffer such vengeance? – it doesn’t seem to be divine. God seems to be more evil than the Devil. The Devil seems to be friendlier, more understanding. The people who brought these words – work, discipline, obedience – are the priests of this God, they represent him. They have destroyed the beauty of simple words.Obedience can also be of tremendous beauty. But it should come out of your commitment, not out of an order from somebody. It should come out of your heart. You love and you respect and you are dedicated to someone so deeply that your heart always says yes; it has forgotten how to say no. Even if you want to say no, you have forgotten the word. Then, obedience is religious, spiritual.Osho,In nine years of being with you, I feel that I have done all I can as far as intelligence goes, to be with you. And yet now I feel in more chaos and confusion, and more ignorant than ever. I even feel on the point of giving up.Is there something I should be doing? Is there some way to be more intelligent and more wakeful? – because I am sure that I have already missed a thousand times.It will be great if you can give up. That is the trouble. I have been telling you to give up. From the very beginning – don’t start! But you don’t listen.Nine years of great work, hard work, and still you are asking, “Should I bring more intelligence and more work?” And you think you have been missing the train because you are not working hard enough. Just the opposite is the case. You are missing the train because you are working too hard! You are so involved in your work that you don’t see that the train has come and passed. By the time you see other passengers getting out on the road you become aware that the train has come and passed.Simply give up and rest on the platform. So whenever the train comes… What is the need to miss the train? But you cannot rest, you cannot relax, you cannot let go. You have made it a project. You are aggressive, goal oriented, always trying to achieve something.And here you are with a man who is saying to you that all that you want to achieve is already within you – just relax, because only in relaxation will you realize what is hidden in you. But you are running so fast. You don’t stop, you are putting your whole intelligence – nine years… You could have made it the very first day you had come to me. And you can make it right now – because the train is always standing at the platform. It never leaves because there is nowhere to go.Osho,Before becoming your sannyasin, I was desperately seeking spiritual truth. Despite what I felt to be many genuine spiritual experiences, I remained discontented and desperate.After sannyas I began to live with your people, work in your communes and most of all, feel your beauty and peace grow in my heart. In this time, my burning desires for spiritual experience and the fruits of those experiences have been slowly disappearing.Nowadays I simply enjoy everyday life, and everything that goes with it – a tasty meal, a walk in the countryside, a good laugh with a loved one, and so on.Beloved Master, am I getting lazy on the way to enlightenment?Can you please talk on the difference between falling asleep and letting go?You are doing perfectly well. Just forget all about enlightenment. Enjoy simple things with total intensity. Just a cup of tea can be a deep meditation. If you can enjoy it, the aroma of it, slowly sipping it, the taste of it… Who cares about God?You don’t know that God is continuously feeling jealous of you when he sees you drinking a cup of tea and the poor fellow cannot have it. Instant coffee… These things are not available in the Garden of Eden. And since Adam and Eve left, there is no human company at all – just living with animals, who don’t know how to make tea. God is very jealous of you and very repentant that he drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden, but now nothing can be done about it. The sons and daughters of Adam and Eve are living far more beautifully, far more richly.Enlightenment happens when you have forgotten all about it.Don’t even look out of the corner of your eye: just in case enlightenment is coming and you will miss it. Forget all about it. You just enjoy your simple life. And everything is so beautiful, why create unnecessary anxiety and anguish for yourself? Strange problems of spirituality… Those things are not something you can do anything about.If you can make your ordinary life a thing of beauty and art, all that you had always desired will start happening of its own accord.There is a beautiful story:There is a temple in this state of Maharashtra. It is a temple of Krishna, and a strange story is connected with the temple because the statue of Krishna – in Maharashtra he is called Bitthal – is standing on a brick. Strange, because nowhere in any temple is any god standing on a brick.The story is that one beautiful man, enjoying life, every bit in its totality, was so contented and so fulfilled that Krishna decided to appear before him. Ordinarily there are people who are singing and dancing their whole life, “Hare Krishna, Hare Rama” and neither Rama appears nor Krishna appears – nobody appears. And this man was not bothering about Krishna or Rama or anybody. He was simply living his life, but living it the way it should be lived: – with love, with heart, with beauty, with music, with poetry. His life was in itself a blessing, and Krishna had to decide, “This man needs a visit from me.”You see the story: the man was not at all thinking of Krishna, but Krishna, on his own part, felt that this man deserved a visit. He went in the middle of the night, so as not to create any trouble in the whole town. He found the door open and he went in.The man’s mother was very sick, and he was massaging her feet. Krishna came behind him and said, “I am Krishna and I have come to give you an audience, a darshan.”The man said, “This is not the right time; I am massaging my mother’s feet.”Meanwhile, just by his side there was was a brick; he pushed the brick back – he did not even look back to see who this Krishna is – he pushed the brick and told him to stand on it, and that when he is finished with his work he will see him. But he was so much absorbed in massaging his mother’s feet – she was was almost dying – that the whole night passed, and Krishna remained standing there.He said, “This is a strange stupidity. People are singing their whole life, ‘Hare Krishna, Hare Rama’ and I never go there. And I have come here and this fool has not even looked back, has not even said to me, ‘Sit down’ but tells me to stand on the brick!”And then it was getting light, the sun was rising, and Krishna became afraid, because people would be coming in. The road was just by the side of the house, and the door was open, and if they saw him standing there, soon there would be trouble, great crowds would come. So he disappeared, leaving just a stone statue of himself on the brick.When the mother went to sleep, the man turned and said, “Who is the fellow who was disturbing me in the night?” And he found just a statue of Krishna.The whole village gathered – what had happened was a miracle. He told the whole story. They said, “You are a strange fellow. Krishna himself came, and you are such a fool! You could have at least told him to sit down, offered him something to eat, something to drink. He was a guest.”The man said, “At that time there was nothing by my side except this brick. And whenever I am doing something, I do it with totality. I don’t want any interference. If he was so interested in being seen, he can come again, there is no hurry.”That statue remains in the temple of Bitthal, still standing on a brick. But the man was really a great man, not bothering about rewards or anything, absorbed so fully in every action that the action itself becomes the reward. And even if God comes, the reward that is coming out of the totality of action is bigger than God. Nobody has interpreted the story the way I am interpreting it, but you can see that any other interpretation is nonsense.So just forget about spirituality, enlightenment, God – they will take care of themselves. That is their business. They are sitting there without customers. You need not worry; do the best you can do with life – that is your test, that is your worship, that is your religion. And everything else will follow on its own accord.Osho,If the master is the one who chooses the disciple and drops him – though it may appear to the disciple that he has chosen the master, and in the course of time, has dropped him – beloved Osho, why did you have to tell us?Now I have the feeling and fear that you might drop me at any time. Beloved, please don't do that to me. It hurts very much to think of it because if a man like you cannot help me, then who will? I have always been let down, and it hurts. And to think of you letting me down is too much.Osho, please promise that you won't let me down, even if I am of no use to you. I know you won't, but still that fear is there. Please be with me always, will you?It is a tricky question. I can promise I will not drop you. The only problem is that if you want to drop me, then you will find it very difficult to drop; I won’t let you drop! So now this will be your fear: I will fulfill my promise in any case, whether you want it or not. So if this dispels your fear, perfectly good. It is not a problem for me, I can promise.I just don’t want to interfere with anybody’s freedom. I want to keep the door open; if you want to go out, I don’t want to close it. But if that is what you want, the door is closed and locked! Now don’t come next time saying that you are now fearing that if you want to get out, now there is no way. A promise is a promise!Osho,My beautiful master, first I wanted to run away; now I never want to leave you. What happened?I changed my mind.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 19 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I am a two-year-old child in sannyas at the age of sixty!I consider myself blessed to have come into the fold of your grace.Was this destined to be so? Then why was it so late in life? Can the child in me become mature in what remains of my life? How? Kindly help.The question you have asked has many implications. It is many questions in one.First, you say that at the age of sixty you are a two-year-old child as far as sannyas is concerned. This reminds me of an ancient tradition in the East. We used to count life from the day a man was initiated into sannyas, not from the day he was born. Because birth does not necessarily turn into life, more often it only turns into vegetation.There are cabbages and there are cauliflowers, but the difference is not much. The experts say that cauliflowers are cabbages with university degrees. But most people simply vegetate; they do not live, they do not come into contact with the living waters of life. They breathe, they grow old, but they never grow up. Between their birth and their death is a horizontal line. There are no peaks of delight, no sunlit peaks of ecstasy. There are no depths of love, of peace, of silence. There is just a horizontal, flat routine from the cradle to the grave; nothing happens. They come and they go.It is said that most people realize that they were alive only when they die – because life was so flat, so colorless. It was not a dance, it was not beauty, it was not a blessing; there was no gratitude in the heart: “Existence has chosen me, and not anybody else in my place, that without me existence will be a little less. There is nobody else who can replace me; I am occupying a unique position and I never asked for it, I never deserved it. It is a sheer gift out of the abundance of existence.”It happened that Gautam Buddha was having a meeting with one of the most intelligent emperors of those days. Just in the middle of their dialogue an old sannyasin – must have been seventy-five years old – came to touch the feet of Buddha. He asked the emperor to forgive him because he was interfering in their conversation, but it was out of necessity. No Buddhist monk can travel in the night; they can move between sunrise and sunset, but at night they have to remain in one place.“I have been ordered to go to the nearest village, and I cannot go without touching the feet of my master. The sun is going down every moment, and your dialogue seems to go on and on – so please just forgive me.”Gautam Buddha asked the sannyasin, “How old are you?”The emperor was very much puzzled; what was the need? – just bless him and let him go.And the old sannyasin said, “Forgive me, I have come very late. My age is only four years.”The emperor was even more puzzled, and he could not contain himself. He said, “This is too much! This man might be seventy-five, might be eighty, might be seventy, but not four years of age. Absolutely not!”Gautam Buddha said, “Perhaps you do not know about the way we count age. This man became a sannyasin four years ago. Hence, the real brahmin, the one who has known the divine, brahman is called dwij, twice born. The first birth is only an opportunity for the second birth. If the second birth does not happen your first birth is meaningless.And to the sannyasin Buddha said, “Don’t be worried. We have an ancient proverb.” He quoted it: “The man who gets lost in the morning, if he comes back home by the evening he should not be called lost. Four years are plenty. Even one minute of awareness is equal to eternity.”So the first thing: don’t be worried about the fifty-eight years that have passed in sleep. Whether they existed or not does not matter; they were like signatures made on water – you go on making them, and they go on disappearing.These two years you have been a sannyasin are immensely significant. And the significance does not require time, it requires depth. You can have the whole eternity superficially. And you can have one single moment of abysmal depth or of the height of Everest and you are fulfilled.So the first thing I want to say to you: don’t be worried about the fifty-eight years that were lost wandering in the desert. Be grateful for the two years that you have entered into the garden of existence. Now it is up to you to make each moment a deep contentment, a profound silence, a joyful dance, an eternity of rejoicing, a fragrance that is not of this world, that is not of time and space but belongs to the beyond.And as I see it, you are growing on the right path with a sincere heart. I have been listening to your songs; they have a sweet pain, a heartfelt thankfulness, sweet because nothing can be sweeter than to come in contact with the immortal, timeless, deathless source of life.To be in touch with a master is, in an indirect way, to be in touch with the godliness of existence.There is sweetness in your songs, and there is a certain pain too. Pain because whatever you want to express, words are impotent to express it. What you want to sing, your heart is overflowing with it, but the language is not capable of translating it. Your musical instruments, howsoever refined, are not able to bring the music of silence into the world of sound. They are two diametrically opposite dimensions. But your pain does not destroy the beauty of your sweetness; it makes it even more beautiful, gives it depth. It shows your experience and, at the same time, the inability to express it. That which can be expressed is mundane. That which cannot be expressed is sacred.And every artist: musician or poet, painter or dancer, all have been trying in different ways for millions of years to give expression to the inexpressible – even if they can give an indirect hint, just a finger pointing to the moon, that is success enough. And you are successful.Sing without any hesitation, without being worried that you will be thought crazy. Unless a singer is thought by the world to be insane, he is not a singer at all; if a dancer is not forced into a madhouse, the world has not given him the certificate. All geniuses are bound to be thought of in this way by the world: “Something has gone wrong with these poor people.”Vincent Van Gogh, one of the Dutch painters, could not sell a single painting in his whole life. Now only two hundred paintings have survived out of thousands that he painted, because nobody took care of them. He was simply distributing them to friends; nobody would purchase them. People were afraid even to hang his paintings in their sitting rooms because whoever saw them would think that they were crazy: what kind of painting are you hanging here? People were taking them – not to hurt him – thanking him, and throwing his paintings into their basements so nobody would see them.Now each of his paintings is worth a million dollars. What happened in one hundred years?The man himself was forced into a mad asylum when he was only thirty-two. And he was forced because of his painting; he was not harmful, he was not violent, he was not doing anything to anybody. But anybody who looked at his paintings was absolutely certain that this man was mad and unreliable. He should be put in a madhouse. If he could paint these things, he might do anything.”For example, he always painted stars as spirals. Even other painters told him, “Stars are not spirals!”He said, “I also see the stars. I see that they are not spirals, but the moment I start painting them something in me says so strongly that they are spirals. The distance is so vast; that’s why your eyes cannot see exactly what their shape is. And the voice is so strong. I am simply unable to do anything else but what my inner being says to do.”And now physicists have discovered that stars are spirals. It has gone like a shock throughout the world of painters, that only one painter in the whole history of man had some inner contact and communication with the stars – and that was a man who was thought to be mad. And because he was thought to be mad, nobody was ready to give him any service. Every week, his brother used to give him enough money to last for seven days. And he was fasting three days in a week and eating four days, because that was the only way to purchase canvas and colors and brushes to paint with. Painting was more important than life.He committed suicide at the age of thirty-three. Just after his release from the madhouse, he painted only one painting, which they had prevented him from painting in the madhouse. He wanted to paint the sun. It took him one year. He lost his eyes… The burning sun, the hot sun, and the whole day long he would be watching all the colors, from the morning till the evening, from the sunrise to the sunset. He wanted the painting to contain everything about the sun, the whole biography of the sun.Everybody who was sympathetic to him told him, “This is too much. Just studying it one day is enough; it is the same sun.”Van Gogh said, “You don’t know. It is never the same. You have never looked at it. I have never seen the same sunrise twice, never seen the same sunset again. And I want my painting to be a biography.”One year, the whole day watching the sun. He lost his eyes, but he painted. And when the painting was complete, he wrote a small letter to his brother: “I am not committing suicide out of any despair – because I am one of the most successful men in the world. I have done whatever I wanted to do in spite of the whole world condemning me. And this was my last wish, to paint the whole biography of the sun in one painting. It is completed today. I am immensely joyful, and now there is no need to live. I was living to paint; painting was my life, not breathing.” And he shot himself dead.You cannot categorize him with ordinary suicides. It is not a suicide out of despair, out of sadness, out of failure – no. Out of immense success, out of total fulfillment; seeing that now, why unnecessarily go on living and waiting for death? “I have done the work that I wanted to do.”Every creative artist has to understand this: the moment people start thinking about him that he is a little bit off center, that something is loose in his head, he should rejoice that he has crossed the boundary of the mundane and the mediocre. Now he has grown the wings which others don’t have. And I can see in you the possibility, the potential. Meditate, and let music become your meditation. Sing and let singing become your life, your very breathing, your very heartbeat.A very stupid idea has prevailed in the world, that only saints are religious. In fact, almost 99.9 percent of saints are not religious. The real religious people will be found in creative dimensions – dancers, poets, painters, singers, musicians, sculptors. The future belongs to the creative man.The past belonged to the uncreative saints. They have not created anything; their only quality was self-torture. They were really all masochists. In a better world they would have been treated, not worshipped. They were not saints, they were psychologically sick. But because the uncreative was on the heights, was dominant, creative people suffered very much. They were thought to be sick. The future is going to be totally different. Now nobody can be a saint just because he is capable of torturing himself. He may be good in a circus…There is a beautiful story by Turgenev:In a circus there was a man whose sole qualification was that he could fast continuously for forty days, fifty days – and that was the longest time the circus would remain in one town. So for the whole time the circus was in the town, he would be on a fast. Doctors were checking, people were watching, but he would not eat.The circus moved from one town to another town, and then it came to the capital, where it remained longer than forty days. And what is there in a man who is fasting? You can go to see him one time – after that there is nothing intriguing, nothing interesting about it. So after a few days people forgot all about him. There were many stalls, but because nobody was coming to visit his stall, it was placed at the end. Finally, people completely forgot about him. Even the circus management forgot about him, because there was no need. And after forty days, he continued his fasting, because he had forgotten to count the days. He knew only that when the circus moved from one town to another town, on the way they would give him food.He was dying. And then somebody remembered: what happened to the great fasting man? The manager rushed. The man was almost dead; it had been ninety days. Ninety days is the limit for how long a man can fast if he is healthy.They asked him, “Are you mad or something? After forty days you should have reported, you should have called somebody.”He said, “There were two reasons: one, I have never counted the days; second, I slowly became aware that the time seemed to be longer this time, but fasting has become a habit. Now, eating is troublesome. So whenever you change towns, it is very hard for me. Forty days I am hungry. For seven days while you are changing towns, for me to put the whole mechanism back into eating and digesting is such a torture. I felt relieved that the time had become longer.”And with hunger there are a few points to remember. If you fast, you will feel hunger for only three days. After the third day, hunger will start disappearing because the body has an emergency arrangement; for three days it waits for food, it cannot wait longer. After the third day it starts eating itself. That’s why you start losing weight. Have you ever wondered where that weight disappears to? Fasting is a kind of cannibalism: eating yourself. The worst kind of cannibalism – eating somebody else one can understand, but eating yourself…But these were your saints. Their qualities were all in the service of death, not in the service of life. I want my sannyasins to be saints with a new quality: the quality that serves life, the quality that nourishes life, affirms life, that makes life a little more beautiful, brings a few more flowers to it.Meditation in the past has been life negative: renounce life and everything that makes life worth living. To me, meditation is just the opposite of what it has been up to now. Meditation is a silent heart, a peaceful mind which can make life more lovable, more livable, which can make life richer in every dimension.I don’t want you to renounce anything. I want you to rejoice in everything, whatever you are doing. You are a musician. Let music be your meditation. This is your religion – not Mohammedanism, not Hinduism, not Christianity. Music is your religion. If you are a dancer, then dancing is your religion.Osho,Why does everyone want to pretend to be what they are not? What is the psychology behind it?Everybody is condemned from his very childhood. Whatever he does on his own accord, out of his own liking, is not acceptable. The people, the crowd in which a child has to grow, has its own ideas, ideals. The child has to fit with those ideas and ideals. The child is helpless. Have you ever thought about it? The human child is the most helpless child in the whole animal kingdom. All the animals can survive without the support of the parents and the crowd, but the human child cannot survive, he will die immediately. He is the most helpless creature in the world, so vulnerable to death, so delicate.Naturally those who are in power are able to mold the child in the way they want. So everybody has become what he is, against himself. That is the psychology behind the fact that everybody wants to pretend to be what he is not. Everybody is in a schizophrenic state. He has never been allowed to be himself; he has been forced to be somebody else that his nature does not allow him to be happy with.So as one grows and stands on his own legs, one starts pretending many things, which he would have liked in reality to be part of his being. But in this insane world, he has been distracted. He has been made into somebody else; he is not that. He knows it. Everybody knows it: that he has been forced to become a doctor, to become an engineer; he has been forced to become a politician, to become a criminal, to become a beggar.There are all kinds of forces around. In Mumbai there are people whose whole business is to steal children and make them crippled, blind, lame, and force them to beg, and each evening to bring all the money that they have gathered. Yes, food will be given to them, shelter will be given to them. They are being used like commodities; they are not human beings. This is an extreme example, but the same has happened with everybody to a lesser or greater extent. Nobody is at ease with himself.I have heard about a great surgeon who was retiring. He was very famous. He had many students and many colleagues. They all gathered, and they were dancing and singing and drinking, but he was sad, standing in a dark corner. One friend came up to him and asked, “What is the matter with you? We are celebrating and you are standing here so sad. Don’t you want to retire? You are seventy-five; you should have retired fifteen years ago. But because you are such a great surgeon, even at seventy-five nobody can compete with you, nobody comes even close to you. Now, retire and relax!”He said, “That’s what I was thinking. I am feeling sad because my parents forced me to become a surgeon. I wanted to be a singer, and I would have loved it. Even if I was just a street singer, at least I would have been myself. Now I am a world-famous surgeon, but I am not myself. When people praise me as a surgeon, I listen as if they are praising somebody else. I have been given awards, doctorates, but nothing rings a bell of joy in my heart – because this is not me. This being a surgeon has killed me, destroyed me. I wanted to be just a flute player, even if I had to be a beggar on the streets. But I would have been happy.”In this world, there is only one happiness and that is to be yourself. And because nobody is himself, everybody is trying somehow to hide: masks, pretensions, hypocrisies. They are ashamed of what they are.We have made the world a marketplace, not a beautiful garden where everybody is allowed to bring his own flowers. We are forcing marigolds to bring roses. Now from where can marigolds bring roses? Those roses will be plastic roses, and in its heart of hearts the marigold will be crying, and with tears feeling ashamed that: “We have not been courageous enough to rebel against the crowd. They have forced plastic flowers on us, and we have our own real flowers for which our juices are flowing, but we cannot show our real flowers.”You are being taught everything, but you are not being taught to be yourself. This is the ugliest form of society possible, because it makes everybody miserable.I have heard of another great man, a great professor of literature who was being retired from the university. All the university professors had gathered, all his friends had gathered, and they were rejoicing. But suddenly they became aware that he was missing. One of his friends, an attorney, went out… Perhaps he in was the garden. But what was he doing there? He was sitting under a tree.The attorney was his closest friend, a boyhood friend. The attorney said, “What are you doing here?”He said, “What am I doing here? Remember fifty years ago? I had come to tell you that I wanted to kill my wife. And you said, ‘Don’t do any such thing, otherwise: fifty years in jail.’ I am thinking that if I had not listened to you, today I would have been out of jail, free.” He said, “I am feeling so angry that a desire comes to me: why should I not at least kill you! Now I am seventy-five. Even if they put me in jail for fifty years they cannot keep me there for fifty years. Within five, seven years I will be dead. But you were not a friend; you proved to be my greatest enemy.”To be what you don’t want to be, to be with someone you don’t want to be with, to do something you don’t want to do is the basis of all your miseries. And on the one hand society has managed to make everybody miserable, and on the other hand the same society expects that you should not show your misery – at least not in public, not in the open. It is your private business. They have created it; it really is public business, not private business. The same crowd that has created all the reasons for your misery finally says to you, “Your misery is your own, but when you come out, come out smiling. Don’t show your miserable face to others.” This they call etiquette, manners, culture. Basically, it is hypocrisy.And unless a person decides that: “Whatever the cost, I want just to be myself. Condemned, unaccepted, losing respectability, everything is okay but I cannot pretend anymore to be somebody else.” This decision and this declaration – this declaration of freedom, freedom from the weight of the crowd – gives birth to your natural being, to your individuality. Then you don’t need any mask. Then you can be simply yourself, just as you are.And the moment you can be just as you are, there is tremendous peace that passeth understanding.Osho,Could you please explain the difference between trusting existence and fatalism?The difference between trust and fate is very subtle. On the surface it seems they mean exactly the same thing, but in reality they are diametrically opposite experiences.Fate is a consolation. You are poor, and you see others getting richer and richer – some consolation is needed. You do everything and you do it honestly, truthfully, morally. You never use wrong means; still you are a failure. And you see others being dishonest, cunning, insincere, immoral, criminal, using all kinds of wrong means and succeeding, becoming richer, attaining power, prestige. How to explain it? It is not new. Since the very beginning man has been puzzled by it. And he had to create some idea as a consolation. Fate, kismet, destiny, God – everything is written in the lines of your hand, in the lines of your forehead; everything is predetermined in your birth chart, you cannot do anything against it. The forces that have determined your life are too big. You are going to fail; it is better to accept your failure as destiny. It hurts less to say it is fate; it gives consolation. It is not your doing, it is not your failure – what can you do against the stars? You cannot determine your birth time and the day and the year.You come into the world just like an actor comes onto the stage fully prepared. He cannot change anything. But once in a while actors can change things, because a drama is a drama.I have heard that in a village… All over India, every year at this time every village is playing the drama of the life of Rama, the Hindu god. And in the beginning it is just like any film story: a triangle – two lovers, one woman. Sita is the woman, and Rama and Ravana are the two lovers. Rama is a young man. Ravana is very strong.In those days, the daughters of kings had the right to choose any device for selecting their husbands. Sita had asked…because in their family they had the bow that had belonged to the god, Shiva. It was such a big strong bow that even to pick it up needed a great wrestler; it was not easy for one person to raise it. As a device, Sita chose that anybody who could raise the bow, and not only raise it but break it with his hands alone – it was a steel bow – that man she would choose as her husband.Hundreds of kings, great wrestlers, archers… Rama was also present there. But nobody thought he would be of any use; he was too young. Everybody was worried that Ravana – who was a huge, dangerous man, had ten heads – was going to win. And everybody was worried – Sita’s father was worried, everybody concerned was worried – that Sita would fall into the hands of this idiot. Somehow she had to be saved.So just as the others were coming forward – and they could not even move the bow, raising it was out of question; they were becoming laughingstocks… Before Ravana stood up, a man came running… It was a device to send Ravana back to his kingdom. He was the king of Sri Lanka. And the man said, “What are you doing here? Sri Lanka is on fire. Your whole kingdom is burning.”Ravana forgot all about getting married to Sita. He rushed off to see what was happening in the kingdom first. It was a false strategy; there was no problem, Sri Lanka was perfectly okay. But by the time he came back, Rama had broken the bow, married Sita, and gone.This was a conspiracy, and Ravana could not forgive it. He was continually in search of Sita, to steal her. Finally he stole her, and for three years he kept her imprisoned. That’s how the whole story goes. In every village it is enacted every year.In this particular village, the man who played the part of Ravana was really in love with the girl who was playing the part of Sita. But they belonged to different castes; marriage was not possible.Every year it was happening: the moment this man would stand up, the other man would come out shouting: “Sri Lanka is on fire!”This time he was determined – because outside the drama they wouldn’t allow the marriage. They were not of the same caste and in India you cannot marry in another caste. And the man who played Ravana was in a lower caste; the girl was a brahmin. This time he thought, something has to be done.The man came running and he said, “Sri Lanka is on fire!”Ravana said, “Let it be. This year I am not coming!” Everybody laughed; nobody could believe it.The prompter was behind the curtain: “What are you saying?”And he said, “This year I am going to marry Sita!” And he went up… And it was just an ordinary bow, everybody had just pretended that it was so heavy that nobody could pick it up; it was just ordinary bamboo. He took it up, showed it to the audience, broke it, threw the pieces into the audience and told Sita’s father, “Bring your daughter! Enough is enough, and the story is finished!”Even people who had fallen asleep woke up – “What is happening? Something new!” The director didn’t know what to do. For a moment there was silence.And Ravana was shouting, “Where is Sita? Now fulfill the promise!”And nobody could say to him, “You are not following the part that has been given to you” – because that would not be right to say in front of the public.But the king, Sita’s father, was a very wise man. He said to his servants, “You idiots, this is not Shiva’s bow; this is the bow my children play with. Take it away. Bring the real bow.”So the servants took away the broken parts. The curtain was pulled down, and they all jumped on Ravana and said, “You idiot, you are going to destroy the whole story.”He said, “This time I am determined.”So the police had to be called, and Ravana was sent to the police station: “Take him, because he is destroying our whole drama.”In a drama it is possible that you can change things. But in life you don’t know exactly what is written in your fate, so whatever happens has to be accepted: “This must be written in my fate.” The belief in fate is simply a consolation because we cannot accept our failure as failure. And we cannot accept our failure for another reason – because it has implications for all our moral values: “We were honest, we were moral, we followed right means, we were truthful, and yet we failed; and the other person was dishonest, cunning, insincere, immoral, criminal, and yet he succeeded.”Now, the whole moral system teaches that truth is going to win, that morality is going to win, that honesty is going to win. But in life we see that all the honest people are losing and immoral people are gaining. The cunning, the clever become powerful. The simple and the innocent are crushed. Our whole value system is at stake. So it was necessary for the priests and the prophets to find a way in which your failure would not be your failure. “You cannot do anything, it is written in your fate. Your failure is not the failure of your sincerity, morality, honesty. And the other person’s success is not the success of wrong means, dishonesty, cunningness; it is his fate. And as far as fate is concerned, nothing can change it – neither honesty nor dishonesty. Yes, because you have been honest you will have a better fate in your future life. Because he has been dishonest, he will have a bitter fate in his future life.”So this was a beautiful consolation, and a beautiful, rational defense for our moral system. But it is all bogus. The truth is the man has succeeded because of dishonesty, not because of his fate. He has succeeded because of his immorality; he has succeeded because he does not care what kind of means he is using.Existence gives you birth as a tabula rasa. No fate is written; there is no destiny such that whatever you do, it has to happen. Existence is freedom. Fate is slavery. Freedom means it is up to you to decide what is going to happen. Fate is a bogus hypothesis.But trust is a totally different thing. Trust is not fate. Trust simply means that: “Whatever happens, I am part of existence and existence cannot be intentionally inimical to me. If sometimes it feels that it is, it must be my misunderstanding.”I have always loved to remember a Sufi master, Junnaid. He was the master of al-Hillaj Mansoor. He had a habit: after each prayer – and Mohammedans pray five times a day – after each prayer he would say to the sky, “Your compassion is great. How beautifully you take care of us, and we don’t deserve it. I don’t even have words to show my gratefulness, but I hope you will understand the unexpressed gratitude of my heart.”They were on a pilgrimage, and it happened that for three days they passed through villages where orthodox Mohammedans would not allow them even to stay in the villages; there was no question of giving them food or water. For three days without food, without water, without sleep, tired, utterly frustrated… The disciples could not believe that this man Junnaid, their master, still goes on saying the same things. Before, it was okay – but still he goes on saying, “You are great, you are compassionate, and I don’t have words to express my gratitude.”On the third evening when he had finished his prayer, his disciples said, “Now it is time for an explanation. For three days we have been hungry, we have not had water, we are thirsty; we have not slept, we have been insulted continually, no place has been given to us, no shelter. At least today you should not say, ‘You are great, you are compassionate.’ For what are you showing your gratitude?”Junnaid laughed. He said, “My trust in existence is unconditional. It is not that I am grateful because existence provides this and that and that. I am – that’s enough. Existence accepts me – that’s enough. And I don’t deserve to be; I have not earned it. Moreover, these three days have been of tremendous beauty because I had an opportunity to watch whether anger would arise in me, and it didn’t arise; whether I would start to feel that God had forsaken me, and the idea did not arise. There has been no difference in my attitude toward existence. My gratitude has not changed, and it has filled me with more gratitude than ever. It was a fire test, and I have come out of it unburned. What more do you want? I will trust existence in my life and I will trust existence in my death. It is my love affair.“It is not a question that somebody is rich and somebody is poor, that somebody is successful and somebody is not. It has nothing to do with anybody. It is my personal, intimate contact with reality. And there is great harmony. I am completely at ease and at home.”Trust is the outcome of deep meditation. Fate is the outcome of your failures, and a mind consolation. They are totally different.Osho,Why do I like so much to criticize people and complain against life?Everybody likes it. To criticize people, to complain against people, gives you a good feeling. Criticizing others, you feel you are higher; complaining about others, you feel you are better. It is very ego fulfilling. And I am saying almost everybody does it. A few people do it out loud, a few people do it just within themselves, but the enjoyment is the same.Only rarely are there people who don’t criticize, who don’t complain; those are the people who have dropped their egos. Then there is no point, why should you bother about it? It is none of your business; it no longer pays you. The ego was helped, nourished.Hence my emphasis is: drop the ego. With the dropping of the ego, you will find almost a whole world disappearing. The whole world that was knit around the ego falls away completely, and you start seeing people in a new light. Perhaps the same person that you might have criticized in the same situation, instead of criticizing him you feel a great compassion for him, a great love, a deep desire to help. The same person and the same situation you would have complained against, now your eyes are different and you see things differently, perhaps you will see that in his place in this situation you would have behaved in the same way; there is nothing to complain about.Your outlook will become more human, more friendly: a deep acceptance of people as they are.You know only some part of them; you don’t know their whole life. And it is not good to decide from a small fragment about the whole person. That small fragment may be absolutely fitting and right in the whole context. But the situation is this: it is very easy to criticize. It does not need much intelligence.I have often told a story of Turgenev’s, The Fool. In a village, a young man is very disturbed because the whole village thinks he is an idiot. A wise man is passing through the village and the young man goes to him and says, “Help me! For twenty-four hours a day I am criticized; whatever I do I am criticized. If I don’t do anything I am criticized. If I speak I am criticized, if I don’t speak I am criticized. I don’t know any way out.”The wise man said, “Don’t be worried.” He whispered the secret in his ear, and told him, “After one month I will come back. Meet me then and tell me how things are going.”The young man went to the marketplace and started working on the formula given by the wise man.Somebody said, “What a beautiful sunset!”And he said, “What is beautiful in it? Prove what is beautiful in it!”The man who had said it was a beautiful sunset was shocked. It was a beautiful sunset, but what was the proof? Is there any evidence? Do you know what beauty is? Everybody knows, but nobody can prove it.The man remained silent. Everybody started laughing.And everybody said, “Strange, we used to think this man was an idiot. He is a great intellectual.”This was the formula given by the old man: criticize everything, just roam about the village watching and when anybody says anything, does anything, criticize it. And particularly criticize things which are taken for granted and nobody questions. Somebody uses the word God – immediately catch hold of him: “Where is God? What nonsense are you talking about?” Somebody talks about love – catch hold of him: “What is love? Where is love? Put it here in front of everybody!”Somebody would say, “Love is in the heart.”And he would say, “No, there is nothing in the heart. You can go and ask any surgeon – in the heart there is nothing like love. There is only a blood-circulating system, which just pumps blood and purifies it. What does it have to do with love?”After one month the old man came back. By that time the idiot had become a wise man. He touched the old man’s feet and he said, “You are great! That trick worked; now the whole village thinks I am a wise man.”The old man said, “Just remember one thing: don’t assert anything from your side, so nobody can criticize you. Let them assert things; you just criticize and complain. And always be aggressive; never be defensive. Don’t take a defensive attitude. Attack, be aggressive, criticize each and everybody, and they will all worship you.”And the idiot became the wise man.It does not need much intelligence to criticize or to complain. And cheaply you become wise; cheaply you become very intelligent.One of my professors… He used to teach me logic. Within a few days I found out that even if I mentioned the name of a book which did not exist, a fictitious writer, he would immediately criticize it: “I have read that book, and there is nothing in it.”I went to the vice-chancellor and I told him the whole thing. I said, “This is sheer dishonesty, because first he criticized those who have really written books. And seeing his attitude – that he criticizes everybody, I suspected that he had not read them, but was just trying to show that he is so well-read, so wise, so intelligent. So I tried a few fictitious names and he criticized them also. He said: ‘There is nothing in those books. Those writers know nothing.’” And I said, “Those writers don’t exist. Those books don’t exist!”The vice-chancellor said, “This is strange. I used to think that man was a responsible man.”I said, “Call him in sometime, and I will drop in casually, by the way.” I wrote down three or four names of books which don’t exist, have never existed and will never exist, with writers who are just fictitious. I gave those names to the vice-chancellor and I told him, “I will come when he is here and we will talk, and just by the way you bring up these names and see what his reaction is.”And he brought up those names and the professor immediately said, “Don’t waste time. Those are all ordinary, mediocre writers, and the books they have written have nothing original in them.”The vice-chancellor could not believe his eyes. He said, “Do you know that these four books do not exist at all? Neither have these four men ever existed. Why are you criticizing them?”And before the vice-chancellor, he became afraid. He said, “Never existed? How did I get the idea that…”I said, “Don’t try to befool anybody, because I have been asking you about other books which have not existed. This was only proof. I wanted to show the vice-chancellor that a professor should at least be sincere enough to acknowledge that he has not read a particular book.”I said to the vice-chancellor, “What kind of respect does this man want from us? My feeling is that he has not read anything; he has simply read Turgenev’s story, The Fool.”I had brought the book, and I read the story to the vice-chancellor. And I said, “This man is the idiot from this story. You should make him alert that if it happens again in the class, we are going to boycott him completely. Either he will have to find the book and prove…he never even goes to the library!”I had looked into all the records before I went to the vice-chancellor. The professor had never been to the library. Under his name – and he had been in the university for ten years – not a single book was issued. And this man was ready to criticize anybody.I said, “A wise man, an intelligent man is always humble.”Your question about why we are so ready to criticize, to complain is very simple. The psychology behind it is that this is the simplest way, the cheapest way to prove that you are somebody special, that you know more. But in fact you are simply proving that you are the idiot of Turgenev and nobody else.Be humble in the world of wisdom. Before criticizing anybody, look into the fact from all directions, from all angles, from all possible viewpoints, and you will be surprised: there is very little that can be criticized or complained about. And if you pay that much attention, then whatever you criticize will be accepted, and accepted with gratitude because it is not to fulfill your ego; it is just to help the other person on the path. But you have to do so much work.One of my professors had written his doctoral thesis on Shankara and Bradley. I told him, “I have read the thesis, and now I am studying everything possible about Shankara and Bradley before I say anything about your thesis.”He said, “You are strange, because I have given my thesis to many professors and they have all given their opinions.”I said, “I cannot give you my opinion in such a cheap way. I will look at all the sources you have looked into; I will look into other sources that you have not looked into.” And it took me almost six months to study Shankara and Bradley.When I gave my opinion to him he said, “My God, it is good that you were not one of my examiners; otherwise, I would never have been able to get the doctorate. I worked on it for six years, and in six months you have gone through all the sources that I have referred to. You have even gone to other sources which I have not even heard of.”I said, “Your treatise is juvenile, it is written by an amateur. Shankara and Bradley are very mature philosophers of the East and West. You have not paid enough respect to these two geniuses. You have done a clerical job. You have looked at a few books of Shankara, a few books of Bradley, taken a few pieces from here, from there, and your thesis was ready. Your thesis does not contribute a single original point. And unless a thesis contributes an original point, it does not deserve a doctorate; it is at the most a beautiful essay. You can publish it as a book, but not for a doctorate.”But he was a humble man; he accepted it. He said, “You are right. I myself was feeling that I had not done them justice. Six years were not enough to cover Bradley’s whole life and Shankara’s whole life. These two are the very highest peaks of genius; six years are not enough. But nobody pointed it out to me, not even my examiners. The examiners will not point it out because to do that they would have had to read it, they would have had to go through the whole thing. Who bothers? In fact, perhaps some of their students gave me the marks and the examiners have not even looked at the thesis.”Nobody is interested in praising anybody, in finding those qualities which everybody has. Nobody is ready to help those qualities grow. Everybody is afraid: if all are growing, what about him? His whole concern is that his ego should go on becoming bigger, and the easier way is to criticize everybody, to complain against everything: be negative, make negativity your very approach. And for this you don’t need intelligence; any idiot can do it. But to be really critical, one has to be very compassionate, very loving. And one has to be ready to devote time and energy and intelligence. Then it is not criticism, then it is not inimical, it is not antagonistic; it is a friendly suggestion, a sympathetic approach.Everyone here should learn to be sympathetic. Your meditation should help you not to criticize but to appreciate. And if you are intelligent enough, you can appreciate in such a way that whatever you wanted to criticize will be understood without being said.Osho,The buddha in me condemns the zorba, and the zorba envies the buddha. How can these two beloveds within me become friends?Just let them fight one day more. Tomorrow we will settle it!

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 20 (Read, Listen & Download)

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I first have to reply to the question that I received before. The question was important. I never postpone a question because one never knows what is going to happen tomorrow. I may be here to answer it or not. You may be here to listen to it or not. But I had to postpone, because the question was important, and the time was already 9:30. I never want to do an imperfect job, so I took the risk. I hoped for the best – that tomorrow we would be meeting – and by chance it has come true.The questioner said that the buddha and the zorba are in constant conflict within his personality.My whole philosophy is to bring a harmonious unity between the zorba and the buddha within every human being. But the questioner is asking only from the mind. In reality, in actual experience, zorba and buddha can never be in conflict. This has to be underlined – because in reality the zorba is completely asleep; he does not know anything about the buddha, and you cannot fight with something you know nothing about. The zorba is not even suspicious that there is anything more in life than to eat, drink and be merry. That is his whole philosophy of life, there is nothing beyond it. How can he be in conflict with the buddha? Both have to be present simultaneously to be in conflict. This is very simple arithmetic.If the buddha has arisen in you, if that awakening has happened in you, zorba disappears. It is just like you were asleep, and now you are awake. When you are awake, sleep is no more. Zorba is the name of your spiritual sleep. They cannot co-exist. The moment you are conscious, alert, aware, the darkness of the unconscious disappears. Either there is zorba, and buddha is dormant… Buddha is just a seed as far as zorba is concerned, it is non-existential. When buddha has blossomed, zorba disappears, just as darkness disappears when you bring the light in. You cannot have light and darkness together.I have always loved an ancient story…God made the world, and from that very day the sun went running after darkness. And darkness could not understand: it has not harmed the sun, it has not even talked with the sun; it has not even met the sun, yet the sun is continuously harassing her.After millions of years of harassment, she finally got tired and went to God and said, “It is ungrateful to complain, but there is a limit to everything. I have been harassed for millions of years, and I cannot conceive of any fault on my part. The sun goes on expelling me from everywhere. It is even difficult to take a rest without anxiety – the sun may be coming, the sunrise may be close. I have not slept for millions of years – the anguish would not allow it. The sun has been almost a continuous torture, and without any reason. I simply want to know: what have I done wrong?”God said, “You should have come earlier. There was no need to wait so long. This is very ungentlemanly on the part of the sun. The sun should be called immediately.”The sun was called. He asked the messenger, “What is the problem? – because I have never done anything wrong. I simply go on doing the same routine every day. Since God made me, I have not done anything else.”But the messenger said, “God is very angry. You have been hurting, harassing a poor woman – darkness.”He said, “My God! I have never heard of her. I have never met her. I am not interested in women at all – I am a born celibate. I am coming, I want to see who this woman is.”And as the sun came to the house of God, darkness disappeared.God said, “Where has that woman gone?” They searched everywhere; darkness was not found.Millions of years passed again, and one day the woman appeared and she said, “You have not done anything; it is still continuing, the same torture.”God said, “You are strange. When the sun was here, where did you go?”She said, “You are behaving like a simpleton. If the sun is here, I cannot be here; if I am here, the sun cannot be here. We cannot stand each other. You will have to hear our story separately and then decide.”God said, “That is not my way. You both have to be present here so I can be certain that nobody is lying.”The woman said, “Then it is better I take my complaint back.”Since then, the woman has not appeared again. Once in a while the sun comes to inquire, “What happened to the woman – because I want to clear it up, it has become a worry on my head that somebody is being hurt by me, perhaps unknowingly.”God said, “You need not be worried. The problem is such that it cannot be solved. I cannot give any decision unless you are both present in my court together and I have listened to both sides in the presence of each other. But by the very nature of things, you cannot both be present. That woman is your absence. So of course you cannot be present and absent simultaneously. Drop your worry. You are doing perfectly fine, and that woman is not going to report against you again. The file in your case is closed.”Exactly the same is the case with zorba and buddha. The moment buddha arrives with all his light and beauty, with all his awareness, with all his joy, zorba disappears, dissolves. Conflict is impossible. Conflict is possible only in your mind.You have been listening to me so you have made a concept of zorba and a concept of buddha; you have neither lived zorba nor have you lived buddha. These are only words in your mind. Then conflict is very easy; then you can go on arguing within your mind: “How can zorba and buddha become one? They are antagonistic, they are enemies; harmony is not possible.” Yes, in the mind it is not possible.That’s why I am telling you constantly to go beyond mind, where it is possible – not only possible, it is already happening – beyond mind, zorba is the buddha; there is no dividing line. All that is beautiful in zorba becomes even more beautiful when buddha arrives, everything becomes a thousandfold more glorified. And all that is wrong and ugly in zorba disappears like darkness. That which can be absorbed is absorbed, and that which is not worth absorbing is dissolved. But don’t make it a mental problem. My approach is not of the mind; it is of meditation. It is an existential approach.Zorba loves singing, playing on his musical instruments, dancing. Buddha will make it perfect, absolute. Even silence will become a song, even stones will become sermons, and whatever you touch will become a musical instrument because your hands will now have the magic of the whole existence, they will have the grace, the beauty, the poetry.Your life will not be a struggle between zorba and buddha, but a love affair – so deep that two lovers disappear into each other, never to separate again. The union, the harmony, the accordance is going to be eternal.But avoid the mind. Mind knows only conflict. Even where there is no conflict, mind creates it; even where there is no problem, mind creates it. Mind cannot exist without problems; problems are its nourishment. Conflict, fight, disharmony – and the mind is perfectly at ease and at home. Silence, harmony – and the mind starts becoming afraid, because harmony, silence and peace are nothing but death to the mind.So just shift your problem from the mind. Start living. And with me, it is easy; it has never ever in history been so easy, because I am not telling you to disown zorba, I am telling you to live zorba to its utmost. There is nothing to be afraid of. Only add one more thing, and that is meditation.Meditation is the bridge between zorba and buddha. Once the bridge is complete and the buddha descends, there will be a tremendous change in your zorba: all that is ugly will have gone, and all that is beautiful will be beautified tremendously.The zorba is not going to lose anything. Without buddha, zorba is just a mundane existence. Without zorba, the buddha has no roots – only flowers. But how long can flowers live without roots? Roots are ugly; that’s why they remain hiding underneath the ground – but they are the source of life and juice. Those beautiful flowers cannot exist without those ugly roots underneath the ground; those roots are continuously nourishing them, giving their life to the flowers. And this miracle is happening everywhere. But we are so blind that we cannot see.When you see a roseflower, you don’t see that in the roseflower is hidden the whole philosophy of life – the leaves are not red, nor are the thorns red nor are the roots red. Yet out of this green foliage comes a beautiful red rose. It is nourished by everything: by the roots, by the leaves, because the leaves are breathing constantly; otherwise, the rose would die. Branches are constantly doing a miracle bringing juice and water from the depths of the earth upward, against gravitation. And there is no pumping system.In the beginning scientists were puzzled at how trees one hundred and fifty feet high managed to keep their leaves green – lush green, at a hundred and fifty feet high. Water goes against gravitation with no apparent mechanism. Miracles are everywhere; one just needs a sensitive heart, a perceptive eye, and you will see matter and spirit dancing together everywhere.Zorba and buddha are never separate. There is just one possibility: buddha can be asleep; then zorba has to live a mundane life. Or, under the stupid influence of the past, you can disown your body, become destructive of your body and try to achieve the impossible: living like a buddha without having anything to do with zorba.Thousands of saints have done that, but you will not find in their life roses flowering; you will not find in their life the lush greenery of existence; you will not find in their life songs and dances. They are almost the living dead. I am fighting against that whole past. I want you to be a zorba and a buddha together; then whatever is ugly in zorba will disappear on its own accord – you are not to renounce it. And whatever is beautiful will be absorbed in the new consciousness, in the new awakening. But don’t make it a mind problem.Osho,Before meeting you and taking sannyas in 1980, I used to achieve whatsoever targets and goals I made. But since then I have been relaxing at the platform, waiting for the whistle of the incoming train. Relaxing and waiting has increased to such an extent that sometimes during your discourses the sound of my own snoring makes me get up, feeling as if the train has arrived – but the train never arrives.Beloved master, what next?Learn to snore totally! This is not right, that your own snoring wakes you up. Be a real authentic snorer, so that it wakes up everybody but you. Snoring is an art. And as far as the platform is concerned, you are not on the platform. You are sleeping on the train, so no need to worry. The train is taking you; that’s why you don’t hear the whistles of oncoming trains. Snore fully, sleep well; the train is going fast.This is one of the problems for those who in their life have been achievers – whatever they wanted, they achieved; whatever the target, whatever the goal, they managed it. But enlightenment is not a goal. And godliness is not an achievement.Godliness is your very reality. All that you need is to relax completely. That’s why I am saying snore perfectly. This getting up again and again and watching whether the train is coming in or not, unnecessarily disturbs your sleep, disturbs your relaxation. My sannyasins are not goal oriented.My whole approach is that of let-go; it is not of effort. You just relax and enjoy. Even in the discourse sleeping is not prohibited, nor is snoring prohibited. Just snore a little musically so everybody can enjoy it. You do not have to do anything; so don’t ask what next. You just have to relax so totally that you can feel your being in its ultimate glory, its blissfulness and benediction.I am telling you that you are already where you want to be; you are already that which you are thinking to become. Becoming is a disease. You are a being. You are not to become anything, but because in your whole life you have been a hard worker, achieving everything that you wanted, it is just the old habit that makes meditation also an effort, enlightenment also a goal, godliness also somewhere else.In this wide world, why do so many people go on missing? And why do only so few people realize the truth, the beauty, the bliss? The reason is simple: everybody is thinking in terms of goals. And those who are thinking in terms of goals are going to fail, because it is not a goal. It is already within you. So the more you run to get it, the farther you go away from it.Coming to oneself is not a journey; it is just renouncing all effort, all goals, all becoming. Just start enjoying wherever you are whatever you are. This is the simplest thing but it appears very difficult because we have been trained for goals. There is nothing that you have to do. All that is needed is for you to sit silently doing nothing; the spring comes, and the grass grows by itself.Naturally, the grass never gives any whistles, it simply grows; it is not a railway station. And the grass is growing. But if you see it every day, you will not feel that it is growing. You are all growing. You will realize it only when the growth has come to such an explosion that you cannot conceive that it is possible without growth. You are growing every day: from a child you become young, from being young you become old. But you cannot find the point at which you started becoming young, at what point you started becoming old, because you are so close to your growth and it happens slowly every day.Being close to me, you are not aware of the fact that you are no longer part of the world in which you are living. Superficially you are living in the same world, but deep down you have entered a different world with me – a world of no effort, a world of non-doing, a world of no goal, a world of isness, of here, of now.Osho,Why do I feel that I have failed? Is it because I still hanker to be perfect, superhuman, special? Osho, please don't spare me anything!The answer that I just gave is also the answer for you. Only people who want to be somewhere, somebody, have to suffer the sadness of failure. But a person who never wants to be anybody, never wants to be anywhere else, cannot suffer the sadness of failure. He is always successful, just like me!From my very childhood, my parents, my well-wishers, my neighbors, my teachers, everybody was saying that, “You are going to be utterly worthless, a good-for-nothing.”I said, “If that is my destiny, I am perfectly happy. Why should I try to be somebody else? Utterly useless? – that’s perfectly good! Good for nothing? – I don’t see anything wrong in it.”And they would say, “Can’t you ever talk reasonably?”I said, “It is just a question of reason. Whatever is going to happen, I am going to be successful, because I have not made a criterion that this has to happen, only then will I be successful. Just vice-versa: I am successful. Whatever happens, that does not matter; my successfulness is certain.”One of my professors was very concerned. He loved me so much that he said, “You could top the university with your left hand, but your behavior is such that even if you manage to get a third class, that would be a miracle, because I never see you reading any textbook.”He used to come to the hostel to check. He never found a textbook in my room. I had never purchased one.“When the professors are lecturing, you are sleeping. And the professors don’t disturb you because when you are awake, you are arguing. It is better that you remain asleep so there is no disturbance.”He was so worried: I may go to the examination hall – but I may not go. Just before my post-graduate final examination, he came in the evening and said, “Give me a promise.”I said, “I can give you a promise, but I lie. So, it is not of much use.”He said, “You lie?”I said, “Yes, I lie; whatever suits the purpose, I do it. You want a promise? – I’ll give you a promise. If somebody else comes and asks for a promise, I’ll give him a promise also.”He said, “That means you will torture me. Tomorrow morning, be ready at seven; I will pick you up and leave you at the examination hall every day.”And it was really a torture for him, because he was a drunkard, but a really good man. He never used to get up before one o’clock. To get up at six o’clock and get ready, and… And he had perhaps the oldest model car; it would take hours to start it. The whole neighborhood would be pushing it. Somehow he would manage once it had started.But he would reach there exactly at seven. All these difficulties… And he would find me sleeping, and he would wake me and say, “This is too much. I never get up before one, now I am getting up at six. And you know my car; she is lazier than me. To start it in the cold at six o’clock is so difficult – the whole neighborhood has to help. And you are sleeping.”I said, “When you told me that you would be coming, I trusted.” I said, “Then why bother to get up early? When you come, I will get out of bed and sit in your car.”He said, “You are not going to take a bath or anything?”I said, “Everything after the examination.”“Any preparation?”I said, “Who bothers about preparation?”On the way to the examination hall, he would try to tell me, “Listen, remember a few things: this is your roll number. Don’t forget.” He would force me to write the roll number on my hand, so that I wouldn’t forget it. I would write the roll number on my hand, and he would say, “Write your name; otherwise you will wonder what this is, whose roll number it is.”I said, “You should trust me just a little bit.”He said, “I don’t trust you. First do this examination. You have to top the university.”I said, “Whatever happens, I am happy.”And he would tell the superintendent, “Don’t let him out of the hall for three hours.” Three hours was the time – because he was worried that once he was gone, I may go back to my bed. And the superintendent came to me and said, “Remember, there is no hurry for you to finish the paper. Take your time. You cannot get out of here for three hours. Your professor has ordered me, and I respect that old man.”I said, “This is strange.”I would finish the paper in two hours or one and a half hours, and I would ask the superintendent, “You can see I have finished the paper. Now don’t bother me, because I have not even taken a bath yet. I have to go and wash my mouth, take a bath and change my clothes. I have come directly from bed.”He said, “Directly from bed? But who forced you?”I said, “The same professor who forced you.” And I said, “I will not report against you. Nobody is going to report it; everybody is so engaged in writing.”He said, “If this is the situation, you can go. But have you answered all the questions?”“I…you can see!” He knew that I had answered, but he would look. He would say, “This is strange. In a post-graduate examination, your answer to the question is just one page, half a page. Do you hope to pass?I said, “I never hope anything. This much I enjoyed; more than that… I never do anything that I don’t enjoy.”And by chance it happened that one of the retired professors, Professor Ranade of Allahabad University – he was a world-famous authority – got my examination papers, my answers. So my professor was going completely mad.He said, “First I did not think that you would even get a third class degree, although you deserve to top the university. But now you are in a very dangerous man’s hands; it is known for years, he has not given a first class to anybody in his whole life. He is retired now, but he still gets the examination papers. And by chance he is going to examine your papers. You are finished.”I said, “Don’t be worried. That makes me happy; I will be staying one more year with you.”He said, “Don’t talk nonsense.”I said, “I am not talking nonsense. You will have another chance to take me to the examination hall, to torture me. You should be happy.”But this is what I call… Strange things happen: Ranade gave me ninety-nine percent marks, with a special note saying that, “I wanted to give a hundred percent but that might look a little prejudiced. The reason I am giving him ninety-nine percent – and for the first time in my whole life a first class – is because I always wanted the answers to be to the point. And I have never seen a man who would answer a whole question in just one paragraph. I loved the boy!”He had written the note to the vice-chancellor saying, “Tell the boy from me, show him my note” – he was very old, seventy-five years – “that he is the first in my whole life to whom I am giving a first class.”I topped the university. My professor, who had been so anxious, now could not believe it. When the results came, he asked me, “What is the matter? There must be some mistake. You…and topping the university? Just go to the vice-chancellor’s office, find out – there is some mistake in the newspaper.”I said, “Don’t bother. If there is some mistake, that is perfectly good.”But he himself was so anxious that I had to push his car, start his car, and take him to the vice-chancellor’s office. Till he saw the note, he did not believe it.And coming out of the office he looked me up and down, and he said, “This is the strangest thing that I have seen in my life, that you have been getting out of bed – no preparation, nothing – and now you are the gold medalist. For the first time,” he said, “I have started believing in God – because you could not have managed it. God must be behind you.”I said, “That is absolutely clear. That’s why I was so relaxed. You were unnecessarily worried. God is just exactly behind me the way I am behind your car to start it. He starts me, and once I am started everything goes well.”There is no failure in life. It all depends how you take things. If you desire too much, you want to reach too high, and you cannot, then there is frustration and failure. But if you do not desire anything and you are perfectly happy wherever you are, life is a moment-to-moment victory.Osho,Why is the mind running like crazy when the heart wants to say something?Mind is always afraid only of one thing, and that is your heart – because mind is basically meant to be a servant but has managed to become the master. And the heart, which was going to be the master, has not even bothered to interfere, and has allowed the mind to remain the master. But the mind is aware that if at any moment the heart wants it, his mastery will be gone. So whenever the heart wants to say something, a fear arises in the mind.Mind is very much afraid of love. Mind is very much afraid of trust. Mind is very much afraid of anything that has to do with the heart. The heart is naturally the master, because the mind’s mastery is not part of nature. But this is the problem: because the heart feels its mastery so definitely, with such a certainty, it never asserts itself, there is no need. It is an intrinsic knowing in the heart that the mind can be pushed aside at any moment. And the mind knows perfectly well that he is just a servant. Because the master is so gentlemanly, he has allowed even the servant to pretend to be the master. But a servant is a servant.So whenever your heart wants to say something, the mind starts feeling shaky – it wants the heart to remain completely dead, it wants man to become completely heartless. And it has succeeded all over the world in making people heartless.But once in a while a few people escape from the slavery of the mind and start asserting the rights of their heart. This is the greatest revolution there is, the revolution of the heart against the mind.I call it the essential sannyas.Osho,Always when I walk across to your house I would like to dance and sing, but then tears come into my eyes and strong feelings overwhelm me and I would like to shout to everybody, “Wake up! Here is Osho. He is available for everybody!” I am so grateful for all I have got from you, and sometimes it is so difficult to keep all this to myself – but I won't go on a missionary trip.What can I do?To have a mission and to be a missionary are two different things. The missionary is functioning from the mind. And to have a mission is the overflowing experience of the heart. The distinction is difficult, but not impossible. The missionary is trying to convince people about something of which he himself is not convinced – because the things that he wants people to be convinced of are not things that he has experienced. A missionary is simply a computer transferring knowledge from one generation to another generation.But to have a mission is a totally different thing. Jesus is not a missionary; Pope the polack is. Jesus has a mission. Gautam Buddha has a mission. To have a mission means you have experienced something, and it is against human compassion and love not to share it. It is not a question of converting anybody; it is a question of sharing. So there is no harm. If it is your experience, shout it from the housetops. If it is coming from your heart, then don’t prevent it – because the more you spread it, the deeper will go its roots. It is just like a tree; the tree goes on spreading its branches far and wide in the sky, and underneath the earth the roots go on spreading.If you have an experience that you feel is capable of quenching the thirst of many, then take every risk – shout it, sing it, dance it, do whatever you can do. Even if the whole world thinks you are insane don’t be worried. The more you share your experience, the deeper it will go into your own heart, and the stronger it will become; your individuality will become a tremendous force.Never become a missionary. A missionary is a servant, a poor servant – just like any other servant. He gets a certain salary to spread the message of the bible. He is not a bit concerned about the message; his whole concern is about his salary. If somebody else is ready to give him double his salary, he would be ready to speak against the bible.I have heard that in a church a bishop was very much worried because one of the eldest and the richest members of the church used to sleep. But it was not a place like this, where even snoring is allowed – as long as you are a little musical. And the old man used to snore. The bishop was very disturbed as the man was always sitting right in front of him.Finally, the bishop found a way – because the old man would always come with a small boy, his great grandson. The bishop caught hold of the great grandson one day, took him to a corner and told him, “Can you do one thing for me? I will give you fifty cents every Sunday.” The boy said, “Done. What do you want?”He said, “You don’t have to do much. Whenever your old man starts snoring, just nudge him, wake him. His sleeping is not a problem; the problem is that when he snores, he wakes up the whole congregation. And I don’t have many sermons – only three. So I don’t want people to be awake, otherwise they will start getting bored.”The boy said, “Advance me.”The bishop said, “Advance? You are something! Don’t you believe me?”The boy said, “Business is business. It is not a question of belief; it is not religion. Just give me fifty cents and then you will see my performance next Sunday.”And the boy performed well. He did not allow the old man to sleep at all. Whenever he snored the boy would start hitting him. He looked many times at the boy: “What has happened to you?”But the boy would not look at him; he would listen to the sermon so religiously, unconcerned with what was happening.Outside, the old man said, “You rascal, why were you…? The whole night I cannot sleep because of my old age and this is the only time in the week that I have a good sleep, and you disturb me. What happened? What went wrong in your mind? And you looked so religious, listening as if you understood what was being said.”He said, “It is not a question of religion. I get fifty cents for my performance. The bishop gave me an advance for today. And I am going to the bishop to get an advance for next Sunday.”The old man said, “Wait. I will give you a dollar – but don’t disturb me!”He said, “Perfectly okay. Advance me.”Next Sunday, the bishop was very puzzled. Many times he inquired of the boy, but the boy looked everywhere else, but never at the bishop. “What happened to the boy? Perhaps I have not given him the advance after all so he is not bothering.”He tried somehow hoping that nobody would understand what he was trying to do, he made gestures. But the boy said, “What is the matter?”After the meeting he got hold of the boy saying, “What is the matter? Can’t you even trust me for fifty cents? Here is fifty cents.”He said, “It is not a question of your fifty cents. My old man is giving me a dollar not to disturb him. Now, if you want… It is up to you.”The bishop said, “I am a poor man. If I go on giving to you in this way, and your old man goes on doubling it… He is a rich man.”The boy said, “Business is business. If you cannot go beyond a dollar, then not only will my grandfather snore, I am going to snore too; and then you will see real chaos. Then not only will you have to pay for my old man, you will have to pay for me – separately: fifty cents for me, and a dollar and a half for the old man – only two dollars. But it will change every Sunday; it all depends on how business goes.”A missionary is a poor servant. Christianity pays him; he believes in Christianity. If somebody else pays him more, he is ready for it. But a man of mission is a totally different thing – you cannot change him. You can crucify him, but you cannot change him.Osho,Your first silent message to me was: “Don't be so serious, enjoy, celebrate!”After three years I finally got it! Why did it take me so long to wake up? Am I really waking up?Do you think three years is so long? What is your criterion. Time is eternal. Three years are not even equal to three seconds.If you can understand the message to celebrate, to rejoice, even in three lives it is early; it is not late. You are fortunate that you got it in three years. How much time you take depends on you. You could have got it the very moment I gave it to you. You took three years – postponing for tomorrow because so many other things have to be done, postponing for other reasons. Because, celebrating when the whole world is in misery, you will look insane. “What are you doing? The world is facing a nuclear disaster and you are celebrating?” You have found many reasons to remain miserable, to remain sad, to remain serious; but you managed to come out of them in three years.If you ask me, you have come home quite early. It is not a long time. In fact, whenever you understand it, it is always early, because thousands of times, for thousands of lives you have heard it and you did not get it. You went on postponing, you went on forgetting.I was referring in a talk to a beautiful book, Waiting For Godot. The author certainly means waiting for God; but not to hurt anybody, he manages to create a fictitious name Godot. But reading the whole story – and it is a small piece – two persons are sitting underneath a tree, and they are saying, “He has not come, this is the time; he should have reached here by now.” They are getting worried and they are talking, and… And nobody says who this Godot is. Or when this Godot promised to come, or who has ever met him – nobody touches any sensitive points. It is taken for granted that Godot is coming. It is good when you have nothing to do, at least to wait – something is going to happen.I thought perhaps Godot may be the German word for God, so I asked my oldest German sannyasin Haridas, “Haridas, is Godot a German word for God?”Haridas said, “No.”I said, “What is German for God?”He said, “The German word is Gott!”And I said, “That is really German! Gott!”There is no question of getting it; in three years you gott it!

https://oshoworld.com/osho-audio-discourse-english-b/

Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 21 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I'm so glad and happy to be with you. My beloved master, I'm so grateful to you because you are still available to all of us who want to drink from your never-ending source. It's such a blessing to be showered from your love and compassion that I'll never find the words to say thank you for everything you have given to us.Soon I'll be back in that crazy world out there, where you will be present only in my heart. Sometimes I wonder if it's still worth it to work outside to spread your teachings; I wonder if you still have a design, a hope to do something about this crazy world, or if you just wish to stay with your sannyasins.Can you say something about this?The question has many questions in it. First, real gratitude can never find words to express itself. The gratitude that can find words to express itself is just a formality, because anything heartfelt immediately goes beyond words, concepts, language. You can live it, it can shine from your eyes; it can come as a fragrance from your whole being. It can be the music of your silence, but you cannot say it. The moment you say it, something essential immediately dies. Words can only carry corpses, not living experiences. So it is understandable that you find it difficult to express your thankfulness. It is not your difficulty; it is the difficulty of the experience of thankfulness itself. And blessed are those who have such experiences, which are beyond words. Cursed are those who know nothing except words and language.Secondly, you are saying that soon you will be going away from me and I will be only in your heart. If I am in your heart, there is no way to go away from me. You can go away from my physical presence, but my physical presence is no longer significant if you are already feeling my presence in your heart. You have become aware of my spiritual presence. The physical presence is only a triggering point – if it can lead you to the spiritual presence, its work is done. Now I will be beating in your heart wherever you are, it does not matter whether you are here or on a faraway planet.Love is the only phenomenon which destroys space, distance, time.The chemistry of love has not been understood yet. Physicists are concerned about space and time, and they have not yet come to understand the point that there is something more in existence, where time and space both disappear. Love is a phenomenon which knows no time, space, distance. Perhaps science will never be able to understand it. Perhaps it is beyond the scope of science. But it is not beyond the scope of poetry, of religion. It is not beyond the scope of meditation. It is not beyond the scope of every individual who is ready to dissolve himself into love. Science then remains a faraway echo, and love becomes the only reality.People like Shankara, Bosanquet, Bradley, were not talking nonsense when they said that the world is an illusion. The world consists of time and space – but these people tried to argue that the world is an illusion. They made a philosophical system propounding the illusoriness of the world. Their very effort confutes them – if the world is illusory, then what is the need to prove that it is illusory? If something is not, it is not. But if Shankara had to go out of this room, he would go through the door, not through the wall. The wall is real. If Bradley had to take his lunch, he would not eat stones. Because what difference can there be, when bread is illusory, and stones are also illusory? Both are illusions.These people were trying to prove something which they had not experienced in their own being. It was not the experience of love; it was mere logic. Hence, hundreds of philosophers have been trying to convince the world that all is illusory, but nobody is convinced. Even they themselves are not convinced.I am reminded of a story:One Buddhist philosopher was brought to the court of a king. People said that he was one of the greatest logicians they had ever heard about. And he propounded the theory that everything is illusory, all is made of the same stuff that dreams are made of.But the king was a very pragmatic, practical man. He said, “Wait. Announce that all people should go into their houses and close their doors, shops should be closed, because our mad elephant is going to come out on the road.” And this Buddhist philosopher was left standing on the road, and he was crying and weeping and shouting, “Save me! Nothing is illusory – at least this elephant is not illusory.” And the elephant was really mad.Seeing his condition…the elephant was stopped from attacking him. The philosopher was brought back to the court and asked, “Now what do you say about your philosophy?”He said, “Everything is illusory.”The king said, “And the elephant?”He said, “The elephant is illusory, the philosopher who was crying and weeping is illusory, and the king who has saved him is illusory – everything is illusory. But please don’t put me out there again – because it is a philosophy. I am ready to argue, but you cannot argue with a mad elephant. If you have any philosophers, bring them and I will prove that everything is illusory.”These philosophers were saying something which has a piece of truth in it. But they were trying to prove it. That’s where they went wrong. Love cannot be proved. It can be only be experienced. And in love, all that consists of space and time appears to be made of the same stuff as dreams are made of. It is not an argument, not a philosophy.You can sit close to a person, your bodies are touching and yet you can be hundreds of miles away from each other. You can be hundreds of miles distant from each other, and yet love can bring you so close that you can melt into each other. So remember, if you feel me in your heart, then I am coming with you. Wherever you go, I am coming with you – and without a ticket, because they have not yet found a way to know whether a person is traveling with someone hiding in his heart.Thirdly: the world is certainly crazy. And it is not that it has suddenly become crazy – it has always been so. I am not a pessimist; neither am I an optimist. I am simply a realist. I know that it is impossible to change this whole crazy world. Even if I can change my people, my sannyasins, that is hoping too much.So I don’t want you to become a missionary, making efforts to change the crazy people. Change yourself, and help the fellow travelers, the sannyasins who are on the same path, in the same search – encourage them, help them in every possible way. There are moments of darkness, there are moments of discouragement, there are moments one feels perhaps he should not have chosen this path because it goes against the whole crazy world. To be sane in this insane world you are bound to be against it. So help those few people who are moving toward sanity, and never ask for the impossible. This is possible: to change a few thousand sannyasins around the world. And perhaps if a few thousand sannyasins are changed, that may create a certain magnetism, a certain gravitation, such that many more millions of people may be pulled into it.But you should begin with yourself. If you can change yourself, that is much, and if you can help those who are on the path, it is enough for your compassion and for your love. In the crazy world there are also many people who don’t want to be the way they are, they want to be transformed. And if you find someone who has a deep longing to be transformed, help him. But never impose yourself on anybody, because if somebody wants to remain insane that is his birthright. Don’t disturb him; he is already disturbed too much. Just leave him alone, and let him live his insanity. Bless him that: “Live it totally.” Perhaps by living insanity totally he may come out of it.The problem with insane people is that they are always living it partially, they are always repressing, they are always not doing what they want to do. If they are allowed total freedom, perhaps they may come out of their insanity. At least my people should give everybody freedom to be himself, without any judgment, without any condemnation, without calling him insane, without calling him a sinner, without sending him to hell. Just accept. A loving person accepts the other, as he is, without demanding any change.Osho,Once I was happily waiting to greet you on your way to Sanai Grove. I was joyfully dancing and singing.When you came closer, my body started moving with the movement of your hands; such weightlessness and joy exploding more and more beyond boundaries into vastness, and then falling into a deep, silent abyss inside myself.Afterward I felt grateful and so relieved; I had been looking for this experience by being with men, and it had happened through being with you.Is such great bliss or ecstasy or orgasm – I don't know what to call it – only possible with a master, or also with a man?The experience of ultimate blissfulness, ecstasy or orgasm has nothing to do with the other. It happens within you; the other is only an excuse. It can be the master; it can be anybody else.With the master it is easier, because with the master you don’t have any expectations. With any other man you have expectations. With any other man you want to dominate; with any other man your relationship is not a relaxed phenomenon. It has nothing to do with the man; it is your attitude, your approach that is decisive. If your relationship with the master is full of expectations, then this experience cannot happen. The experience can happen even with a tree, or even with the stars, or even just sitting alone in your room. It has nothing to do with anybody else. You have to understand it clearly: it is an explosion of joy within you.But sitting alone in your room is the most difficult, because you don’t have any excuse. You cannot even smile because you will think, “Am I going crazy? There is nobody and I am smiling.”I was waiting at a railway station. The train was due to come late in the night, and there were few other people. One man relaxing in an easy chair was attracting everybody’s attention because sometimes he would make gestures as if he was throwing something away, and sometimes he would smile and sometimes he would laugh, and the laughter would be so much that he would have to hold his belly, because the whole body was laughing.I was just sitting by his side. I didn’t want to disturb anybody – he was enjoying so much – but it was difficult to resist the temptation to know what was happening to the man. I asked him, “It is interference on my part, I am sorry, but I cannot resist anymore, and we have to sit here for a few hours more. What is going on? Sometimes you throw things away just by a gesture of your hand. And you make such faces, and sometimes you smile, and sometimes you have such a belly laughter that you have to hold your belly – and you are alone.”The man said, “I don’t tell the secret to anybody. But you have been sitting by my side for three hours, and I can understand how difficult it must have been for you to resist the temptation of asking. I will tell you the secret. Just come close.”So I went close. I pulled my chair close to him. And he said, “It is nothing special. I am just telling jokes to myself.”I said, “Jokes?”He said, “Yes, I am telling jokes, but sometimes old jokes that I have told many times start, so I throw them away. And sometimes the jokes are so juicy that I cannot contain myself from laughing loudly, but people are sleeping, and there are so many people, so I have to hold myself and my laughter. A few jokes are such they don’t create laughter, but just a very gentle smile.”I said, “You are a great man. You have found a great secret.”He said, “What do you mean by finding a great secret?”I said, “If everybody knew this secret, the world would be much nicer, less miserable; there would be more laughter, more joy. There is no need to wait for somebody else to tell you a joke. This is perfectly good – you tell a joke to yourself, and if you don’t like it you can simply throw it away. With somebody else telling a joke, if you don’t like it you still have to smile, you have to be a hypocrite. Deep down you are saying, ‘Rotten!’ but on the surface you are smiling and saying what a great joke it is. And you have found a tremendous freedom. You can choose your own jokes, and you can enjoy any juicy joke as many times as you want – you can start telling it again.”The scientists have discovered that all that happens to you happens in the centers of your brain. Excuses may be outside, but the real happening is in the seven hundred centers in the brain.One of the most important men of this century was Delgado. For his whole life he worked on animals and how their brains function. And he was surprised to find that what you call sexual orgasm – which the ordinary man finds to be the ultimate in pleasure – can be managed without anybody, you can do it alone. It has nothing to do with anybody else. You can keep just a small remote controller in your pocket…because there is one center that controls your sexual pleasure.Delgado was working on white mice. He had opened the brain of one mouse, and planted an electrode at the sex center in the brain. According to his findings, sex has nothing to do with your genitals. Sex is centered in the head – the genitals are only branches spreading out, connected to the center.He fixed the electrode to a remote controller, and as he would push the button the poor mouse would go into a thrilling experience, ecstasy, orgasm. Delgado could not believe it; it had nothing to do with the genitals, it was direct. Then he made a small machine with buttons on it, and trained the mouse to push the button if he wanted a mild orgasm, or if he wanted a very strong one, or if he wanted the strongest.And you will be surprised – even mice are not so stupid – when there is a choice, who will go for the mild orgasm? He had just to push the button and his whole body would go into a thrill. By his side was put his food, water, everything that he liked – but he was not interested in anything. In one hour he had six hundred strong orgasms – and of course he died, because you cannot survive that much, there is a limit to everything. Six hundred orgasms in one hour, ten orgasms per minute… And he forgot about drinking or food.Delgado says that whenever we think that our pleasure, our pain, our misery, our joy is dependent on somebody outside, we are wrong. Outside are only excuses. And this is the teaching of all the ancient mystics: that your bliss is within you, the kingdom of god is within you. There are different ways of saying it. Delgado speaks in scientific terminology. Jesus speaks in a religious way.You are saying that here with me, you feel ecstatic, orgasmic experiences. I want you to remember, I may be the excuse, but the whole doing is yours. You are absolutely independent. And it is better to remember it; then it can happen with any man, any tree, any beautiful sunset, any starry night, or just sitting silently doing nothing in the darkness of your room. You just have to find out what happens in you.You are focused on the outside; that’s why you go on missing what is happening inside. You think it is happening because of the master, so you are focused on the master. Then you become attached to the master – that becomes your slavery. When something like this happens, close your eyes and see what is happening within you, and soon you will find small clues: how it happens, in what situations. You were silent, you were relaxed, you were not thinking. Your mind was empty, and it came like a flood. Then try it alone.It is not happening with any other man because with any other man you are not silent. With any other man you are constantly quarreling, fighting, nagging. It is very difficult to find a woman who is not bitchy, and being bitchy do you think you will have ecstasy? You are bitchy, but the man will be the target. You think that he is the cause: why did he come late, where has he been?One day Mulla Nasruddin’s wife was crying. As I entered their house, she started crying even more loudly. I said, “What is the matter?”She said, “Now things have gone beyond control. This man” – and she pointed toward Mulla Nasruddin, her husband – “has been having affairs with women. There is no doubt about it, because many times I have found hairs on his coat, which are not his hairs – he is bald. The color is different.”I said, “Have you found any today?”She said, “Not today – that’s why I am crying, because today I looked minutely and found that there was no hair. It means he has started having affairs with bald women. This is too much; I cannot tolerate this. With women who have hair it is okay, but with women who are bald…”It is you who are finding things which can make you joyous, which can make you miserable. It was not happening with the man for a simple reason: first, you were always quarreling, always demanding. And these experiences are not such that they can be produced on demand: “Bring one ecstasy just now.” Nobody can do that except Delgado. But for that you will have to go through a small operation. In your skull he will make a small hole and put in an electrode. And he can give you a remote control – just a small size, you can keep it in your pocket. And there will be no need to ask anybody; you can give yourself as many orgasms as you want.But the danger is the same: what happened to the poor white mouse is going to happen to you, because the experience is so beautiful that you will not want to lose a single moment for anything else. Perhaps… The mouse is a small thing, died in one hour; you may take twenty-four hours. But more than that, you cannot hope to survive. Man can survive in misery for seventy-five years, but in ecstasy… Seventy-five years in ecstasy? Impossible! Your organism is not made of steel. It will have a breakdown.I can provide you an atmosphere in which it is easier to move into such spaces. If you are intelligent, you will start looking inside yourself for why these spaces are happening. And you will start on your own, alone, so that you can have those experiences without me. If you are unintelligent, then you will start clinging to me, and that’s how so many people in the world are being exploited. If you go to someone and say, “It is because of you, master, you are the lord of my heart,” you are giving that man a chance to exploit you and others. Out of all the so-called spiritual teachers, masters, prophets, saviors, ninety-nine percent are simply frauds. But you are responsible. You have made them frauds.I don’t want anybody to cling to me, to be attached to me in any way. My whole effort is to give you total freedom, and methods so that whatever you want, you can create it within yourself. Not even God is needed; nothing is needed.You are enough unto yourself.This is the great blessing of existence to every human being. You are made with such perfection – but you never explore it, it remains dormant. Just become an explorer of your own interiority, of your own subjectivity, and you will find thousands of ecstasies, immense blessings, unimagined, undreamt of. You are a paradise, but have you forgotten yourself. You are looking everywhere except within you, and that is the only place where you are going to find the treasure, the truth, the beauty.Osho,In this phase of your work, are you giving the final touch to the painting of your whole life, for the transformation of the new human being?My work is not like a painter’s work. It is not that I can complete the painting; it is one long painting. And I will be giving touches to the painting even when I am breathing my last – still, the painting will be incomplete. In life, only mad people ask for perfection. The perfectionist is another name for someone who is getting ready to become mad.I was a guest in a maharaja’s palace, and the maharaja was showing me around – it was a beautiful palace. At a certain place he stopped and said, “Do you see?” There was a wall, incomplete. I said, “Why have you left it incomplete?”He said, “The palace was made by my grandfather, and this is the tradition in our family that nothing should be made perfect. Some imperfection should be left so that the coming generation remembers that life does not allow perfection.”Imperfection is not something bad. Imperfection is the root of all growth; perfection can only be death. Once something is perfect it is dead.The painting that I have started will remain imperfect, although I will go on trying to make it perfect, but it is the very nature of existence that it cannot be perfect. And it is not my painting.Those who are with me – it is as much their painting too. When I have gone, you have to continue to paint it. The painting has to go on growing new flowers, new foliage. Don’t let it be dead at any point. In other words, don’t let it become perfect. Make every effort to make it perfect, but don’t let it become perfect. Then there is tremendous beauty, and always flowing and growing, and there comes no full stop.In life we are always in the middle. You don’t know the beginning of life, you don’t know the end of life. We are always in the middle and everybody has always been in the middle. It is a process, an ongoing process, a river that goes on flowing. That’s the beauty of it, that’s the glory of it. And not only with the painting, with everything – remember it. Accept that imperfection is the rule, that something becomes perfect only when its death has come. To ask for perfection is to ask for death. Death is the full stop. In life you can use commas, semi-colons, but never a full stop.In one of the poems of Rabindranath Tagore… The critics all over the world criticized it because it suddenly begins and it suddenly ends; there is no beginning and no end. It seems as if it is a middle portion – something in the beginning is missing, something in the end is missing.And Rabindranath was asked, “You have been criticized but why are you silent?”He said, “Those people don’t understand life. Life is always in the middle, and my poetry represents life. Out of nowhere it begins, and suddenly it disappears and evaporates without giving you the feeling of completion.”But the mind is a perfectionist. Hence the mind always feels uneasy with the heart, with love, with life, with meditation, with beauty. With everything that grows, mind is always feeling uneasy. It is perfectly at ease with machines; they are complete. Machines are perfect.To me, imperfection is not something to be condemned; it is something to be rejoiced in, something to be appreciated, because it is the principle of life itself.Osho,A strange thing happened when I last saw you in discourse: looking at you, I felt as if I could not see you; I had to close my eyes to be centered again. And even then I cannot say I found you.Also, during the day when I go inside there is so much love and gentleness in being with myself. It is almost like where I used to find you before there is just a vast, loving space and it feels like me. You are somehow distant and cool. This puzzles me.Is something going wrong? – although I feel rich, and you are my most beloved master.There is no need to be puzzled. Nothing has gone wrong. Everything is as it should be. The more you love me, the closer you come to me, the more you will find I am disappearing. At a certain point, you will find that where I used to be there is only love, a fragrance, a presence. And the strangest thing is that it will feel as if it is your center, it is you. This is one way of coming close to the master.People are different. Somebody may have just the opposite thing: as he comes closer to me, he starts disappearing. And as he comes very close, he finds he is no longer. But it does not matter. The basic thing is that two are not allowed to enter into the door of heaven. The two should become one. Now who disappears and who remains is just a question of language, absolutely immaterial.And you are feeling love, you are feeling blissful, you are feeling rich, so certainly everything is going right. When things are going right, they give you indications. When things are going wrong, you are miserable, you are in despair, you are in anguish. There is no need to inquire, you can simply see your own state, and you can find out whether things are going right or wrong. If you are feeling loving, richer, fuller, contented, then everything is going right. You are blessed. And whether the master disappears in the disciple or the disciple disappears in the master is only a question of from where you are seeing it.My grandfather used to say… He was not educated; he was not a thinker. He was a very practical man. But once in a while he used to say things, just out of his practical life experiences, which had a tremendous validity. He was a cloth merchant. I used to sit by his side once in a while when he was dealing with customers – his way of dealing with the customers was strange. But they loved him; if he was not there they would ask “Where is he? When will he be here? – then we will come.”The first thing he would ask the customer was, “Do you want to be cheated? It is up to you. Do you want to pay the right price, or do you want to pay more? You can decide; just tell me. If you want to pay more, then haggling is going to happen. And remember one thing.”In my village there was a beautiful river, and very sweet watermelons used to grow by the side of the river. Moving around the world, I have never come across such sweet watermelons in my whole life. The watermelons were so sweet that the name of the river became sakkar, sugar.So he used to say to customers, “Listen, whether the watermelon falls on the knife or the knife falls on the watermelon, in each case the watermelon is cut. You are the watermelon; I am the knife. So what do you decide – haggling or no haggling? In haggling you will pay more. I know the exact price. I cannot go below that, above that I can say yes at any moment. But if you don’t want to be cheated, I will tell you the right price exactly. Just remember the watermelon and the knife.”So whether the disciple disappears in the master or the master disappears in the disciple, it does not matter, it is just the watermelon gone.And you are the watermelon and I am the knife. So enjoy, and feel rich. Everything is going right.Osho,When I sit in your lecture I feel your silence and feel I become part of it. This is a wordless process in melting more and more into silence.At the same time, there are words from you. I hear them, and suddenly a connection happens from the silence to the words, and I feel golden, golden gratefulness about your beloved, wonderful words. The silence and the words are one.Please can you say something about this process – if it is really possible that words can say the wordless.Yes, the word can say the wordless but only to the chosen few, only to those who are absolutely silent. The word coming out of silence carries around it the wordless silence. Now the question is at the receiving end. If it is received by a mind full of words and chattering, then the silence and the wordlessness is destroyed; you only hear the word. But if you are silent, you hear the word and you also hear the wordless; you hear the sound, and you also experience the soundlessness.In Mahavira’s life a strange thing is reported. It is very difficult to say that it can be factual, historical. Particularly in the outside world, it will look absolutely absurd and irrational. But here, I can tell you the story. And I can tell you that it may have happened – because it is happening here, so there is no reason why it could not have happened in Mahavira’s time. Time is irrelevant, but it can be told only to those chosen few people who have experienced something similar.It is said that Mahavira never spoke, although there are scriptures. But Mahavira never spoke, he just remained silent. He had eleven disciples who were deep in silence, and there was something transferred from Mahavira in silence to the disciples. And these eleven disciples have written the scriptures; they told the people what Mahavira was saying.So whenever it is said that Mahavira said this, remember, what he said is not a direct statement. Mahavira never spoke; he was silent. But something transpired between him and his chosen group of disciples, and those disciples became his spokesmen. They went around spreading his message.What is the guarantee that they heard the right thing? What is the guarantee that they did not imagine that they were hearing? What is the guarantee that they are not saying things of their own? There is a guarantee, and the guarantee is that all the eleven heard the same thing.All the eleven had to immediately write down what they heard, and because all eleven could not have imagined the same thing, it becomes an absolute guarantee: they have heard, silence has spoken to them. From silence to silence there has been a communion. The followers of Mahavira cannot prove this.I have asked many Jaina monks, “Can you prove this?”And they said, “Those were the days of truth, and this is the age of darkness. Now it cannot be proved; neither can it be experienced.”To them it is simply a belief, and most often they don’t mention it because it is embarrassing. If somebody raises a question, they don’t have the right answer.But in this mystery school it is happening, so there is no question of the story about Mahavira being a fiction. As my sannyasins are growing in silence, moving deeper into meditation – as their masks are falling down, as they are becoming more and more innocently connected with me – first it will happen that they will hear my words, and along with my words, the wordless message.And at the second step, there will be no need for me even to use the word. I can simply sit here, and you can hear the wordless message. And before I leave this body, I want it to become an existential experience not only to eleven people but to thousands of people. Only that can give credibility to Mahavira’s story. In twenty-five centuries Mahavira’s disciples have failed, they have not been able to bring any rationality, because it is not a question of reason, it is a question of meditation. And you will be surprised that Mahavira’s whole life is a life of meditation, and in Jainism meditation is simply forgotten. The whole religion has become a ritual.So it is true: you can hear the wordless side by side with my words. And soon you will be able to hear the wordless even without the words. And that day will be a day of great celebration – when I can speak to you without speaking. A silent meeting, a communion with no noise, a music with no sounds, nothing is said but everything is heard, understood, immediately experienced.Osho,German youngsters seem to contradict Nietzsche! I have read: “God is not dead, it's just that he can't find a space to park his car.” What do you think?The German young people are not wrong, neither are they right; they just don’t know the whole thing. Frederick Nietzsche is also in the same position – neither right nor wrong – because he also does not know the whole thing. He says, “God is dead.” That is true in a way, but the fact is God committed suicide. And why did he commit suicide? – because he could not find a parking place for his old, ancient Ford. So they are both right.It is that same old Ford – the bible describes it – that God used when he drove Adam and Eve out of the Garden of Eden. Drove in what? It was an ancient Ford model-T. And it must be somewhere in Mumbai, because I have been all around the world. You cannot find such ancient models as you can find in Mumbai. And the Indian government is very protective of ancient models; it does not allow new cars to come in, and it does not allow the old cars to go out. Mumbai is a great museum for old cars. If you search, you may find the first car in which God drove Adam and Eve. Where did he drive them? – to Victoria Station!

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 22 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,I am afraid to meet you. Trembling, shocked, alone – it means death.The meeting with the master has always been a kind of death: death to all that you have been, death to your past, death to your ego, death to your personality. But it is not only death, it is also resurrection, the birth of the new, the birth of the fresh and the innocent, a new sunrise on the horizon, a new unfolding of your being. But naturally, first you have to meet the death; you have to pass through it. Resurrection can only be afterward.Death is what you pay for your resurrection; hence, your question is significant.You are feeling afraid coming closer to me. This is not new. This has nothing to do with you or me. This is as old as man. The most ancient scriptures in the world are the Vedas. They describe the master as death – but a death which opens the door to the divine, certainly a death which happens only to the blessed ones. It is no ordinary death, it is not the death of your body; it is the death that transforms you. Everything remains the same – the body, the world – yet nothing remains the same because your vision, your perspective, your way of looking has gone through such a deep mutation that although superficially everything is the same, in depth everything has changed. You have entered a new dimension of life: the dimension of eternity, the dimension of ecstasy, the dimension which is beyond time and space.But this much courage is needed: you will have to come close to the master, you will have to go through this fire which burns only that which is false in you. Out of it, you come as twenty-four karat gold. The function of a mystic school is to encourage you: “You need not be worried. We have passed through the test; the fire is cool and the death is a blessing.”But if you don’t have any guts, then perhaps the time is not ripe for you, perhaps in some other life with some other master the death will happen. But why postpone? What is possible right now should not be postponed for tomorrow. Why remain in misery even for one day, even for one minute, even for one second?The death of the ego, the death of your personality, the death of all that you have been thinking about yourself, immediately opens a door. New flowers start blossoming, new songs start stirring in your heart, new dances. You don’t walk anymore, you simply dance; you fly. The ecstasy is such, the blissfulness is such…gather just a little bit of courage.Osho,You always said to us that we should rejoice in being alive, but deep in myself I found a very strong will to die – not that I want to commit suicide, but to die naturally.Somehow I know that by dying I might find that which I really enjoy, which is silence. I can say that I am utterly bored and fed up with this ugly world. There is nothing that makes me feel attracted to do anything other than being with you. Osho, what's wrong with me?Nothing is wrong with you. Everything is wrong with the world. It is only the retarded people who don’t feel bored. You are intelligent. You can see that there is nothing meaningful. Life is a drag, a repetition. There seems to be no adventure in it, no challenge; there seems to be no hope. Tomorrow will be again the same as yesterday.It is the prerogative only of human beings to get bored; no other animal gets bored in existence. Have you seen any animal in existence being bored? Boredom is a high quality of intelligence. It means you are perceptive; you can see that there is nothing but – finally – death. Empty handed you have come and one day empty handed you will leave, and all that happens in between birth and death is simply tedious. So I cannot say there is anything wrong with you.Every intelligent person thinks that perhaps what is not available in life may be available in death. Psychologists have found that almost every intelligent person at least once in his life thinks of committing suicide – he may not commit it, but the idea comes. Particularly in this century, the greatest philosophers: Jean-Paul Sartre, Jaspers, Martin Heidegger, Soren Kierkegaard, Marcel… Almost all the topmost thinkers of the contemporary world are agreed on one thing – they don’t agree on many things, but on one thing they are all in absolute agreement – that life is meaningless. And if this is so, then the question naturally arises, why go on living? If there is no meaning, no significance, then what is the need to be dragged from the cradle to the grave unnecessarily? This is the only contemporary philosophy: existentialism.There have been many philosophies born in different ages, but in this age there has been only one philosophy and that is existentialism. And its basic ground is so strange that one feels that all these people are mad. If they are not mad, then we are mad – there is no other alternative.The whole philosophical movement called existentialism talks about life as meaningless, accidental, there is no purpose behind it; it is full of anxiety and anguish – which are incurable. It is a nightmare. This is such a contrast.Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Nagarjuna and Bodhidharma – they talk of blissfulness, of tremendous possibilities of ecstasy, of growing into new dimensions of being. What has happened? Why this diametrical opposition?And Jean-Paul Sartre or Jaspers or Martin Heidegger are not unintelligent people; they are as intelligent as any Gautam Buddha. One thing is missing: they have depended only on reason. They are very rational people; they have completely forgotten the heart. They live in the mind and the mind is a desert. Nothing grows there – no flowers, not even an oasis. Modern man slowly, slowly has forgotten the language of the heart. The possibilities that open only through the heart have been completely forgotten. Only one thing has remained, and that is your reason, your rationality.And the trouble is, all that is beautiful belongs to the heart, all that is meaningful belongs to the heart, all that is significant is a fragrance of the heart.Reason is perfectly good as far as objects, dead objects are concerned; for scientific research it is the best instrument. For things, reason is the right method of discovery. But the moment the question arises about anything living, reason is impotent. And if you ask reason a question concerning life, love, peace, joy, blissfulness, it simply negates, as if these things don’t exist. It is almost like a blind man. If you talk about light to the blind man, he is going to say that there is no light. Because to see light… Your hands cannot do anything to see light, your ears cannot hear it, you cannot taste it, you cannot smell it. All your senses are perfect, but only eyes have the capacity to see light and colors and rainbows. Reason has a limitation. It is a perfect tool for dead things. And this is one of the mistakes of this whole century: we have been asking blind people about light, or asking the deaf about music.Asking reason about love, meaning, significance, ecstasy, is futile. Reason will simply say these things don’t exist – because reason has never come in contact with any of these things. Reason is not intentionally denying you anything, it is just not its capacity; you are stretching it beyond its capacity.It is good that at least in your life one thing is still significant: your love for me. But you cannot give any reason for it. Or can you? Is it something rational? Is there some arithmetic behind it, some scientific evaluation? Can your mind support it? It is not from the mind that you are related to me; it is that a part of your heart is still alive with me, is still dancing, is still singing. And that is the great hope: your heart is not dead; you have not completely denied it. This small loophole is enough. If I can enter through it, I can bring the whole of paradise behind me – don’t be worried.And you are such a nice man that you are not thinking of committing suicide. So there is time, you are waiting for a natural death. Don’t be worried. Before natural death, I will give you the taste of natural life. And once you are drunk with natural life, death disappears; you become part of an eternal flow of life, which knows no end. Every moment is a new discovery, every moment a new peak. Every moment you think, “What can be more than this?” – yet the next moment something more becomes possible. This is an unending process. Just let me in. And the way to help me is to meditate. Sit silently…Life is boring, so there is no harm in sitting with closed eyes, because there is nothing to see. Sit silently, peacefully. You have looked outside and you have found nothing but meaninglessness. Now give a chance to your inner world, look inward.And I promise you that the same eyes which have not found anything outside will find inside everything, a constant hallelujah.Osho,What is happening to me? I am opening more and more, and I have the feeling that the shadows in my body are gradually disappearing. When I close my eyes I can see more light in the body. It is so beautiful, and I feel so much for you – more than I ever felt before. Osho, can this be? Is this me? Why do these doubts still arise? Would you please comment?Whatever is happening is the deepest longing of every seeker. You are here only for this kind of happening. It is the beginning. In the beginning it is very natural; the mind will create doubts. There is no need to be angry with the mind; the mind cannot understand it, it is beyond the scope of the mind. And naturally the mind wants you to remain rational, reasonable, sane.The mind creates doubts for the simple reason that it wants to protect you. It is not against you, it is trying to protect you so that you don’t get into some crazy space. But it is only in the beginning that the mind creates doubts. And this is the time when the master and the school of the master helps you not to be bothered with what your mind is saying, but to explore the new that is arising.You are feeling light. All shadows are disappearing, and a luminous body is arising within you, a body of light. The mind can accept a skeleton; it cannot accept a body of light. The mind is very primitive; it still believes in matter. Physicists have come to the conclusion that there is no matter at all; only energy exists. But the energy particles are moving so fast that they create the illusion of solidness.It is just like a fan moving fast. You cannot see the three wings separately, it becomes a circle. If it moved with the speed of light, the way electrons move in a pillar, then you could sit on the fan and you would not fall, and you would not feel that something is changing beneath you and there are gaps. Because before you could feel the gap, the other wing of the fan would have come in and you would not feel anything, the fastness of speed would make it a solid thing. All that looks solid only looks solid. But mind is very primitive.The heart is neither primitive nor contemporary. The heart is eternal; it knows no divisions of time. So the heart can see the body of light without any doubt. In fact, that body is truer than the solid body that we see, because the body of light means the body of electrons, pure electricity.It happened after the Second World War: a soldier came back home. He had been away from home for five years, and naturally he was in a hurry to meet his wife. As he hugged his wife he got a shock – such an electric shock, he fell flat on the ground. He said, “My God, what has happened?”For five years the wife had been waiting and waiting and waiting with such intensity, her electric forces had been accumulating.Doctors were called. They could not even take her hand to check her pulse – immediate shocks. Then the electrician was called, hoping that something… Now it was no longer physical; something electrical had gone wrong. The electrician was very much afraid. He said, “First take this bulb in your hand.” He gave the woman a five-candle bulb to put in her hand, and the bulb lit up.That was the first happening of its type. The whole woman was throbbing with electricity. Because of her, research started into human electricity, and now it is an established fact that every human body has electricity.If your eyes are very perceptive, you can see the electric aura around the body. As you have seen around the photos of Nanak, Kabir, Krishna, Rama, Buddha – those circles around the faces are not fictions, they are not the imaginations of the painters; they have been seen by disciples, by meditators.And now in the Soviet Union, there is a photographer who even takes photographs… He has developed very sensitive plates. His name is Kirlian, and because of his name, his photography has become known as Kirlian photography. He has become world famous. If he takes your photo, it will not just be you but also surrounding your whole body will be an aura of light. And strangely enough, if somebody’s hand has been cut off in an accident and Kirlian takes a photograph, the hand is not there in the photograph but the aura of the hand is still there. The electrical body is still intact – nothing has been disturbed, only the physical part has dropped. One of your fingers has been cut off for some reason, some accident; but in the photograph four fingers will show a darker photo of the physical finger with a lighter shade around it, and one finger will be simply the lighter electric shade. But the shade will still be there.And this is not only with the human body. A roseflower… You can pluck a petal and Kirlian can say which petal has been taken out – his photograph will show the missing petal’s electric aura.So what is happening to you is that as you become silent, you start becoming aware of your inner being, which is surrounded by light. The ancients have called it the astral body, the body of light, the body made of starlight – that is what astral means. Just remember that it is not in the area of mind, and tell the mind, “This is none of your business. Do your thing.”And there are many more things. Existence is not limited to the mind; it is far bigger, far more mysterious. You have all the possibilities that any mystic has ever experienced anywhere in the world, but you will have to silence your mind; otherwise those doubts can go on disturbing you.That’s why my insistence is: before entering the mysterious world, first silence the mind. Discipline the mind for silence, for no-thinking, so that when you enter the mysterious world the mind does not come in the way, does not raise awkward questions which you cannot answer, and which even if you answer, the mind cannot understand.Mind has a limited scope. It is a bio-computer. It is not your whole being. The heart is far bigger. And beyond the heart is your being, which is bigger than the heart. And beyond your being is the universal being – which is infinite. To enter into these mysteries you will need a silent mind that does not disturb you.Osho,Lao Tzu described buddha nature to be more like a woman than a man – which makes the story of meeting the buddha on the path and killing him highly suspect.In other words, suppose I meet her on the path? Osho, this surely spells trouble. Any suggestions?Milarepa, as far as you are concerned, if a buddha – as a woman – meets you on the way, your job is easier. You are a great ladykiller. So kill her lovingly – what is the problem in it? Lao Tzu has made things very easy for you.It is true that all great qualities are feminine – love, compassion, sympathy, kindness. All these qualities have a flavor of the feminine.There are male qualities, qualities of the warrior, courage. They are hard qualities; one has to be like steel. This is because man’s qualities have developed through war, and female qualities have developed at home, in the garden of love, with the husband and children – she has lived in a totally different world. Man has lived continuously fighting. In three thousand years there have been five thousand wars on the earth – as if killing is man’s only profession.Just the other day, Nirvano showed me a photograph of Ronald Reagan kissing his wife. The way he is kissing her, it looks as if he will kill the woman! That photograph should be enlarged and hung everywhere all over the world – because he looks exactly like a chimpanzee. Even kissing has some violence in it – perhaps it is nuclear kissing.The world has lived in two parts. Man has made his own world while the woman has lived in a shadow – she has created her own world in the shadow. It is very unfortunate because a man or a woman, to be complete, to be whole, must have all the qualities together. Both men and women should be as soft as a rose petal and as hard as a sword, both together. So whatever the opportunity and whenever the situation demands it… If the situation needs you to be a sword, you are ready; if the situation needs you to be just a rose petal, you are ready. This flexibility between the rose petal and the sword will make your life richer.And it is not only between two qualities; it is between all the qualities. Man and woman are two parts of one whole; their world should also be one whole, and they should share all the qualities without any distinction. No quality should be stamped as feminine or masculine. When you make somebody masculine that person loses great things in his life. He becomes juiceless, he becomes stale, he becomes hard, almost dead. And the woman who completely forgets how to be hard, how to be a rebel is bound to become a slave, because she has only soft qualities. Now roses cannot fight with swords, they will be crushed and killed and destroyed.A total human being has not been born yet. There have been men and there have been women, but there have not been human beings. My whole approach, Milarepa, is to bring the whole man to the earth, with all the beautiful qualities of woman and with all the courageous, rebellious, adventurous qualities of man. And they should all be part of one whole.But from the very beginning we start telling children… A small boy, if he wants to play with toys like girls, we immediately stop him: “Be ashamed of yourself; you are a boy, you are a man, don’t be girlish.” And if a girl tries to climb a tree we stop her immediately: “This is not ladylike, climbing a tree, this is for the boys, rough. Just come down!”From the very beginning we start dividing man and woman into parts. Both suffer – because climbing a tree has a joy of its own, no woman should miss it. To be on top of a tree when the wind is strong, in the sun, with the birds singing… If you have not been to that point, you have missed something – and just because you are a woman. Strange!To be adventurous – to climb the mountains, to swim the oceans – should not be prevented just because you are a woman, because that thrill is something spiritual. A man should not be prevented when he wants to cry. He has been prevented, he cannot bring tears – tears are only for women: “You are a man; behave like a man.” And tears are such a beautiful experience. In deep sadness or in great joy, whenever something is overflowing, tears give expression to it. And if tears are repressed, at the same time what they were going to express – the deep sadness or the great joy – is also repressed. And remember perfectly well that nature has not made any difference. It has given man and women the same tear glands, of equal size. But if you are a man and you are crying, then everybody condemns you, as if: “You are behaving like a woman.”You should say, “What can I do? Nature itself has given me tear glands. Nature is behaving like a woman. It is not my responsibility; I am simply enjoying my nature. Tears are my right.” All qualities should be available to everybody.There are men who become incapable of love because they are trained for certain qualities: “You have to be hard. You have to be competitive. You are not to show emotions. You must not be sentimental.” Now how do you expect a man who is not emotional, not sentimental, who is not allowed to feel, how can you expect him to love? And when he misses love, his life becomes miserable. And the same is happening on both sides.I would like all distinctions to disappear. Everybody should be allowed everything that is naturally possible to the person whether he is a man or a woman.And we would have a richer world consisting of richer people.Osho,May I ask you a Tibetan question? Lord Buddha's third body has now disappeared into you. Is it not called the mental body? Does it mean that the whole mental heritage of Buddha, all his teachings of meditation and initiation – his whole system – has dissolved into you? Does it also mean that you free this earthly globe from all systems, by swallowing them into your love and friendliness?Please tell a joke. Jayesh is going mad!First, Jayesh, the third body does not mean the mental body. The first body is the physical body. The second body is the mental body. The third body is the astral body. One becomes enlightened when one transcends the mental body. The astral body consists only of pure light, just a flame with no smoke around it.Secondly, you are right: I am ready to take all the poison in the world that is driving people crazy and to drink it – because that poison cannot make me crazy. I can relieve people of their poisons: their theologies, their religions, their political ideologies. These are all poisons, and since the beginning they have been driving mankind into constant madness. Christians killing Mohammedans, Mohammedans killing Hindus, Hindus killing Buddhists, it goes on and on, atheists killing theists, theists killing atheists. It seems we don’t want anybody in this world to be free – at least free to think.In the Soviet Union, my sannyasins are being persecuted, they are being continually harassed by the government. They have done no harm. Just their being related to something which is not communism, is enough to freak the communists out: Communism should be the only religion in the Soviet Union.Communists don’t understand anything of what I am saying; they don’t understand that my atheism is far more refined than their Karl Marx or their Engels or their Lenin; than any of their atheism is. They don’t understand that I am for an authentic communism in the world. And in the Soviet Union there is no communism.Yes, the capitalists are no longer there and now poverty has been distributed equally. I am not in favor of poverty. I want richness to be distributed equally – not poverty. And the basic idea in communism was to create a classless society – which has not happened. There are no more capitalists, but the people who are in power have become the new class, the power elite. Capitalists have never been as powerful anywhere in the world as the power elite are in the Soviet Union. And it is now sixty years, seventy years after the revolution. The same group of people is running the country; no new blood can enter the power class. And they want to overrule the whole world.And America’s intention is the same: to destroy freedom, to destroy individuality and to create an indirect imperialism all over the world. They have almost succeeded.I would like to take all these ideologies away and make people free of their cages, give them their wings again, give them their sky back. So you are right. That has been my effort my whole life. And to my last breath I will continue to do the same: to free people from Hinduism, from Mohammedanism, from Christianity, from Judaism, from communism, from fascism, from nationalities, from distinctions and discriminations of man and woman, black and white.How much insanity have we been carrying on our shoulders? Because of that burden we cannot grow. I would like everybody to be unburdened completely. I understand Jayesh. He is saying that he is going mad…because for almost three months he has been away from me. His has been a strange story.He was a successful businessman; then he got tired. He heard about me, read about me and came from Canada to be with me in the commune in America with great expectations that: “Now I will be sitting and meditating.”And the next day he was arrested with me, and we were behind bars.He told me, “Osho, this is too much. I came to meditate, but in a way I am fortunate that from the very beginning I am with you. Although it is jail, it does not matter.”And then he was with me all around the world, being deported from this country to that country.For three months he has been away, working for me. Certainly he must be going mad because he has been trying to find headquarters for me. He works to the last – everything is complete – and then at the very end American pressure comes in. Because the American spies are continually surrounding him. The American ambassador is continually watching every move.At the last moment, as they are going to sign an agreement that I can have a commune in their country, the phone rings and the American president himself is on the phone. And such blackmail! He threatens that: “If you allow Osho to remain in your country more than thirty-six hours then you will have to return all the loans that you have taken in the past” – which means billions of dollars. “And if you cannot return them, then your interest rate will be doubled. Secondly, whatever loan agreements there are for the future” – which are again for billions of dollars – “are canceled immediately. You can choose, you are free; you can choose Osho or you can choose American loans.”Naturally no country is in a position… They have to drop the whole idea.Jayesh has been working, working, working for almost the whole year. It takes a month or two months to negotiate with the politicians and everybody, and when the final decision is about to be taken then immediately American pressure comes in. And it is not pressure, it is simply blackmail; it is threatening them that “We will kill you.”And certainly a country will be killed – it cannot pay the loans, and it has all its future programs based on the loans that America is going to give. All those programs: bridges will remain half built, hospitals will remain half built, and there will be such a great unemployment that the whole economy will flop. This is economic imperialism: on the surface politically you are free, but deep inside you are not free, nobody is free.Naturally he needs a joke after three months, just to give him a laugh.Jayesh, I have heard that a certain man, Reagy – no relation to Ronald Reagan – worked in a circus, and he was the elephant trainer. He trained the elephant so that on his order, the elephant would raise one of his legs up. Then he trained him to raise up two legs and then he trained him to raise up three legs. And he was such a perfectionist that he was trying to train the poor elephant to raise all four legs up, until he realized it seemed difficult, that it was impossible, it could not happen.So he had a great idea: he declared in the newspapers that, “Anybody who can come and make my elephant raise all four of his legs simultaneously, I will give him a ten-thousand-dollar reward. Entry fee is one hundred dollars.”Many people came and lost their one hundred dollars. How can the elephant raise. They tried persuasion, hypnosis, meditation – nothing worked.And Reagy was very happy; he was collecting money.And then one day a blue convertible car came in, and a small man came out. And he said to Reagy, “Are you the man who is going to give me ten thousand dollars if I can make your elephant raise all four legs simultaneously?”He said, “Yes. But before that you will have to give me one hundred dollars as an entry fee.”He gave him one hundred dollars, went back. From the back of the car he pulled out a steel rod.Reagy could not imagine what he was going to do. People had come who had tried yoga who had tried all kinds of things. “What is he going to do?” He waited.First the man went in front of the elephant and looked into its eyes. Then he went to the back of the elephant and gave it a good hit in the balls. The elephant jumped with all four of its legs.Reagy was in tears. He had accumulated only eight thousand dollars! And this man cheated! He had to give him two thousand dollars from his own pocket. The man took ten thousand dollars away.Then Reagy saw how to get those ten thousand dollars back.Elephants are known to move their heads up and down, but they are not known to move their heads from side to side.So he declared in another advertisement: “I will give ten thousand dollars to anybody who can make my elephant move his head from side to side.”Again people started coming for a hundred dollar entry fee. Again Reagy was very happy: people were coming – yogis, Taoists, Zen masters, all sorts of magicians – but nobody could manage it, he would only move his head up and down and they would lose their hundred dollars.Then suddenly one day that blue convertible car came back again and out came the small man. And Reagy started to tremble that: “This man… Now let’s see what he does.”He said, “Are you the man who is going to give ten thousand dollars if I can move your elephant’s head from side to side?”He said, “Yes, but first…one hundred dollars!”The man gave one hundred dollars. Then he went behind the car and took out the rod.Reagy said, “This idiot…with that rod again? How can he make his head move from side to side?And the man came to the front of the elephant carrying the rod, he looked into his eyes and said, “Do you recognize me?”And the elephant said, “Yes.”The man said, “Do you want the experience once more?”And the elephant said, “No.”And he asked for another ten thousand dollars!

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 23 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Today, after a year, I am coming to see you, to be with you. And since I awoke this morning I have been aware that my heart is beating harder and quicker than usual, and that there is a hollow, stage fright feeling in my belly. Tears are close to my eyes, but there is no sadness. On one hand I can see it as fear, nervousness. On another it is excitement, anticipation, and on yet another it is energy, pure and simple – life, pulsation.Beloved friend, it certainly doesn't feel to be a problem, but could you speak about the phenomenon of the disciple coming closer to the physical body of the master?There are very few moments in man’s life more magical than the feeling of love and trust from a disciple toward the master. It is a relationship not of this world, because it is a ladder to the beyond.Coming closer to the master certainly gives a new pulsation to the life energy, to your receptivity, to your openness. It gives you a dance; your heart starts singing a song. It is a moment of rejoicing. It is the same moment as when a river comes to the ocean, dancing, to disappear into the ocean – but the disappearance is only from the side of those who are standing on the bank. To the river itself, it is becoming bigger, vaster, oceanic.Coming closer to the master is a way of becoming a master – and what can be more rejoicing, more joyful?There are many kinds of love, but the love that exists between the master and the disciple is the purest, unpolluted by any expectations, by any demands, by any conditions. The master accepts you as you are, with no desire to make something else of you. You love the master because he gives you, for the first time in your life, in all your relationships, freedom to be yourself, without fear, without guilt. Your experience is natural.It has happened to every disciple, it is a cosmic experience. But it cannot happen if you are only a student. If you have come here only to learn, to accumulate knowledge, then this kind of miracle is not possible. If you have come here to expand your consciousness, to make your being more integral; then you have not come to increase your knowledge but to be reborn. You have come to become a child again; you have come to get back the purity, the fragrance, the beauty of your innocence.I am not a teacher, and this is not a place where knowledge is important. I am just a presence to inspire in you that which is dormant, to allow you to recognize yourself. I am not here to impose any religion on you. I am here to make you completely weightless – without religion, without ideology – just a profound silence, a serenity, a depth, a height that goes to the stars.This is a place of a master, and the function of this place is magic – not ordinary magic, but magic that creates Gautam Buddhas. And naturally, when you are coming out of your darkness toward the light of becoming a Gautam Buddha, it is impossible not to be thrilled, not to be ecstatic, not to be in a dance.If you are alive, stars will be born out of you, flowers will be blossoming in you. But if you are dead, as most of the people on the earth are, then nothing will happen to you. Nothing happens to the dead.There is a beautiful story in Mahavira’s life: Mahavira went to Vasali, one of the great cities in those days. In Vasali there was a great thief. He had only one young son whom he was training in his art. He said to him, “Listen, you are free to do everything, but don’t go close to that man Mahavira. I am a master thief, but I also avoid him, because that man is dangerous. Something magical surrounds him, and once you are caught in it there is no way out. So remember, go everywhere else, but avoid the campus where Mahavira is staying.”The son was very obedient. He avoided Mahavira’s campus for many days, but the temptation was natural: here is a man who his father fears so much that just to be close to him seems to be dangerous. It is worth testing. So one day he went just a little closer to the campus – not inside the grove where Mahavira was staying with his ten thousand disciples, but outside the grove. And he heard only one sentence. Mahavira was saying that in paradise, the angels and the female angels are tremendously beautiful, but just one thing is wrong: their feet are pointing in the opposite direction. The angels are going one way, but their feet are going in the opposite direction.Being afraid that his father might come to know, the boy escaped. But he thought, “There was no danger there, and Mahavira was just telling a fictitious story.” But that same night he and his father were both caught stealing. It was impossible to get any information from the father; hence, the king said, “Don’t bother about the father, concentrate on the son. There is a possibility that we may be able to find out all the information that we need.”And the strategy was that he was given intoxicating drugs, so he slept for hours, completely unconscious. He was taken to the most beautiful room in the palace, and all the beautiful girls were serving him, bringing food, drinks. As he came back to consciousness, he thought, “My God, I am dead. I am in paradise. This is the paradise that fellow Mahavira was describing, and the girls are really beautiful. Everything is great.”But then he looked at their feet, and immediately he understood that there was some conspiracy: “This is not paradise, because their feet are just like our feet.”The women tried in every way to persuade him, “You are dead and you are in paradise.” And they were saying, “This is just the reception. Before you enter the permanent paradise, you have to tell everything about your life. This is the rule. Everything will be written, recorded, and then you will enter permanent paradise.”They wanted him to confess all the sins that he and his father had been committing, all the thefts, murders, and things for which they had never been caught. But now he would simply smile.He said, “Forget all about it; I have heard from Mahavira himself. Your feet have given me the clue that this is the palace of the king. And this is a strategy. Tell your king to try to befool somebody else. I am a disciple of Mahavira.”They said, “Strange. When did you become a disciple of Mahavira?”He said, “Just passing by I heard one sentence, and that one sentence has saved me today.”And because there was no proof, finally they had to be released.He told his father, “I am not going to listen to you at all. If I had not disobeyed you and had not listened to Mahavira, we would both be hanging on the gallows; just one sentence – and that too, a small part of a story – has saved me. I am going to the man. His magic has caught me.”He became a great disciple of Mahavira.He said, “You have saved me. Now give me a new life, because I don’t want just to be saved and continue to be a thief and a murderer. It was good that I was caught, a discontinuity has happened. You start my life from scratch; accept me as a child.”Coming to the master is coming in search of your innocence, in search of your lost childhood, in search of your originality, in search of your individuality, in search of freedom.Osho,One day – it was Friday, when orthodox Jews are preparing for the sabbath – a man who didn't like Jews met an orthodox rabbi on the street. In an attempt to torment him, he asked him to express the entire philosophy of Judaism while he stood on one foot.The rabbi stood on one foot and said, “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. That is the law – the rest is commentary.”If I were to be met by a tormentor and asked to stand on one foot and explain in one sentence what your teaching is, would I be correct in saying that it is freedom from suppression?It will not be so easy. First, you don’t know the name of the rabbi. His name was Hillel. He is the most famous Jewish philosopher, and he certainly condensed the whole philosophy of Judaism into a single sentence.The incident is true. He was asked to stand on one foot and answer in the shortest way what the essence of Judaism is. And what he said is beautiful, but not without flaw. He said: Do unto others what you would like to be done to you by them. This is the essence of Judaism; the rest is commentary. All great scriptures of the Jews, the Torah, the Talmud, are all just commentaries on the single, small, seedlike statement: Do unto others what you would like to be done to you by them.As far as Judaism is concerned, no Jewish thinker has raised any suspicion about it. Neither has any non-Jewish philosopher raised any question about it. But I am more concerned with human reality than just with philosophical arguments. And looking at human reality, the statement is not correct, because my taste and your taste may be different.To do unto others what you would like to be done to you by them can be right only if everybody’s taste is the same. And that is not the case. For example, somebody is a masochist; he likes to be beaten, he likes to be tortured. Now what should he do with you, torture you? According to the principle, he should beat you, he should torture you, because that’s what he wants you to do to him.Perhaps Hillel or the Jewish philosophers were not aware that there are people who love to be tortured and there are people who love to torture. It is the latest contemporary psychological insight that there are sadists who like to torture, and there are masochists who like to be tortured; hence, it is said that the best couple in the world would be if by chance a sadist and a masochist get married. Then they are living in paradise, because one wants to be tortured and the other wants to torture. Both are enjoying.But it is very difficult. No astrologer thinks about it, no parents think about it. In fact, whether somebody is a sadist or a masochist is not considered at all when people are thinking about marriage. Before you fall in love, remember the first basic inquiry: if you are a sadist, then find a masochist; if you are a masochist, find a sadist. The best places to find such people are the offices of psychoanalysts. Just sit outside there; you will find all kinds of people. But this statement will not be applicable.And you want to know if somebody asks you about my philosophical standpoint… It is not going to be that easy, because I see man as a multi-dimensional being. You will be able to state it standing on one foot, there is no need for sentences, but you will have to state ten non-commandments.The first: freedom.The second: uniqueness of individuality.The third: love.The fourth: meditation.The fifth: non-seriousness.The sixth: playfulness.The seventh: creativity.The eighth: sensitivity.The ninth: gratefulness.The tenth: a feeling of the mysterious.These ten non-commandments constitute my basic attitude toward reality, toward man’s freedom from all kinds of spiritual slavery.Osho,At Rajneeshpuram in 1983 something from the beyond entered into me. Since then I have not been the same person anymore. My old goals and desires have faded away. Things which were meaningful to me before, have lost their importance.But when I talk to people about meditation, silence, and what keeps us away from it, a great new energy and clearness starts rising in me. Every cell of my body becomes alive. I myself become a listener to what is said through me, and I feel grateful and very loving toward the people with whom I can share.Beloved master, have I become a flute, an instrument for the beyond? Or is my ego playing a horrible joke on me? Please comment.It certainly has changed your life. You have become a flute to the divine – because if it was a projection of the ego, the ego would not have allowed you to ask the question. And the ego never becomes a vehicle, a medium, a flute. It is not a hollow bamboo. The ego is very solid, does not allow itself to be used by higher forces. It can exist only in the very mundane world. To allow the higher forces means you are entering into the sacred, going beyond the mundane. The ego cannot go outside the mundane world. And its very fabric is to praise itself, to brag about itself even when it is not valid.For example, poetry descends in you but the ego grabs it and proclaims to the whole world, “I have written it.” No great poetry has been written by any ego; nothing great can come out of it. The great comes only when the ego gives way, when it is not obstructing, when it is absent, on leave.It is said about Rabindranath that whenever he wrote, he would close his door and inform the house that unless he opens the door, nobody is allowed even to knock on it. It was a big family. Rabindranath’s grandfather was given the title of raja by the British government, although he was not a king – but he was so rich and he had so much land that he could have purchased a few maharajas. His family was very big; almost one hundred members were living in the palace.And it was a very strange family. Rabindranath has written in his memoirs, “We have seen strangers coming into the family as guests and then never leaving. And my grandfather was such that he would say, ‘It does not matter. He must be some distant relative. Perhaps we have forgotten, he has forgotten, but destiny has brought us together. Let him live here.’”So the family went on growing. Anybody could come and say, “I am related to you, a far off, distant relation.” And he was received not only as a guest, but once he entered the house it was against the culture to ask him, “When are you going to leave?” It was not asked.It is not the culture of Mumbai. In Mumbai, the first thing people ask is, “When are you going to leave?” You have not even settled in the chair, your luggage is still in the taxi, and they are asking when you are going to leave – because tickets have to be advance-booked.Those were different days, and a different kind of people. So nobody ever asked when you were going to leave. And why should one leave? Living in the palace of a king, living like kings, every need was fulfilled.So a man used to go with a bell, all over the palace, announcing that nobody is to disturb Rabindranath. And all his brothers, his mother, father, grandfather, they were all concerned while he was inside his room – sometimes it would be three days, four days, and he had not eaten, he had not come out.They asked him, “What is the matter? You can come out, you can eat, you can go back again. Nobody is going to prevent you, nobody is even going to ask you any question.”Rabindranath said, “It is not a problem for me to come out. The problem is that when something is descending in me, if I leave the room just to take a shower or just to drink a cup of tea, the process stops. And it is not in my hands to start it again. Then I don’t know when it will start again; it is something falling upon me, falling through me. I am just a passage. I don’t want anybody to disturb me because I don’t want to disturb the process.” Every great poet, painter, singer, dancer has been aware of the fact that he has been great only in the moments when he has not been. It is not a contradiction.The greatest dancer of this age was Nijinsky. He went mad because he was born in the West; in the East, he would have become a Gautam Buddha. In the West there was no background to explain what was happening to him, and it was a weird experience. While dancing – once in a while when he would forget himself completely, would become so much absorbed in the dance that there was only the dance and no dancer – he would jump so high that it was against gravitation. No scientist had any explanation. Man cannot jump that high, it is simply not possible.And that was not the whole story. When he came back down… When anything is falling, the gravitation of the earth pulls it forcibly. But when Nijinsky came back down, he would come so slowly – just like a dead leaf falling from the tree, moving slowly, or like a feather. That was even more difficult to explain.And when people asked him, “What do you do?” he said, “Whenever I try to do it, it never happens. Finally I give up, and then one day suddenly it happens – but it happens only when I am not, when I am not the doer. It is something of the beyond.”So don’t be worried, if you are feeling silent, peaceful, loving. These are not the ways of the ego. The ego cannot feel silent, the ego cannot feel peaceful, the ego cannot feel loving. Your meditation has ripened. You have come to a maturity. Rejoice, and be grateful.Existence is very compassionate. If we are ready to open our hearts without holding anything back, then immense treasures become available to us.In the beginning such doubts may arise: “Perhaps it is ego.” Don’t give a place to such doubts. Remember, ego can create misery, ego can create anguish, ego can create hate, ego can create jealousy. Ego can never become a vehicle for the divine; it can never become the passage for the beyond.Osho,Why do I always compromise?One compromises because one is not certain about one’s truth, one is not certain about one’s own experience. The moment you have experienced something, it is impossible to compromise. There is no possibility at all. You compromise only because your idea is only a mind thing, a borrowed thought. You don’t know whether it is right or wrong, so even if half proves to be right, it is not a bad bargain.There is an ancient story in Egypt. Two women came to the court of the king with a small child. They contended, both of them, that: “The child belongs to me, he is my child.” And each woman was persistent: “The child is mine.”The king had to decide, and it was very difficult – how to decide? The husbands of both women had died in war, in the service of the king.Finally he asked his master, an old wise man. The master came and he said, “It is very simple. Bring the child.”The child was brought to the master, who asked the king to cut him in two, and give half to each woman. “What is the problem? They both say the child is theirs. There being no other evidence, no witness, justice demands that the child should be divided into two.”The king was shocked. He said, “What are you saying?”But before the king could say anything more, the master drew the king’s sword out of its sheath. And one woman ran forward and said, “No! Give the child to the other; he is not mine.”The master gave the child to the woman who had run forward and said he was not hers. The king said, “What is happening? I don’t understand. The woman is saying the child is not hers.”The master said, “Only the mother couldn’t stand to see the child cut in two. The other woman is withstanding it perfectly well, without any difficulty – if the child is cut in two, there is no harm; it is not her child. She is ready to compromise, even if half a dead child is given to her. But the other woman is not ready to compromise – either the whole child or no child.”When you have a truth, you are almost like a mother – you have given birth to an experience. Either you would like to have it totally, or you would not like to have it at all. But you cannot be ready to cut it in two, because any living experience cut in two becomes dead. All compromises are dead. Nobody in the whole history of man who has known anything about truth, has ever compromised. Rather, he has been ready to die for it.It happened with al-Hillaj Mansoor. His master Junnaid loved him very much – he was a man worthy to be loved – and he tried to persuade him for years, “In your room you can shout Ana’l haq – I am God – but don’t do that in the streets. You know that the people are fanatic, I also know the fact.”But al-Hillaj said, “You only know the fact. I have experienced it. You have compromised with the society; you are a respected teacher. I don’t want any respectability, but I will not hide my truth. Truth is like fire; you cannot hide it. I have to shout it from the housetops.”And in a Mohammedan country – where fanaticism is the rule, not the exception – he was immediately captured, and brought before the caliph because: “This is against our religion; there is only one God, and he is in the heavens. You are just a mortal being. Even Mohammed has not said, ‘I am God.’ He simply says, ‘I am the messenger of God.’ And you are saying that you are God. Are you mad? Either stop it, or death is the only punishment for it.”Al-Hillaj said, “Death is accepted, but I cannot compromise on this point. It is my experience: I am God. And I say you are also God – but your God is asleep and my God is awake.”Junnaid again came into the jail to persuade him, “This is foolish. You are such a beautiful young man, with a great future. You can become a great teacher. I know that what you are saying is right, but can’t you compromise?”Al-Hillaj said, “With all honor I want to say to you, you don’t know. That’s why you have compromised. You have heard; I have seen. You have read; I have been. Death does not matter, but compromise is simply out of the question.”And the day he was crucified, thousands of people came to throw stones, to condemn him. Junnaid also came; he loved him, al-Hillaj was his student, and Junnaid knew that he had immense possibilities of growth. And he had understood perfectly well that he himself was only knowledgeable, and al-Hillaj had experienced. But this is how compromise works.Everybody was throwing stones – not to throw a stone was to risk that people might think, “This man is in favor of al-Hillaj.” So he brought a roseflower so that when so many people in the crowd were throwing stones he could throw the roseflower; people would see that he had thrown something, but who knew that he had thrown the roseflower?The mind of compromise…nobody would suspect that he had not thrown a stone. So he was compromising on two grounds: one with the people, that he had thrown a stone…and he was compromising with al-Hillaj also. Because al-Hillaj must be looking out for Junnaid, to see whether he had come or not, and it would be very cowardly not to go.Al-Hillaj was smiling when stones were showering on him, hurting him, and blood was flowing all over the body. But when the roseflower of Junnaid hit him, he started crying. Tears came to his eyes.Somebody asked, “What happened? So many stones and you continued to smile, and somebody has thrown a roseflower and tears have come to your eyes.”Al-Hillaj said, “Yes, because the people who are throwing stones don’t know me. And the person who has thrown the roseflower knows me, knows my truth. But he is a coward, and I am ashamed that I have been a student of this man. Stones don’t matter. But this roseflower has hit me hard.”Compromise simply means you are on uncertain ground. Rather than compromising, find grounding, roots, individuality. Find a sincerity of feeling, the support of your heart. Then whatever the consequence, it does not matter. The man who knows, knows perfectly well that no harm is possible. You can kill him, but you cannot harm him. And the man who does not know is always trembling, always worried. In that worrying and trembling, that anguish, he goes on compromising with everybody – just to be safe, not to be harmed.But what are you trying to save? You don’t have anything to save. Those who have something to save don’t compromise.A man like Socrates was given an opportunity by the judges, that if he leaves Athens… He can live outside of Athens and in this way he can avoid the death penalty. Anybody would suggest that “This is a simple compromise, you can just live outside the boundary lines of Athens” – because in those days in Greece there were only city-states; every city was a state. Just outside the boundary you were outside the state. He could have lived almost in the suburbs. But men like Socrates are impossible.He said, “I would rather die than escape. And anyway, I am old. How long am I going to live? And if the most cultured city of these days cannot tolerate me, who is going to tolerate me? It is better to die in Athens than anywhere else – at least I have the consolation that I am being killed by the most cultured people.”The judges were really trying hard somehow to save him, because he had not committed any crime. It was just that the mob wanted him to be killed – he was corrupting the youth. Now, anybody who brings new thoughts to the world can be blamed because he is corrupting the youth – because he is bound to be against the old ideas, he is bound to fight against the old. You can call it corruption: “He is corrupting our tradition, our religion, our culture.”The judges said, “We have another suggestion: you can live in Athens, but stop talking about truth.”Socrates said, “You are asking me to do the impossible. I will speak about truth and truth alone until my last breath. Do you want me to start speaking lies? Do you want me not to speak at all? – that too is a lie, because I know the truth and I am not speaking it, and the lie is spreading in people’s minds. No, I will be here, and I will speak the truth. It is up to you – you can kill me – but no compromise on any ground.”Try to find your individuality, your integrity, and make the effort of not compromising, because the more you compromise, the less you are an individual. You are only a cog in the wheel, just a part in the vast mechanism, just a small part of the mob – not an individual in your own beauty, in your own right.I am absolutely against compromise. Death is far more beautiful than a life of compromise.This is a joke for my beloved master:It has always been one of the most profound questions throughout the ages: was Jesus Christ a Jew or not? Recently, scientists have made substantial progress toward finding the answer. The results of their research were first made public a few months ago.Jesus was a Jew for three important reasons:(1) He lived with his mother all his life;(2) His mother always called him ‘the best'; and(3) Starting out with a gift of just two pieces of wood, he managed to set up an international company.Jews have never been able to forgive themselves for crucifying Jesus, for the simple reason that he was their best boy. They could not conceive that he would create the greatest and the richest international company. Almost half of the population of the world is Christian.And he certainly created this whole big show out of two pieces of wood – that’s how the cross is made. I never call Christianity Christianity – I call it “crossianity” because it is really based on the cross. The findings seem to be perfectly true. And he created a company that has lasted for two thousand years and is still growing. And the commodity that he produces is invisible. As far as salesmanship is concerned, Jesus is the best salesman ever. His commodity is not great. Christianity is not a great religion; it is very primitive and third class, but he managed to sell the product to almost half of the world. And because the product is invisible, it is very difficult to decide its quality.I have heard that in a New York shop they were selling invisible hairpins for women, and women were certainly excited. Invisible hairpins! And they were charging a lot for nothing. One woman opened the box – of course you cannot see invisible pins – and she asked the salesman, “Are you sure that there are invisible hairpins in it?”He said, “Don’t be worried. We have been out of stock for almost three months, but they are still selling, so we have stopped purchasing, because there is no point. They are invisible – we cannot see them, you cannot see them, nobody can see them. And people are purchasing them, standing in queues for invisible pins.”God is an invisible commodity which you cannot see. Not for a few months, but for eternity it has been out of stock. Heaven and hell: all invisible things, and Jesus managed to create a bogus religion based on these things like God, heaven and hell. The religion has nothing in it.One can argue against Gautam Buddha. At least there is something in it – you may agree, you may not agree. But Christianity has nothing in it – you cannot even argue against it, it is simply baseless. It is a great hypocrisy. The pope, the archbishops, the bishops, the cardinals and the priests – none of them have experienced anything; none of them have ever said that they have experienced anything. And they are millions in number, and they are converting others to their religion. They don’t know anything of what religion is. Perhaps that’s why they have such a great appeal for all the idiots. The mediocre mind does not want to experience or even at least to be intelligently convinced. It simply wants to believe: the cheapest thing in the world. Christianity provides belief. You believe and you are saved. And who are these saviors?Just the other day, I was brought news from a monastery in Europe. It is an old monastery, and now it is divided into two parts. Half of the monks have declared that they are homosexuals – so they are worshipping separately and they have occupied almost half the grounds and the church. And you should not think that the other half are celibate; most probably they are not courageous enough to say what the other brothers have said.When I was in America, in Texas the government passed a law against homosexuality. Now, Texas is a backward state in America: homosexuality became illegal, criminal, and one million people protested against the law – if there are one million homosexuals in Texas, then what about California?In parliament in Holland they discussed why they have not allowed me entry into Holland. And the minister concerned said strange things… But nobody in parliament raised the question: “What nonsense are you talking?”One can understand… He said it was because I have been speaking against the pope. To speak against the pope is not a crime – in no country’s constitution, and in no country’s law is it a crime to speak against the pope. But it can be understood. Secondly he said that I have been speaking against Mother Teresa. But is this a crime?And thirdly – the most important – is that I have been speaking against homosexuality. Has the whole of Holland gone homosexual? Then change the name from Holland to “Homosexual-land” – because in parliament nobody raised the simple question that: “This is nonsense; we are not homosexuals.” They may be Catholics, they may believe in the pope…Christianity teaches celibacy, and celibacy is unnatural. It creates homosexuals, lesbians. And finally it has brought the disease AIDS, which is another name for death – because there is no medicine, no medical cure for it. The pope who served just before this pope was a world-famous homosexual. Before becoming a pope, he was the archbishop of Milan, and all of Milan laughed because he was continually moving around with his boyfriend. When he became the pope, he took his boyfriend to the Vatican; the boyfriend became his secretary. And everybody knew, the whole of Milan knew, the whole Vatican knew, but nobody raised the question. It seems Christianity has created the most unintelligent people in the world.I have heard…A man and woman were making love in their bed, and suddenly a car drove into the garage. The woman said to the man, “Wake up, wake up! My husband is coming; it is certainly his car. Just get in the closet.”So the man jumped into the closet.The husband came in; he had come just for half an hour because he was on his way to some other duty. And the man inside the closet heard a small voice. Somebody said, “It is very dark in here.”He said, “My God, who is there? Keep quiet!”The voice said, “Give me something.” So the man gave him fifteen dollars.The voice said, “I am going to scream.”He said, “You seem to be a very strange fellow,” and he gave him fifteen dollars more.The voice said, “No! It is so dark!” So the man gave him all he had, fifty dollars. He said, “This is all I have; now do whatever you want to do – whether it is dark or not, screaming or not, I don’t have anything more.”The next day, the boy said to his mother, “I want to purchase a bicycle.”The mother said, “Bicycle? But a bicycle costs fifty dollars at least.”He said, “Don’t be worried, I have got it.”She said, “Where did you get it from?”About that he remained silent.The mother said, “You will have to tell me where you got it from. Have you stolen it?”He said, “No, I have not stolen it. And I am not going to say where it came from. But it is certain that I have not stolen it, and my source of getting it is absolutely moral.”Mother said, “First go to the church and confess to the priest. If you cannot tell me, tell the priest where you got the money from.”So he went to the confession booth, and the priest came. The boy said, “It is very dark in here.”And the priest said, “You son-of-a-bitch! Don’t start it again!”

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 24 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Why can modern psychologists not think or write about, or even conceive of enlightenment? Is enlightenment a new phenomenon beyond their conception? Will they ever understand a phenomenon “beyond enlightenment”?Please comment.Modern psychology is in its very childhood. It is just one century old. The concept of enlightenment belongs to Eastern psychology, which is almost ten thousand years old. Modern psychology is just beginning from scratch, it is at the ABC stage. Enlightenment and beyond enlightenment are the very end of the alphabet of human endeavor: XYZ.Modern psychology is a misnomer because the word psychology originates from the word psyche. Psyche means the soul. The exact meaning of the word psychology would be the science of the soul. But it is a very weird word. Psychology denies the existence of the soul and still goes on calling itself psychology. It accepts only the physical body and its byproduct, the mind. As the physical body dies, the mind also dies; there is no rebirth, there is no reincarnation. Life is not an eternal principle, but just a byproduct of certain physical material things put together.You have to understand the word byproduct. Even the idea of a byproduct is not very original. In India, there has been a school of materialists, at least five thousand years old, called charvakas. They describe mind as a byproduct of the body. Their example is very fitting. Remember, it is a five thousand year-old example. We can find modern contemporary parallels to it. In India you must have seen people chewing betel leaves, pan. It consists of four or five things – the betel leaf and three or four things more. You can eat them separately and they will not give the color red to your lips; but if you eat them together they will create the color red as a byproduct. That red color has no existence of its own, it is a byproduct.In a contemporary example, look at a watch working.I have heard that Mulla Nasruddin when he retired, was presented with a gold pocket watch by his friends. It was automatic, and from the very beginning he was surprised; he thought what a miracle it was that it went on and on. But after three or four days it stopped. He was very much surprised, what had happened?When it stopped he opened it up and found a small dead ant inside.He said, “Now I know the secret! This ant is the driver, and now he’s dead how can the watch continue? But those idiots should have told me that there is a driver! – it needs food, it needs water. And sometimes you even have to change the driver!”When a watch is running, and if it is automatic, what makes it tick? Is there some immaterial entity like a soul? Open the watch and take the parts apart, and you will not find any soul. That’s what charvakas said five thousand years ago: that if there is a soul, then cut a man open and you should find it. Or when soldiers are cut open in the war – so many souls would be flying upward. Or when ordinarily a death happens in your house naturally, the soul must leave the body.Charvakas were very stubborn materialists. In five thousand years, materialism has not gone even a step further than charvakas. They weighed a dying person, and when he was dead they weighed him again and the weight was the same – it proves that nothing left the body. Then what was ticking in the body? It was something – a byproduct of the constituents of the body. And the materialists of all ages – Epicurus in Greece, Karl Marx and Engels in Germany and England – continued to repeat the same idea: that consciousness is a byproduct. And modern psychology has accepted it as their basic foundation: there is no soul in man; man is only a body.Joseph Stalin was able to kill almost one million Russians after the revolution. Anybody who was unwilling to give up his rights to his property was killed mercilessly. The whole family of the czar which had ruled for hundreds of years – one of the oldest empires in the world, and one of the biggest – nineteen persons in that family were killed so mercilessly that they did not even leave a six-month-old baby, they killed that baby too. Killing was easy because of the philosophy, nothing is killed; it is almost like breaking a chair. Otherwise it would be difficult for any man to kill one million people and not feel any prick in his conscience. But the philosophy was supportive of all these murders – because nothing is murdered, only the physical body. There is no consciousness, which is separate from the body.Modern psychology is still behaving stupidly because it is still clinging to the five thousand year-old primitive idea of charvaka, that consciousness is a byproduct. Hence, all that modern psychology can do is a mechanical job. Your car is broken down. You go to the workshop and a mechanic fixes it. The psychologist is a mechanic, no different from a plumber. He simply fixes nuts and bolts in your mind, which get loose once in a while; he tightens them here and there. Somewhere they are too tight, somewhere they are loose. But it is a question of nuts and bolts.The question of enlightenment does not arise for the modern psychologist because enlightenment is based on the experience that mind is not your whole reality. Beyond mind there is your consciousness, and going beyond mind is what enlightenment is all about. The moment you cross the borders of the mind, there is enlightenment: a world of tremendous light, awareness, fulfillment, rejoicings.But there is a possibility to go even beyond that – because that is your individual consciousness. If you can go beyond it, you enter into the cosmic consciousness. We are living in the ocean of cosmic consciousness, just as a fish lives in the ocean and is not aware of the ocean. Because it is born in the ocean, it lives in the ocean, it dies in the ocean; the fish knows only the ocean. If a fisherman pulls it out of the ocean, throws it in the sand on the beach, then for the first time it becomes aware that something had been surrounding it, nursing it, and giving it life, and that without it, it cannot remain alive.It is easy to give a fish the experience of being out of the ocean. It is very difficult to give man the experience of being out of the cosmic consciousness. Because the cosmic consciousness is everywhere – there is no beach, there are no boundaries to the cosmic consciousness. So wherever you are, you are always in an invisible ocean of consciousness.Modern psychology stops at the mind. The mind is only an instrument, and it is an instrument of the physical body – so they are not wrong in saying that it is a byproduct. But the mind is not all. The mind is only a bio-computer, and the day is not far away when the function of the mind will be almost taken over by computers.You will be able to keep just a small computer in your pocket containing the whole Encyclopedia Britanica. Any information about any subject will be immediately available – there is no need to remember it, there is no need to read it, there is no need to study it. Your mind is going to lose its job very soon.But the psychologist is concerned only with the mind. And there are people called behaviorists who say there is no mind either, that man is only a physical organism.In the Soviet Union they don’t accept the mind. The Soviet psychology is even more primitive; it accepts only the behavior of your body. There is nothing which you can call mind; hence in the Soviet Union there is nothing parallel to psychoanalysis. There is no question – if somebody’s mind is behaving in an abnormal way then medicine is needed, not psychoanalysis. Then he has to be hospitalized; he is suffering from a sickness just like any other sickness.At least in the West they have taken the first step beyond the body – not a very big step, very small, very negligible, but still a step accepting that there is something like the mind, that although it is a byproduct, it functions on its own as long as the body is alive. And now it is a great profession: psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists; they are all fixing people’s minds because everybody’s mind is in trouble.There are only two kinds of people in the world: normally mad, and abnormally mad. Normally mad means you are mad, but not beyond limits. You are mad just like everybody else. You can see these normally mad people watching a football match. Now can a sane person watch a football match? They need some nuts and bolts, because with a few idiots on this side and a few idiots on that side throwing a ball, and millions of idiots so excited in the stadium and at their television sets, glued to their chairs for six hours so they cannot move, as if something immensely valuable is happening because a ball is being thrown from this side to that side… And millions more, who are not so fortunate to be able to see, keep a transistor at their ears, at least listening to the commentary. You call this world sane?There are boxing matches: people are hitting each other, and millions of people are so excited. In California, the University of California has been researching… Whenever a boxing match happens in California the crime rate immediately rises by thirteen percent; and it remains thirteen percent higher for seven to ten days afterward – rape, murder, suicide. And now it is confirmed by other studies that boxing is simply our animal heritage. The one who gets excited in you is the animal; it is not you. You also want to kill somebody – many times you have thought of killing somebody – but you are not ready to take the consequences. In a boxing match there is a psychological consolation; you get identified. Every boxer has his own fans. Those fans are identified with him. If he hits the opponent and the opponent’s nose is dripping blood, they are rejoicing. What they have not been able to do, somebody else is doing on their part, on their behalf. In any world which is sane, boxing would be a crime. It is a game, but all your games seem to be primitive – nothing of intelligence, nothing of humanity.These normally mad people are always just on the boundary line. At any time they can slip. A small accident – the wife dies or goes away with somebody else – and you forget the normal boundary, you cross it. Then you are declared mad, insane, and immediately you have to be taken to the psychiatrist or the psychoanalyst. And what is his function? His profession is the highest paid profession in the world. Naturally he makes people normal again, he pulls them back, he keeps them from going farther away from the normal line. His whole expertise is how to put you back and make you normally mad.Naturally the people who are functioning as psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychotherapists are in danger because they are constantly dealing with mad people. Naturally more psychologists go mad than any other profession – the number is twice as many. More psychologists commit suicide than any other profession – the number again is twice as many. And once in a while every psychologist goes to another psychologist to put himself back into the normal world, because he is slipping out. One would expect that at least the psychologist should be a sane person; he is trying to help other insane people. But this is not the case. They behave more insanely than anybody else, for the simple reason that from morning till night they are constantly coming in contact with all kinds of weird, strange people with weird ideas.One man was brought to a psychoanalyst. The man was convinced that he was dead. Everybody had tried to tell him: “Don’t be foolish, you eat perfectly well, you sleep perfectly well, you talk perfectly well, you go for a morning walk – and you say you are dead?”He said, “Who says that dead people don’t go for a morning walk? Every day I meet many dead people going for a morning walk.”The family was very much puzzled – what to do with the man?When they found it impossible to convince him – because he wouldn’t go to the shop. His argument was clear: “Dead people don’t run businesses. I have never come across a single dead man. If you can convince me by bringing a dead man who runs a business, I will go to the shop. I will do only things which dead people are supposed to do – nothing else.”They told the psychoanalyst the whole story: “This man is in a poor state.”The psychologist said, “Don’t be worried, I will fix him.”He took a needle and asked this madman: “What do you think about the proverb that ‘Dead people don’t bleed’?”He said, “It is absolutely right. I heard it when I was alive: ‘Dead people don’t bleed.’”The psychologist was very happy. The family was very happy also, listening, thinking that the psychologist is really great; he is catching him on the first point.The psychologist pushed the needle into the dead man’s hand and blood came out. He looked at the dead man and said, “What do you say now?”The man said, “That means that proverb is wrong – dead people do bleed. I had only heard it; now it is my own experience.”If you come across such people the whole day long, in the night you will dream of the same people. Naturally, psychologists don’t live a very sane life. And they cannot live a sane life until and unless they accept that there is something beyond the mind. The beyond is the rest, the shelter. The mind is a continuous chattering, it is twenty-four hours chattering. Only beyond the mind is peace and silence. In that peace and silence sanity is born.Enlightenment is the ultimate peak of sanity: when one becomes perfectly sane, has come to a point where silence, serenity, consciousness are twenty-four hours his, waking or sleeping. There runs a current of tranquility, blissfulness, benediction, which is nourishment, food from the beyond.Eastern psychology accepts the mind as the lowest part of human consciousness – dismal and dark. You have to go beyond it. And enlightenment is not the end, because it is only individual consciousness. Individuality is still like two banks of a river. The moment the river moves into the ocean, all banks disappear, all boundaries are annihilated. You have gone beyond enlightenment.Modern psychology has to learn much from the Eastern experiment. It knows nothing. All that modern psychology is doing is analyzing dreams, fixing people to somehow carry on their normal business and repressing their abnormalities. But it brings no transformation. Even the founders of modern psychology – Freud or Jung or Adler or Assagioli – are not people who you can put into the category of Gautam Buddha, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu. You cannot put these people with the seers of the Upanishads, with Kabir and Nanak and Farid. They are the sanest people humanity has produced, and they have not bothered about dreams, they have not gone through psychoanalysis for years together.It is such a strange phenomenon: in the whole world there is not a single person who has completed psychoanalysis – because it goes on and on…ten years, twelve years. There are people who have been in psychoanalysis for twenty years, wasting millions of dollars. In fact, just as everywhere ladies talk about diamonds and emeralds and rubies, in America ladies say: “How long have you been in psychoanalysis? I have been in it for thirteen years!” It is a criterion of wealth; it shows you can afford to pay millions of dollars.The poor man, the psychoanalyst, has to listen to all kinds of garbage. No wonder that they start going mad, they start committing suicide, they jump from the window of a thirty-story building or hundred-story building! Just listen to a woman’s dreams for twenty years… It is a great relief for the husband, he is perfectly happy that she throws all her garbage and tantrums and everything on the psychoanalyst; it is not too costly, he can manage to pay – but for the poor psychoanalyst… Twenty years of listening to one woman and her stupid dreams! If one day he suddenly jumps out of the window, you cannot condemn him – he needs everybody’s sympathy.But it is big business. Just the other day I was telling you that Jesus founded a big business: Christianity. Another Jew, Sigmund Freud, founded another business: psychoanalysis. Another Jew, Karl Marx founded another business: communism.Jews are strange people. Whenever they do something, nobody can compete with them. Now half the world is communist in one Jew’s hands; the other half is Christian in another Jew’s hands. And who knows? – maybe both are partners. Jews are always business minded; they don’t bother about Christianity, they don’t bother about communism. Sigmund Freud is dead; Karl Marx is dead. Wherever they are – in hell or in heaven – they may be enjoying the fact that their businesses are going well; they may have even joined with Jesus. This would be the real trinity: three Jews running the whole world.Modern psychology will not accept meditation because meditation will destroy its business. A man of meditation needs no psychoanalysis. The deeper his meditation goes, the saner he becomes and the further beyond the mind is his flight.Meditation is the greatest danger for psychoanalysis, for psychologists. They have to insist that there is nothing beyond the mind because if there is something beyond the mind, then their whole business can flop. The East has to assert itself, show that what they are doing is simply foolish.In a Zen monastery in Japan the same kind of psychological case is treated within three weeks; in the West he would not be treated in twelve years. And in the Zen monastery in those three weeks there is no psychoanalysis. You will be surprised: nothing is done; the person is put in an isolated place…a beautiful garden, pond. In time food will be provided, in time tea will be sent; but nobody will talk with him, he has to remain silent. You can see the difference.In psychoanalysis he has to talk about his dreams continually, for years, one hour every day, two hours, two sessions a week, three sessions a week – as much as you can afford. And here in a Zen monastery they simply put the man in a beautiful, comfortable place. There are musical instruments available, painting material is available, or if there is anything special he wants to do that is made available; but it has to be something to do – not talking. And for three weeks nobody will to talk to him. During the three weeks, people paint, people play music, people dance, people work in the garden, and after three weeks they are perfectly normal, they are ready to go back home.What has happened? If you ask the Zen master, he will say, “Nothing! These people were working too hard, and their mind got wound up too much. They needed unwinding. So just three weeks rest and their mind was unwound. They needed physical work so that the whole energy went into the body, not into the mind.” And these people certainly became interested… Without doing anything all the strange and weird things that they had been thinking had disappeared. This is a simple way for sick people to unwind the overloaded mind.For those who are healthy – not sick people – the way is meditation. There are different methods for different types. And thousands of people have achieved such luminosity, such glory, such godliness, that all the psychologists of the world should be ashamed. They have not been able to produce a single person like that. Even their founders are just very ordinary – worse than ordinary. Sigmund Freud was so afraid of death that even the word death was prohibited. Nobody should mention the word death in his presence because just hearing the word he would fall into a fit, he would go unconscious. These are the founders of modern psychology; they are going to give humanity sanity!And on the other hand, a Zen monk, just before dying, said to his disciples, “Listen, I have always lived in my own way. I am an independent person and I want to die in my own way also. When I am dead I will not be here, so I will give you the instructions to be followed.”Just as in India, it happens in exactly the same way in Japan too; before he is taken to the funeral, the person’s clothes are changed, he is given a bath and new clothes are put on him.The Zen monk said, “I have taken the bath myself, I have changed my clothes, you can see. So when I am dead, there is no need for any bath or changing of clothes. And these are the orders from your master, so remember. At least a dying man’s wishes should not be denied – and I am not asking much.”His disciples said, “We will do as you say. There is nothing much to it.”He died, and thousands of disciples were there. When his body was put on the funeral pyre, they all started laughing and giggling. He had hidden firecrackers inside his clothes. He had made it into a divali, just to make everybody laugh – because that was his basic teaching, that life should be a dance, a joy; and death should be a celebration. And people said that even after death he managed it so that nobody should stand around him with a long face, so that everybody was laughing. Even the strangers who had come started laughing; they had never seen such a scene.These are the people who have understood life and death. They can make death a joke. Not Sigmund Freud, for whom the word death becomes a fit. And the same is the case with other great psychologists. Jung wanted to go to Egypt to see the old mummies of kings and queens, dead bodies preserved for three thousand years. But he was very much afraid of death and dead bodies. He was a disciple of Freud. He booked the ticket twelve times, and each time he would find some excuse: “I am feeling feverish,” or, “Some urgent work has come.”And he knew. He wrote in his diary: “I knew it was all an excuse. I was avoiding going to Egypt, but the more I avoided it, the more I was attracted – as if I had to go, it was a challenge to my manliness. Am I such a coward? So I would book again, and I would gather courage, and I would try to convince myself that there is nothing to be worried about – they are dead bodies, they cannot do anything to you. And so many people go to see them. They are there in the museums. Thousands of people see them every day. Why are you afraid?” – but arguments won’t do. Finally, the twelfth time he booked, he managed to get to the airport, but when the plane came on the airstrip all his courage, arguments and everything disappeared. He said, “I am feeling very sick and nauseous. I want to go back home. Cancel the trip.” And after that, he never dared book again; twelve times was enough. He never managed to reach Egypt – which was only a few hours’ flight.He came to India, and he went to all the universities of India. He was here for three months. But he would not go to one man, where he needed to go. He would not go to Shri Raman Maharshi. And in every university it was suggested that he was wasting his time: “You have come to understand the Eastern approach, but we are all Western-educated psychologists in the Indian universities’ psychology departments. You are just wasting your time. These people may be educated in the West or in the East but their education is Western; they know nothing of the East. But by chance there is a man… He knows nothing of psychology, he is absolutely uneducated, but he represents the East. This man has experienced the ultimate flights of meditation. Just go and sit by his side.” Jung went up to Madras, but he would not go to see him. It was only a two-hour journey from Madras, but he would not go. And he had come to India to understand what the Eastern attitude to psychology was.Western psychology – which is the contemporary psychology – is very childish. The East has a ten thousand year-old inquiry into human consciousness. It has touched every nook and corner of human beings, within and without, as individual and as universal.But it is unfortunate that even the Eastern psychologists and professors of psychology have no idea about the Eastern approach. They are just parrots repeating Western psychology secondhand. That too is not their own original contribution. Sometimes even parrots are better and more intelligent.I have been a professor in the university, and I have been in constant conflict with the professors: “You are parrots and you are agents of the West without your knowing. You are corrupting the Eastern mind because you don’t know what you are doing. You are not even aware of what the East has already discovered. You are just carbon copies carrying certificates from Western universities.”I have often told a story in the universities:A bishop was looking for a parrot. His own parrot had died. He had been a very religious parrot – religious in the sense that he was able to repeat the Sermon on the Mount accurately, word for word. And whoever heard him was simply amazed. And the parrot had died and the bishop was missing his parrot.So he went to a very big pet shop, and he looked around. There were many parrots there with many qualities. But he said, “No, my parrot was almost a saint, I want a very religious parrot.”The pet shop owner said, “I have a special parrot – but the price may be too much. He is no ordinary saint, he is a very special saint. Come inside with me. I keep my special parrots in my house behind the shop, not in the shop itself. There in a golden cage was a beautiful parrot.The pet shop owner said, “This is the religious parrot. You have talked so much about your parrot, but this parrot is unique – you will forget all about yours. Come close and see: on its right leg there is a small thread; if you pull that thread, he will repeat the Sermon on the Mount. There is also a small thread on its left leg; if you pull that, it will repeat the Song of Solomon. So if you have a Jew for a guest, you can make the parrot repeat the Song of Solomon from the Old Testament; or if you have a Christian guest, then the Sermon on the Mount from the New Testament.”The bishop said, “Great, this is really great. And what will happen if I pull both threads together?”Before the owner could say anything, the parrot said, “Never do that, you idiot. I will fall on my ass!”Even parrots have some intelligence.Sooner or later psychology has to inquire into the states created by meditation, into spaces which are beyond mind. And unless it dares to penetrate the innermost core of human beings, it will not become a science. Right now its name is wrong; it has to prove that it is psychology – the science of the soul.Osho,During deep relaxation I have experienced some strange things. One is that I felt lifted from the earth, and the second that I felt touched by hands trying to help me.Every time it happened I felt totally scared, didn't dare to open my eyes, and did everything I know to ground myself.Osho, can I trust and just let go, or is there danger? “I” don't make myself fly. I don't know how far it would go, and whether I would ever be able to come back.Can you please comment?First, can’t you recognize my hands? Open your eyes, and just take a good look! You see my hands every day. If in meditation you feel two hands appearing, don’t close your eyes. And you will be able to recognize my hands. There is nothing to fear.In fact, the feeling that you are uplifted from the earth is tremendously valuable. You are not really lifted up, you are on the earth; it is not that your body is really lifted up. But you have three bodies. Your physical body will remain on the earth. And because of meditation your mental body is silent, relaxing.Only the astral body is capable of rising upward; it is beyond gravitation. Gravitation has no power over it.Light is not under the control of gravitation. That’s why the flame of a candle can go upward. Even if you put the candle upside down, the flame will immediately turn upward. The flame cannot go downward because the gravitation has no pull on light.Your astral body is made only of light, of electrons.It is very indicative that you feel that your body is uplifted. Naturally in the beginning you will be gripped by fear: what is happening? But open your eyes.These are the moments when I am really with you in case you need me; hence, you feel two hands because it is a very delicate moment. Any accident is possible. Open your eyes and see. You will be surprised, because it will seem as if you are floating above your body and your body is lying down on the floor. But you will see a thin cord as if made of silver, shining, joined with the body lying down on the floor. The point the silver cord is joined to is your navel, and it is very flexible. You can fly higher, and it will stretch without any difficulty. You can come closer. But don’t be afraid. Don’t start thinking, “How am I going to get into my body again?”You have not come out of the body with your effort. It is your silence, your peace that has helped your astral body move out. The moment you feel like getting back into the body, you will immediately find yourself back in the body. And those two hands that were close to you will disappear the moment you are back in the body.And just watch my hands closely because these will be the same hands, and naturally you need not be afraid of my hands. My hands have never done any harm to anybody. In fact, I cannot do anything with my hands – these must be the laziest hands in the whole world.But your experience is immensely significant, impeccably beautiful. And the fear that if you go on and on, how far and where it will lead… Don’t be worried. Wherever it leads you is the right place, the right space.Relax and remain in a let-go. You have not to control its movements, because you are far smaller than the energy that you are trying to control. The best way is to simply surrender to existence and allow it to take you wherever it takes you; it has never taken anybody into any wrong space. It always takes you back home.Osho,Out on the sparkling seas of oneness, a mysterious wind fills my sails, giving direction to my journey and beckoning me onward into unknown waters.My beloved captain, when does the unknown become the unknowable?Your question is very simple. The mind can be divided into two parts: the known and the unknown. The known is your knowledge; the unknown is your ignorance. And all your universities and educational systems are trying to do only one thing: to put your mind completely in the field of the known, to dispel the unknown, to dispel ignorance.Beyond the known and the unknown is what I call the unknowable. That is beyond mind. That is the world of the mysterious, the world of the miraculous. The moment you pass beyond the mind, the unknown is left behind, the known is left behind, and you enter into the unknowable. And the unknowable is the field of true religion. You experience it, you live it, you feel it, it becomes your heartbeat, but you can never say you know it. Knowledge seems to be a much lower category. The unknowable belongs to the category of being, not to the category of knowing.The mystics of all the ages, of all countries, are making every effort to push you from the known and unknown into the unknowable, to push you from the mind into the ocean of the mysterious. There you will experience much – much that you can imagine, much that you can dream about – but you will not be able to bring anything from it into the world of knowledge, you will not be able to translate it into words, into language, into anything that can become a symbol for it.I am reminded of a small child – and a mystic is almost like a small child – the child was sitting with a canvas with all his colors and brushes, and his father was reading the newspaper. Again and again the father looked at the child…he’s not doing anything, just sitting there. He said, “What are you doing?”The child said, “I am painting.”After half an hour the father said, “But I don’t see any painting on your canvas. Haven’t you decided what you are going to paint yet?”The boy said, “No, that’s not the point. I have painted it.”The father came close to see. He said, “Painted it? I never thought that you would befool me. A plain canvas; you have not even touched it!”He said, “No, father; I have done my painting. A cow is grazing the grass.”The father said, “A cow grazing in the grass. Where is the cow?”The boy said, “After grazing the grass, she has gone. What would she do here now?”The father said, “Okay, where is the grass?”The boy said, “You are strange; the cow has eaten the grass and gone.”The father said, “How did you make this idea up? To befool me?”The boy said, “No, I am not befooling you. I saw the grass, I saw the cow, I saw the grass disappearing and I saw her go away.”The child is innocent. Perhaps his imagination… And a child’s imagination is really powerful – they cannot make any distinction between the dream and the real. He may have seen a cow and the grass, and when the cow was there and the grass was there he did not paint anything. What is the point of painting on a canvas when there is a cow and grass and everything is already there? But then the cow eats the grass and the cow goes…The father said, “Stop painting from today, and stop all kind of imagination; otherwise you will go mad.”That’s what we are doing with every child. We are not allowing the child’s imagination to be refined to such a point that it becomes almost real; otherwise, every person would carry a poet in him, a painter in him, a singer in him, a dancer in him. And finally, the culmination of all that is creative is the mystic.When you have sung the best of your songs, then silence is the song.When you have danced the best dance, the dancer disappears. And without the dancer, how can the dance remain?When your poetry is perfect, there is no poet. The poetry has immense significance but no meaning.In ancient China a Taoist proverb says: “When the archer is perfect, he throws away his bow and his arrows. When the musician is perfect, he forgets all about his instruments.”There is a mysterious world – illogical to the mind – supra-logical to those who understand the world of the mystic. It surrounds us; we just need the right perception, clear eyes unburdened with knowledge – innocent, weightless. We need wings – wings of love, not of logic. Logic pulls you downward. It is under the rule of gravitation. Love takes you toward the stars.Allow the mystic in you, and you have found all that is worth finding.

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 25 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,From time to time a beautiful story you told us more than a year ago comes to my mind.It is about a young man who set out to look for truth, and after some failures was given the task of looking after some cows. Starting with just a few of them on the mountains, he had not to come back until he had succeeded in raising one thousand of them. Years went by, until one day the man heard the cows talking to him, saying, “We are one thousand!” Eventually he returned to the valley, where people could hardly distinguish the man from the animals.Often, simply by recalling this story, tears come to my eyes. There is so much beauty and freshness in the end of the story, that for a few moments it brings my being to a standstill.Osho, I would love to hear you telling this story again and again: “We are one thousand! We are one thousand!”Osho, what is the meaning this small tale is carrying? Why do these few words fill me with awe and tears? Would you kindly comment?The story is one of the most ancient stories of the heart, of the world beyond words – of knowing, not of knowledge, of utter innocence as the door to the divine. The story contains the very essence of meditativeness. It has many dimensions, many implications, and it is no wonder that it fills you with tears of joy. Those tears are indicative that the story has touched your heart, your very being, that you have tasted it although you don’t understand what it is. You have felt its beauty, its glory, its depth, but you find it hard to explain to yourself what it is that you have found.You have found a world of magic, mystery and miracles.I would love to tell you the whole story. It needs to be told thousands and thousands of times because each time you will find some new fragrance, some new sweetness, some new height, some new door opening, some new sky with new stars. And there are skies beyond skies.I used to live in a place…I lived there for twenty years, in Jabalpur. Its ancient name was Jabalipur; it was named after a great mystic and seer of the Upanishads, Satyakam Jabal. And this story is concerned with Satyakam Jabal.Satyakam was a very inquiring child. He did not believe in anything unless he had experienced it. When he became a young man – he must have been nearabout the age of twelve – he said to his mother, “Now it is time. The prince of the kingdom has gone to the forest to join the family of a seer. He is my age. I also want to go, I also want to learn what this life is all about.”The mother said, “It is very difficult, Satyakam, but I know that you are a born seeker. I was afraid that one day you would ask me to send you to a master. I am a poor woman, but that is not a great difficulty. The difficulty is that when I was young I served in many houses – I was poor, but I was beautiful. I don’t know who your father is. And if I send you to a master, you are going to be asked what the name of your father is. And I am afraid they may reject you.But there is no harm in making an effort. You go and tell the truth in the same way I have told the truth to you. Many men have used my body because I was poor. Just say that you don’t know who your father is. Tell the master that your name is Satyakam, your mother’s name is Jabala; so they can call you Satyakam Jabal. And as far as the search for truth is concerned, who your father is does not matter.”Satyakam went to an ancient seer in the forest, and sure enough the first question was, “What is your name? Who is your father?”And he repeated exactly what his mother had said.There were many disciples – princes, rich people’s sons. They all started laughing.But the old master said, “I will accept you. It does not matter who your father is. What matters is that you are authentic, sincere, unafraid – capable of saying the truth without feeling embarrassed. Your mother has given you the right name, Satyakam. Satyakam means one whose only desire is truth. You have a beautiful mother, and you will be known as Satyakam Jabal. And the tradition is that only brahmins can be accepted as disciples. I declare you a brahmin – because only a brahmin can have the courage of such truth.”Those were beautiful days. The old seer’s name was Uddalak. Satyakam became his most loved disciple. He deserved it; he was so pure and so innocent.But Uddalak had his own limitations. Although he was a man of great learning, he was not an enlightened master. So he taught Satyakam all the scriptures, he taught him everything that he was capable of, but he could not deceive Satyakam as he had been deceiving everybody else. Not that Satyakam was raising any doubts; it was just that his innocence had such power that the old man had to confess, “Whatever I have been telling you is knowledge gathered from the scriptures. It is not my own. I have not experienced it; I have not lived it. I suggest that you go deeper into the forest. I know a man who has realized, who has become an embodiment of truth, love, compassion. Go to him.”Uddalak had heard about the man, but did not know the man personally. Uddalak was far more famous; he was a great scholar.Satyakam went to the other man. This man taught him many new scriptures, and all the Vedas: the most ancient scriptures of the world. And after years he told him, “Now you know everything; there is nothing more to know. You can go back home.”First he went to see Uddalak. From his window, Uddalak saw Satyakam coming on the footpath through the forest. He was shocked. Satyakam’s innocence was lost; in place of innocence there was pride – naturally, because now he thought he knew everything in the world that is worth knowing. The very idea was so ego fulfilling.He came in. As he started to touch the feet of Uddalak, Uddalak said, “Don’t touch my feet! First, I want to know where you have lost your innocence. It seems I have sent you to the wrong man.”Satyakam said, “To the wrong man? He has taught me everything that is worth knowing.”Uddalak said, “Before you touch my feet, I would like to ask you: have you experienced anything or it is just information? Has any transformation happened? Can you say that whatever you know is your knowledge?”Satyakam said, “I cannot say that. What I know is written in the scriptures; I have not experienced anything.”Uddalak said, “Then go back, but now go to another person I have come to know about while you were gone. And unless you have experienced, don’t come back. You have come here not more than when I sent you but less. You have lost something of immense value. And what you call knowledge – if it is borrowed, it only covers your ignorance; it does not make you a knower. Go to this man and tell him that you have not come for more information about truth, about God, about love. Tell him you have come to know truth, to know love, to know God. Tell him, ‘If you can fulfill the promise, only then waste my time; otherwise I will find another master.’”Satyakam said exactly this.The master was sitting under a tree with a few of his disciples. After listening to the request, he said, “It is possible, but you are asking something very difficult. There are so many disciples here – they all want more knowledge. They want to know about and about. But if you insist that you are not interested in information, that you are ready to do anything, that your devotion to truth is total, then I will find a way for you.”Satyakam said, “I am ready to sacrifice my life, but I cannot go without knowing the truth. Neither can I go to my teacher nor can I go to my mother, who has given me the name Satyakam. And my teacher accepted me without knowing whether I was a brahmin or not, just on the simple grounds that I was truthful. Tell me what has to be done.”The master said, “Take all these cows that you see here, deep into the forest. Go as deep as possible, so you don’t come in contact again with any human being. The purpose is that you forget language, words. Live with the cows, take care of the cows, play on your flute, dance – but forget words. And when the cows have grown to one thousand, come back.”The other disciples could not believe what was happening – because there were just a dozen or two dozen cows. How long is it going to take for them to become one thousand?But Satyakam took the cows, went as deep as possible into the forest, beyond human contact, beyond human context. For a few days it was difficult but slowly, slowly… The cows were his only company. And they are very silent people. He played on the flute, he danced alone in the forest; he rested under the trees.For a few years he continued to count the cows. Then by and by he dropped it, because it seemed impossible that they would become one thousand. And moreover he was forgetting how to count; language was disappearing. Words disappeared; counting could not be saved.And the story is so immensely beautiful: the cows became worried when they became one thousand, because they wanted to go back home, and this man had forgotten how to count. Finally the cows decided, “We have to speak; otherwise this lonely forest is going to become our grave.”So one day the cows caught hold of him and told him, “Listen, Satyakam, we are now one thousand and it is time to go back home.”He said, “I am very grateful to you. If you had not told me… I had even forgotten about home or about returning. Each moment was so tremendously beautiful – so many blessings. In the silence, flowers went on showering. I had forgotten everything. I had no idea why I had come here, who I am. Everything had become an end in itself: playing the flute was enough, resting under the trees was enough, seeing the beautiful cows sitting silently all around was so beautiful. But if you insist, we should return.”The disciples of the great master saw him coming with one thousand cows. They reported to the master, “We had never believed that he would come back. He is coming, and we have counted exactly one thousand cows. He is coming!”And when he came, he stood there – just in the crowd of cows.The master said to the other disciples, “You counted wrong. There are one thousand and one cows; you forgot to count Satyakam! He has moved beyond your world, he has entered into the innocent, the silent, the mysterious. He is not saying anything, he is just standing there as the cows are standing there.”The master said, “Satyakam, come out. Now you have to go to your other master who sent you here. He is an old man and he must be waiting. Your mother must be waiting.”And when Satyakam came to Uddalak, his first teacher – who had not allowed him to touch his feet because he had lost his innocence, he was no longer a brahmin, he had fallen, he had become just a knowledgeable parrot – as Uddalak saw him from the window again, he ran out the back door, because now Satyakam cannot be allowed to touch his feet; now Uddalak would have to touch Satyakam’s feet. Because Uddalak was still a scholar, and Satyakam was coming not as a scholar but as one who is awakened.Uddalak escaped from the house: “I cannot face him. I am ashamed of myself. Just tell him,” he told his wife, “that Uddalak is dead and he can go now to his mother. Tell him I died remembering him.” These were people made of different mettle. Satyakam went back home.The mother had become very old, but she had waited and waited and waited. And she said, “You have proved, Satyakam, that truth is always victorious. And you have proved that a brahmin is not born, a brahmin is a quality to be achieved. Everybody by his birth is a sudra, because everybody’s birth is the same. One has to prove by purifying himself, by crystallizing himself, by becoming centered and enlightened, that he is a brahmin. Just to be born into the family of a brahmin does not make you a brahmin.”If you meditate on the story, you will see: the very essence of meditation is to be so silent that there is no stirring of thoughts in you, that words don’t come between you and reality, that the whole net of words falls down, that you are left alone.This aloneness, this purity, this unclouded sky of your being is meditation. And meditation is the golden key to all the mysteries of life.Osho,I have the most beautiful master ever – life has given me so much since I have been with you – but still, except for moments of beatitude with you or in my meditation, deep down in myself there is always a deep-rooted sadness and a longing for some space that I hardly can remember.Can you please comment?Meditation always opens doors, different doors to different people. Sadness is not necessarily something bad. Don’t judge it as a bad or negative quality. When a person who has never been silent, for the first time becomes silent, the very silence feels sad because there is no excitement, no firecrackers.You can misunderstand your first acquaintance with silence as sadness, but it is not sadness. It is just that you have always been engaged in a thousand and one things and now they have all disappeared. You feel a little lost. Before silence becomes a song, a small period, a transitory period, is absolutely necessary. You know sadness. And sadness has something of silence in it – whenever you are sad, you are a little silent. So there is an association between your sadness and silence. When you become silent for the first time, the only thing you can feel from your past experience is sadness.Allow it to deepen. Don’t judge it as sadness, because that very judgment may become a barrier. The moment you say something negative you are trying to get rid of it. Don’t say anything negative about it. Just accept it as a bridge between silence and song. Just wait a little, and you will start feeling that this silence is not dead, it is not the silence of the graveyard. It is a silence which is very much alive, a silence which is not empty but too full, overflowing.Overflowing with what? Again, a new experience is waiting for you. You have known only songs with words. You have never known a pure song without words, music without sound. Just a little waiting, and the sadness will start turning into a song with no words, into music with no sounds, into a dance with no movements.Everything is going perfectly well; just a little bit of patience is needed.When you are sick, in the hospitals you are called patients. Have you ever thought about why? It is because healing takes time, and you have to be patient. This is inner healing, and you need a deeper patience.But if silence is there and meditation is happening, then there is no problem at all. Spring will be coming soon with all its colors and all its flowers and all its beauty. Just wait a little.Osho,I was born in the mountains, and throughout my childhood and youth I was pulled to explore, climb, or just sit on the peaks, on the steep walls, or by the side of a glacier stream. I lived in the mountains, and they fed me, like a mother, with something very precious.Somewhere I read that the mountains, the high, snow-capped peaks are the very essence of Buddha.Osho, the beauty that surrounds you, the cool breeze that hovers around you, is like the one coming from the highest, the wildest peak in the world.I've been with you for seven years, and in this last period of time I felt that I was passing through the same pastures, the same plains I remember leaving for the heights seven years ago. I see the starting point as completely different now: it is sweet and beautiful, enough unto itself, no longer awful and disgusting as it used to be.Osho, I haven't come to know anything; the thousand suns did not shine in my head. All I've got now is myself, contented, at the same point from where I started my journey seven years ago.Have I been dreaming all these years of traveling far away when my feet did not leave the base camp? Or was all this to realize that where I started from is where I belong?Osho, please tell me… Sometimes this dream seems to be real, but now my being does not feel as if it is pulled to go anywhere. Have I been cheating myself? Or is this as far as it is allowed for me to go in this life?Will you tell me the truth? I'm tired now; be merciless, but please say what is really happening to me.It is not only with you, but with everybody exactly the same. You are what you are seeking. You are standing at exactly the place toward which you have been traveling – for seven years, seventy years or seven hundred years. Your reality is within you; it is not somewhere else. But to understand the point, sometimes it takes years. You knock on many doors before you come to your own door, and then you are puzzled, because this is the house you had left and this is the house you have been searching for.But the search has not been useless; it has given you the eyes to recognize.I have often told a Sufi story: a man renounces the world, his wife, his home. He is young and he is going in search of a master. Just outside his village under a tree, an old man is sitting. The sun is just setting, and darkness is descending. The young man says to the old man, “You look as if you are a traveler; you certainly don’t belong to my village. I am a young man and I am in search of a master. You are old; perhaps you have come across a master in your journeys, and will be kind enough to help me with some directives, some guidelines, because I am feeling at a loss where to go.”The old man said, “I will give you exact details. The master looks like this” – and he described the face of the master, the eyes of the master, the nose of the master, the beard of the master, his robe. “And he sits under a certain tree” – and he described the tree.And he said, “You will find him; just remember these details. Whenever you find a man who fulfills these criteria, you have found your master.”Thirty years passed. The young man became old, tired. He never came across anybody fitting the description given by the old man. Finally he gave up the whole idea of finding a master: “Perhaps there is no master anywhere.”He went back to his village. And as he was entering the village, under the same tree… It was sunrise, there was more light. The old man had become very old. The last time they had met he must have been sixty; now he was ninety. And because for thirty years the man had been looking for certain eyes, a certain nose, a certain beard, a certain robe, a certain tree… As he saw the tree and he saw the old man he said, “My God, so you were describing yourself! Why didn’t you tell me? Why did you force me to travel unnecessarily around the world for thirty years searching for you, while you were sitting here?”The old man said, “First throw out all your tantrums and your anger; then I will tell you the truth. Thirty years ago you were too young. The time was not right; it was sunset, darkness was descending. And you were in such a hurry to go in search, that if I had told you that I was the master you would have laughed and said, ‘This is strange that you are sitting just outside my village.’ And you cannot blame me because I explained every detail, but your eyes were looking far away. You were listening to me, but you were not looking to see that I was describing my eyes, my nose, my beard, my robe; that I was describing the tree under which I was sitting. You were not ripe.“These thirty years have not gone to waste; they have matured you. Now you can recognize me. Just look; it is sunrise, the right time. And it is not the beginning of your journey; you had already given up. I am meeting you at the end of thirty years of long, arduous effort. That which you can get cheap you cannot recognize. You had to pay these thirty years and all the troubles that you went through just to be mature enough to recognize me.“I could have told you on that day too – but it would have been pointless, and you would have missed me.“And you think you have been in trouble for thirty years? Just think about me – for thirty years I have been sitting under the same tree, because I described this tree. I have not left it for a single day because I was aware that any moment you might come, and if you didn’t find me here I would have been proved to have spoken lies. I have been sitting here for thirty years continuously – day in, day out; summer, winter, rain, but I have been sitting here. And you see I am old. I was worried that if I died before you came back, it would be a tragedy. So I have been trying to somehow cling to life, because as far as I am concerned there is nothing left, I have realized myself. Life has given everything that it can give. I have been sitting just for you.”The story is strange, but significant. It takes time to realize that which you are. Basically there is no need; you can realize just now, this very moment. But to realize it you will need a certain maturity, a certain centering, a certain awareness, a certain silence. Seven years are not long. And don’t be worried that you have not seen a thousand suns rising in you; it is not necessary. Everybody experiences his innermost being in his own way. Somebody experiences it as light, but that is his type. There are people who have realized it as immense darkness. You are hearing the firecrackers all around.Two religions in India, Hindus and Jainas, celebrate a festival, the festival of lights. They have different reasons; it is just a coincidence that something has happened on the same day in the history of both religions.Hindus celebrate it because Rama, one of the Hindu incarnations of God, was victorious over Ravana. He came back after fourteen years of wandering in the forest and the mountains to his capitol, Ayodhya. And because he was coming back after fourteen years, the capitol celebrated with lights and firecrackers and rejoicings. That is the Hindu reason.For Jainas this is not the reason. Mahavira became enlightened on the same day, and Mahavira is the most important individual in the history of Jainism. Jainas are celebrating because Mahavira attained liberation. And he attained liberation in a unique way. Mahavira is unique in that he became enlightened on the night of amawas, no moon, complete darkness. He is alone; there is nobody else who has become enlightened on the night of amawas.Gautam Buddha became enlightened on a full-moon night. And except for Mahavira, anybody who has become enlightened has become enlightened either on a full-moon night or close to it. Individual types… Gautam Buddha was born on a full-moon night. He became enlightened on a full-moon night. He died on a full-moon night. This cannot be just coincidence. His type has something to do with a synchronicity with the full-moon night.There are saints, mystics…when they become enlightened, they smell some perfume which is not of this world. Because of this experience, among Sufi mystics perfume has become very significant, and Sufi mystics of different schools use different kinds of perfume. Because their master experienced a certain perfume, they use something parallel to it. It cannot be exactly the same, but something parallel, on the lowest rung of the same ladder, which the master experienced on the highest rung. They use that perfume as a remembrance of their master. Some have heard unworldly music, anahat nad. Because people are of different types, their ultimate experience is also going to be of a different type; it is going to have their signature on it.So don’t be worried if you are not seeing a thousand and one suns rising in you. Kabir has seen them. Gautam Buddha has not seen them. Mahavira has not seen them. But there are a few other mystics who have seen them. Just as you are unique in your ordinary life… You know people who have a sensitivity for music, and there are others who don’t have any ear for music.Mulla Nasruddin’s wife bought two tickets for a classical concert. Mulla tried hard, but could not escape; he had to go to the concert. It was classical Indian music. So when the musician started doing his aalap, tuning his instrument, Mulla Nasruddin’s eyes became full of tears. His wife said, “I never thought you loved classical music so much.”He said, “It is not the classical music. I am crying because this man is going to die!”The wife said, “What gave you the idea this man is going to die?”He said, “You wouldn’t understand. One night one of my goats started doing exactly what this man is doing. And I said, ‘What is the matter?’ I tried hard to stop her but she wouldn’t listen, and in the morning she was dead. I can guarantee that by morning this man is going to be dead; this is the beginning of the disease. This is not music.”He had never heard classical music. The poor fellow had one similar experience…a natural conclusion.There are people who are sensitive to certain things, for example paintings, and there are a few who are not at all sensitive to paintings. In the life of Michelangelo there was one incident. Just a few years ago, you may have read in the newspapers, a man, a madman destroyed one of the most beautiful statues in the Vatican. It was of Jesus Christ lying in his mother’s lap after he was taken down from the cross. That statue was thought to be the best statue in the whole world. And certainly it was so alive. Michelangelo had put all his art into it; it was his masterpiece. And this man simply destroyed it with a hammer because he wanted to become world famous. He became world famous. This incident in Michelangelo’s life concerns the same statue.Michelangelo went into a shop in the market where there were shops selling marble. Just in front of the shop on the open ground there was a big rock – a huge marble rock that had been lying there for years – and he asked, “What is the price?”The owner said, “There is no price; it has been lying there for almost ten years, and you are the first person ever to ask about it. If you can take it away, it is yours. It will be enough payment that our grounds are cleared and we can put out other rocks for show. That rock is taking so much space. And every artist comes here; no artist has ever seen any possibility for that rock.”And Michelangelo cut from that same rock this statue that was destroyed a few years ago.When the statue was ready, he invited the shop owner. The man could not believe it. He said, “Where did you get such a beautiful piece of marble?”Michelangelo said, “This is the same rock that you gave me at no charge.”The man said, “My God, but you have created the most beautiful statue I have ever seen. How could you manage to think, looking at that ugly rock, that you would be able to do it?”He said, “I have not done anything. It was just that Jesus cried out to me, ‘Michelangelo, I am encaged in this rock. Make me free.’”This is genius. Jesus was there; Mary was there. But to see the possibility in that ugly rock, you need a certain insight.Now, if Michelangelo becomes enlightened, his experience will have something to do with his genius. If Yehudi Menuhin becomes enlightened, his enlightenment will have something to do with his musical genius.Each individual is unique in ordinary life. The uniqueness becomes even sharper and clearer, crystal clear, when the person becomes enlightened – because only then his pure genius, his pure individuality, uncontaminated, unpolluted, is revealed.So never be concerned that what has happened to others should happen to you. Sometimes it can happen because in this big world, millions of people have lived before, and thousands of people have become enlightened; you may have something similar. You may have something which will look strange to others.Ashok Bharti has recently asked a question which is unique because it happened only once before. Since he has been here he has been singing songs; those who have been here can see that the quality, the joy, the celebration has been growing. But something else has been happening that you cannot see. He has written in his question, “Osho, my breasts are growing like women’s breasts. And feminine qualities which I was not aware of before are becoming more and more expressive.” If he says this to anybody else, they will think he is mad: “Just go to a doctor, you have some hormonal disturbance.”But it happened in Ramakrishna’s life, and something much more. After his enlightenment Ramakrishna tried whatever methods were available. He wanted to see whether he could reach the same experience through other methods, because he wanted there to be only one religion in the world. Every religious person should have that desire. It is ugly to see that there are three hundred religions in the world, continually fighting and continually destroying each other, talking about love and killing each other.In Bengal, there is a small religious group which believes that Krishna is the only man and everybody else is a woman. It is a strange kind of idea, and everybody else laughs about it, and particularly at the behavior of those people because they sleep with a statue of Krishna close to their bosom at night, just like a woman sleeps with her husband or her lover.Ramakrishna tried their ideology also, and in six months time his breasts became just like those of women. But what was even stranger was that he started having a menstrual period. The sincerity of the man, the totality of the man: whenever he followed anything, whenever he did anything he did it completely.So it is possible: singing songs of love… Your mind is the creator of your body, it affects your body. You can see it happening in the West in the women who are concerned with the liberation movement. Their breasts slowly disappear because they don’t want to be women; they want to be men. And they want in every possible way to be exactly like men: in their dress, in their behavior, in their language. For example, nowhere in the East will any woman use a four-letter word; that is simply ungraceful. But in the West, that is part of the liberated woman: to smoke cigarettes and to use four-letter words. One is just waiting for the day when they start pissing standing up! They might start – equality is equality! One can go to stupid lengths. But in the West, the breast has suffered immensely. The Eastern woman is still rich as far as breasts are concerned. Your mind has immense power over your body. If your mind takes up a certain idea, sooner or later the body will follow it. The body is slow, but it will follow it.But even beyond the mind, your individuality is intact. No two individuals’ experience is exactly the same. That has been the cause of a great tragedy, because Mohammed experiences something which Mahavira does not experience, and then the followers start making criteria: if they follow Mahavira then Mahavira’s experience becomes the criterion; unless somebody experiences the same, his experience is not right. The same is true of the followers of Mohammed or Moses or Zarathustra.But the truth is – and nobody has been insisting on it – that all are unique people; they all grow different flowers. The similarity is in the blossoming but not in the color of the flowers or in the fragrance of the flowers. The color and the fragrance is going to be unique – and it is good, because it makes spiritual life rich; otherwise it will be very monotonous.So don’t be worried about anybody’s experience. And if you are fed up with the journey, perhaps you are coming back to your village and I am sitting there under the tree. Just recognize me! I have been telling you in every possible way who the master is.Osho,You described in “The Mustard Seed” how Ramakrishna was addicted to food, and people would never have thought that a liberated man could be addicted to food. Before he died, he said he was clinging to something imperfect in him so he could be here and serve people.You say many masters have done this. The moment they feel that something is going to become completely perfect in them, they will cling to some imperfection just to stay here.Now Osho, what are you clinging to, or planning to cling onto?I am addicted to you!

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Beyond Enlightenment 01-32Category: THE WORLD TOUR

Beyond Enlightenment 27 (Read, Listen & Download)

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Osho,Thirteen years ago I left the world, deadly wounded, and came to you. You healed me and gave me back even more than life.Then one year ago I went back to that same world I had escaped from, feeling like a child just out of kindergarten, who barely knows the ABC. Naturally there were dark moments. During those moments an inner voice – was it your voice, Osho? – kept hammering at me, “Don't get lost in your emotions – watch!” For months this voice became my constant companion until suddenly a realization happened to me: that the darkness and the conflict were created by my own fears, desires, judgments. This glimpse was surrounded by a calm, relaxed feeling of freedom and acceptance.Now, experiencing again the overwhelming beauty of sitting at your feet, I can see that no matter how long I watch, this desire to be in your presence will remain with me.Osho, is it really possible not to long for something so unique and beautiful?The spiritual path has many crossroads. On each crossroad, one feels as if one has arrived. In a certain way it is true, too. It is a certain blessing which was never known before, a peace that is absolutely new, a silence undreamt of, and a love, the fragrance of which one has desired, longed for, for lives and has never found. Naturally one feels the home has come.This is one of the most difficult tasks for the master – to push you on, to say to you, “This is only the beginning; there is much more waiting for you.” And although it is inconceivable to you that there can be anything more than this, the trust, the love, the devotion toward the master helps you to move.These moments come again and again. Each time it becomes in a way more difficult, in a way easier. It is difficult in the sense that each new realization, new achievement, new revelation is so vast, so absorbing, that everything you have known before simply fades away, so it becomes more difficult to move on. But on the other hand, it becomes easier to move on because each time the master has said to you, “Move on” you have always gained more; it has never been a loss, it has always been a new door to a new mystery, a new sky beyond the old one. So the trust also has increased. It is easier now to listen to the master and move on.An ancient story – I have always loved it – an old woodcutter, poor, alone, had only one way to earn his everyday bread and that was by cutting wood and selling it. As he came into the forest, just near the entrance under a beautiful bodhi tree, the same tree under which Gautam Buddha became enlightened; hence the name of the tree has become bodhi tree. Bodhi means enlightenment.By the way, you will be surprised to know, scientists have found that the bodhi tree has a certain chemical which no other tree has, and that chemical is absolutely necessary for the growth of intelligence. Perhaps it is a very intelligent, sensitive tree. It may not have been just a coincidence…The woodcutter would see this old man sitting silently, always there – summer, winter, rain. He would touch his feet before entering the forest, and every time he would do that the old man would smile and say, “You are such an idiot.”The woodcutter was shocked: “Why? – I touch his feet, but rather than giving me a blessing, he simply smiles and says, ‘You are such an idiot.’”One day he gathered courage and asked, “What do you mean?”The old man said, “I mean that you have been cutting trees in this forest for your whole life, and if you go just a little deeper into it you will find a copper mine. Only an idiot could miss it! Your whole life you have been in this forest… You can collect the copper and that will be enough for seven days’ comfortable living, no need to cut wood every day in your old age.”The man could not believe it because he knew the whole forest. “He must be joking!” But perhaps he was right, and there was no harm in going a little further and being alert and watching to see whether there was a copper mine.And he went in, and he found a copper mine. He said, “Now I know why he was continually saying, ‘You are such an idiot, working every day in your old age.’”Now went only once every week. But the old tradition continued: he would touch his feet, and the old man would smile and say, ‘You are such an idiot!’”“But,” the woodcutter said, “now this is not right, because I have found the copper mine.”The old man said, “You don’t know. If you go a little further, you will find a silver mine.”He said, “My God, why didn’t you tell me before?”The old man said, “You didn’t even believe me about the copper mine – how could you believe about the silver mine? Just go a little further.”This time there was suspicion but not so much; there was a certain trust arising. And he found the silver mine.He came back and he said, “Now I have found enough silver that I will be coming only once in a month. I will miss you very much. I will miss your blessing very much. I have started loving to hear from you: ‘What an idiot you are.’”But the old man said, “You are still an idiot, it makes no difference.”The woodcutter said, “Even though I have found the silver mine?”He said, “Yes, even then. You are just an idiot and nothing more – because if you go just a little deeper there is gold. So don’t wait for a month, come tomorrow.”Now he thought he must be joking. If there is gold, why should he be sitting here under this tree in old rags, with no shelter from the rain, no shelter from the sun, depending on people who bring food to him…sometimes they bring it, sometimes they don’t. And if he knows where the gold is, I don’t think… This time he is certainly joking. But there is no harm. He has always been right. Who knows? This old guy is a little mysterious.”He went further and found a big gold mine. He could not believe his own eyes – this is the forest he has been working in for his whole life, and this is the forest where that old man is sitting.He brought much gold, and he said, “I think you will not say anymore that I am an idiot.”He said, “I will continue. Come tomorrow because this is not the end; this is only the beginning.”He said, “What? Gold is just a beginning?”He said, “Come tomorrow. Just a little deeper in the forest you will find diamonds – but that too is not the end. But I will not tell you too much; otherwise you will not be able to sleep tonight. Just go home. Tomorrow morning, first you find the diamonds, and then come to me.”He really could not sleep the whole night. A poor woodcutter… He could not imagine that he was going to become the owner of all these mines – gold and silver and copper, and now diamonds – and the old man was saying this was only the beginning. He thought and thought… What can be more than diamonds?In the morning he went very early – the old man was asleep – he touched his feet. The old man opened his eyes and said, “Have you come? I knew you would come; you couldn’t sleep. First go and see the diamonds.”The woodcutter said, “Can you tell me what can be more?”He said, “First find the diamonds – step by step, otherwise you will go crazy.”He found the diamonds and he came dancing to the old man. He said, “Now you cannot say that I am an idiot. I have found the diamonds.”But the old man said, “Still, you are an idiot.”He said, “Now I will not leave you unless you explain it to me.”The old man said, “You can see that I know all about these mines – silver, gold, diamonds – and I don’t care about them, because there is something more which is not in the forest but within you, just a little deeper, not outside but inside. And because I have found it, I don’t care about all these diamonds. Now it is up to you; you can stop your journey at the diamonds but remember; you will remain an idiot. And I am proof, because I know about all these mines and I have not bothered with them. This can make you understand that there is something more which is never found outside, however far you go; it is found inside you.”The man dropped the diamonds. He said, “I am going to sit by your side. Unless you drop this idea that I am an idiot, I am not going to move from here.”He was a simple, innocent woodcutter. It is difficult for knowledgeable people to go in. It was not difficult for the woodcutter. Soon he was entering into a deep silence, a joy, a blissfulness, a benediction.And the old man shook him and said, “This is the place. Now you need not go into the forest. And I withdraw my word idiot about you; you have become a wise man. You can open your eyes. You will see the same world but not in the same light; the same colors, but now they have become psychedelic; the same people, but they are no longer just skeletons covered with skin, they are luminous spiritual beings; the same cosmos, but for the first time it is an ocean of consciousness.”The woodcutter opened his eyes.He said, “You are a strange fellow. Why did you wait so long? I have been coming here almost my whole life and I have seen you sitting under this tree. You could have said this any day.”The old man said, “I was waiting for the right moment, for the ripe moment, for the time when you would be able not only to hear but to understand it. The journey is short, but you should not stop at every achievement – because every achievement is so fulfilling that your imagination cannot think there can be more than this.”You are asking me what can be more beautiful than to be in the presence of the master. Why not dissolve in the presence? To be in the presence of the master, there is still separation. Why be in the presence? Why not become the presence itself? And only then you will know that to be in the presence was only the beginning of a journey that ends in becoming the presence.I know you, and I know your heart. I have not told the story of the woodcutter without remembering the fact that you have such an innocent heart yourself. Just don’t stop anywhere. It is possible… Make it your realization. Become the light yourself, and then whatever is experienced is inexpressible.In your dark moments, while you have been away for one year, you have heard the word watch. With your innocent mind, it is very simple for me to speak to you from any distance, a heart-to-heart communion. Those words were mine, and you have recognized them. Because there are things you need not bother about, you simply have to watch and they pass on: anger, greed, jealousy. All the components of darkness have one quality in common: that if you can watch them they start dispersing. Watching is enough; you are not supposed to do anything with them.In the life of one of the great mystics, Baal Shem, there is an incident. He used to go toward the river in the middle of the night just to be in absolute silence, alone, to enjoy the peace and the beauty of the night. Just on the bank of the river was a rich man’s mansion, and a watchman was there who was puzzled about this man, Baal Shem. Every night, exactly as the tower bell was tolling twelve, Baal Shem would appear out of the darkness.The poor watchman could not contain the temptation to inquire, “Why do you come here every night and sit next to the river in the darkness? What is the purpose of it?”Rather than answering him, Baal Shem asked, “What is your work?”He said, “I am a watchman.”Baal Shem said, “Exactly! That is my work. I am a watchman.”The watchman said, “That is strange. If you are a watchman, then what are you doing here? You should be watching the house where you are the watchman.”Baal Shem said, “There is something to be explained to you: you watch somebody else’s house; I watch my own house. This is my house. Wherever I go, I go with my house – but I am continuously the watchman.”I love the story.Be continuously a watchman of all dark moments. They will pass away. In fact, that is the definition: anything you watch, if it disappears by watching that means it was something wrong. If by watching it becomes clearer, closer, that means it was something to be absorbed. There is no other definition of good and bad. It is watching that decides – the only criterion. What is sin and what is virtue? That which disappears is sin, and that which comes closer, becomes clearer, wants to become part of you is virtue. Watching is certainly the golden key of spiritual life.Osho,The other day you talked so beautifully about the sadness which follows the first experience of our innermost silence.Is it necessarily so, that when I first experience this silence, I also feel with my whole being that I am absolutely alone on my journey?Aloneness is also one of the fundamental experiences as you enter silence. In silence there is nobody else; you are simply alone.The deeper your silence will be, thoughts will have gone, emotions will have gone, sentiments will have gone – just pure being, a flame of light, burning alone… One can get scared because we are so much accustomed to living with people: in the crowd, in the marketplace, in all kinds of relationships. You may not be aware that in all these relationships – with friends, with your husbands, with your wives, with your children, with your parents – you are basically trying to avoid the experience of aloneness. These are strategies so that you are always with somebody.It is a well-known fact, psychologically established, that if a person is left alone in isolation, after seven days he starts talking – a little like whispering. For seven days he keeps talking inside, keeps himself engaged in the mind, but then it becomes too much – things start coming out of his mind through his mouth and he starts whispering. After fourteen days you can hear him clearly: what he is saying. After twenty-one days he does not bother about anybody, he has gone insane; now he is talking to walls, to pillars: “Hello friend, how are you?” – to a pillar, hugging a pillar! And this is true not about somebody special, it is true about everybody. He is trying to find some relationship. If he cannot find it in reality, he will create a hallucination.You will see: just stand by the side of the road and watch people going from the office to the house, and you will be surprised. They are alone – although there is a crowd all around – but they are talking to themselves. They are making gestures, they are telling somebody something – because the crowd around them is not related to them. They are alone in the crowd, so they are trying to create their own illusion. Maybe they are talking to their wife, to their boss. There are many things which cannot be said but right now they can say them. In front of the wife they cannot say it, but in this crowd, where everybody is engaged in his own thing, everybody is doing his own thing, they can say things to the wife. Nobody is listening, and at least one thing is certain – the wife is not there. But they need the wife, they need someone to talk to.And after thirty days of isolation, a dramatic change happens. It is not only one-sided; it is not only that they are talking to the pillar, the pillar also starts talking to them! They do both things: first, “Hello, how are you?” and then, “I am good. I am fine, doing well.” They answer from the side of the pillar too – in a different voice. Now they have created a world of their own, they are no longer alone. No madman is alone. Either you are mad or not. If you don’t know aloneness, there is something of madness in you.Only pure aloneness gives you a clean sanity. You don’t need the other; the dependence on the other is no longer there, you are enough unto yourself. Language is meaningless because language is a medium to relate with the other. The moment you are no longer dependent on the other, language is meaningless; words are meaningless.In your silence – when there are no words, no language, nobody else is present – you are getting in tune with existence. This serenity, this silence, this aloneness will bring you immense rewards. It will allow you to grow to your full potential. For the first time you will be an individual, for the first time you will have the touch and the taste of freedom, and for the first time the immensity, the unbounded-ness of existence will be yours with all its blissfulness.So whatever happens in silence – either sadness or aloneness – remember, in silence nothing wrong can ever happen. Whatever happens is going to enhance the beauty of it, deepen the charm of it; anything that happens will bring more and more flowers, more and more fragrance to it.Rejoice! Whatever happens in silence is your friend, it is really your bosom friend. It is going to take you to the ultimate peak of ecstasies.Osho,I don't really have a question to ask you – everything is very good. Only one thing is confusing me a little. You have often spoken about the “chosen few.” Please, who is doing the choosing?It is a very difficult question.In the beginning, God used to do it! But there are many hypotheses about what happened to God: some say he died a natural death, some say he committed suicide, some say he got into an accident. Some say he was murdered by man – because without murdering him, man could not really be free. I will not go into what happened to God. One thing is certain: he is missing.In the beginning, he had chosen the Jews to be the chosen few, “God’s own people.” But since then, he has had no opportunity. And Jews have been praying continually in every synagogue all over the world, “Now it is time for you to choose somebody else; we have suffered enough!”And it is true. If God had not chosen them they would have lived just like everybody else. But because he chose them, he made everybody else their enemies – great jealousy and competition.I remember that once, India’s first prime minister, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was asked, “Who are you going to choose as your successor?”He said, “I am not going to choose anyone, because whoever I choose would have to face immense difficulties. Everybody else who is ambitious and wants to become the prime minister would all be together against one single person, and there would be no possibility for that person I have chosen to succeed me. So I will keep my mouth shut.”And you are asking who is choosing here? Here, it is a very different process. Here, the moment you become a sannyasin you have chosen yourself. Every sannyasin belongs to the chosen few, and nobody is doing the choosing; it is you who are doing it; hence there is freedom. If you feel difficulties, you can drop out of it. Nobody prevents you from becoming a sannyasin, nobody prevents you from dropping sannyas. Your freedom is intact. So remember, here nobody is choosing. Everybody is choosing by becoming a sannyasin. So no need to kill me; I have learned from the lesson of God. I will never choose anybody, because it is dangerous! And to choose anybody is to put him in difficulty.Now Jews have suffered so much in four thousand years for the single reason that they were the chosen few. All over the earth, nobody else has suffered so much. It gave them a superiority complex, a feeling that they are holier than thou, and naturally nobody likes people who think themselves holier than thou. So in every country, in every place, they have been put down and given evidence that they are not holier or higher.Just in Germany alone, Adolf Hitler killed six million Jews. The responsibility lies with God, because the reason these Jews were coming into conflict with Adolf Hitler was that he was saying that the Nordic Germans were the highest race. Jews have to be completely eradicated from the earth because as long as the Jews remain, you cannot proclaim that Nordic Germans are the highest. Jews are an old race, with a four-thousand-year history, and they have proved in every way that they are more intelligent. No Jew is a beggar; they are all rich, they know how to produce wealth. They are all cultured and well educated. Forty percent of Nobel Prizes go to Jews, and the other sixty percent to the rest of the world – it is simply unimaginable. It was difficult for Adolf Hitler in the presence of Jews, because they had all the intelligence, all the riches, everything that proved that they were somehow more intelligent than others. To make the Nordic Germans a superior race, Jews had to be completely eradicated from the earth.The fault lies with God; he should not have chosen the poor Jews. And even if he had chosen them, he should have whispered in the ear of Moses and told him, “Please don’t tell anybody. Just keep it in your mind that you are the chosen few, but it should not leak out, it is a secret.”But there is no joy if it is a secret. The joy is when you proclaim it.Here I am not proclaiming anybody as chosen, but I am giving you an opportunity. If you want to be chosen, there will be difficulties. My sannyasins everywhere are going through all the difficulties. One has to pay for everything. You want to be the chosen few for free? It is not possible; you will have to pay for it.Osho,Often, in the past, you have spoken on doubt and the value of doubting everything.On the level where you are my master and I, through your grace, have become your disciple, there has never been any doubt – forgetfulness on my part, yes; unawareness on my part, yes, but never the torment of doubt.Beloved Master, could you speak on doubt in the relationship of the disciple with the master?There is no possibility. A disciple becomes a disciple only when he drops all doubts. So in the very nature of things, a disciple cannot doubt. If he doubts, he is not a disciple.As a student he can doubt as much as he wants. When all his doubts are finished and a trust beyond doubt has arisen, he enters into the world of disciplehood; now there is no possibility of doubt arising. If it arises, the disciple immediately falls back into the category of student.So as far as the master and discipleship is concerned, doubt is an impossibility.Osho,Why do you always look in your hand before you start answering the first question? Do I see it wrongly, or do you find the answer there?My hands are empty. I don’t have any answer.You have questions; I don’t answer you, I simply destroy your questions. And before destroying your questions I have to look at my hand because it is not only with my language that I destroy your questions, it is also with my hands. So I have to prepare them, to ask, “Are you ready?”When they say, “Yes, master, go ahead,” I start!Without my hands, I cannot answer you. They almost do most of the work. My words keep you engaged, and my hands go on doing the real work.So you are not seeing wrongly; you are seeing absolutely right.I look at them, not for answers, but just to see whether they are ready or not.Osho,It is for the first time I have been so close to you. When I am sitting here with you I feel my heart in tune with your heart, I feel a deep love for you. But I also feel my outer seriousness.Why is laughter so difficult for me?Laughter is one of the things most repressed by society all over the world, in all the ages. Society wants you to be serious. Parents want their children to be serious, teachers want their students to be serious, the bosses want their servants to be serious, the commanders want their armies to be serious. Seriousness is required of everybody.Laughter is dangerous and rebellious.When the teacher is teaching you, and you start laughing, it will be taken as an insult. Your parents are saying something to you and you start laughing – it will be taken as an insult. Seriousness is thought to be honor, respect.Naturally laughter has been repressed so much that even though life all around is hilarious, nobody is laughing. If your laughter is freed from its chains, from its bondage, you will be surprised – on each step there is something hilarious happening. Life is not serious. Only graveyards are serious, death is serious.Life is love, life is laughter; life is dance, song.But we will have to give life a new orientation. The past has crippled life very badly; it has made you almost laughter-blind, just like there are people who are colorblind. There are ten percent of people who are colorblind – it is a big percentage, but they are not aware that they are colorblind.George Bernard Shaw was colorblind, and he came to know it when he was sixty years old. On his birthday somebody sent a present, a beautiful suit, a coat, but the person forgot to send a tie. So Bernard Shaw went with his secretary to find a matching tie. He liked the suit very much. He looked at ties and he chose one, and the secretary was surprised; she could not believe it – because the suit was yellow and the tie was green. She said, “What are you doing? This will look very strange.”He said, “Why will it look strange? It is the same color.”The manager, the salesman, they all gathered, and they tried in many ways to find out. He could not distinguish between yellow and green; they both appeared the same to him. He was colorblind. But for sixty years he was not aware of it. And there are ten percent of people in the world who are colorblind. Some color they are missing, or maybe they are mixing it up with some other color.The constant repression of laughter has made you laughter-blind. Situations are happening everywhere, but you cannot see that there is any reason to laugh. If your laughter is freed from its bondage, the whole world will be full of laughter. It needs to be full of laughter; it will change almost everything in human life. You will not be as miserable as you are. In fact, you are not as miserable as you look – it is misery plus seriousness that makes you look so miserable. Just misery plus laughter, and you will not look so miserable.In one apartment house… And modern apartments have such thin walls that whether you want to or not, you have to hear what is going on, on the other side of the wall. In a way, it is very human. The whole apartment house was puzzled about one thing: every couple was fighting, throwing pillows, throwing things, breaking cups and saucers, shouting at each other, husbands beating wives, wives screaming. They didn’t need any loudspeaker systems or anything, and the whole apartment house enjoyed.The only problem was with one sardarji. From his flat they never heard any fight; on the contrary, they always heard laughter. The whole crowd was puzzled: “What is the matter? These people never fight. There is always laughter – and both are laughing so loudly that the whole building can hear it!”One day they decided that it had to be looked into: “We are missing so much, and they are enjoying so much. What is their secret?”So they caught hold of the sardarji as he was coming from the market, carrying vegetables and other things. They all caught hold of him and they said, “First you have to tell us what the secret is. Why do you laugh when everybody fights?”The sardar said, “Don’t force me, because the secret is very embarrassing.”They said, “Embarrassing? But we thought you are doing great. We always hear laughter, either you laugh or your wife laughs…no fight.”The sardar said, “What happens is, she throws things at me. If she misses, then I laugh; if she hits me then she laughs. The same things are going on, but it is just that we have made a different arrangement – what is the point? So I have learned how to dodge her, and she is learning how to…”After twenty years the same sardar wanted to divorce his wife. The magistrate had heard about them: that this was the only couple in the whole city who had never been known to fight. They simply laugh – the whole city knows them as the laughing couple.The magistrate said, “What has gone wrong? You are so famous.”The sardar said, “Forget all about that, just give us permission to divorce.”“But,” the magistrate said, “I have to know the reason.”The sardar said, “The reason is very clear: she hits me, and it is too much; I have been getting those hits for years.”The magistrate asked, “How long have you been married?”He said, “Almost thirty years.”The magistrate said, “If you have been able to cope with the woman for thirty years, then just ten, twenty years more…”He said, “That is not the point. At first I used to dodge, but now she has become such a good…there is no way that I can dodge. So only she laughs, I have not laughed for ten years. This is unbearable. In the beginning it was perfect; it was almost fifty-fifty, there was no problem. I was laughing, she was also laughing. But now a hundred percent of the time she laughs, and a hundred percent I am just standing there, looking like a fool. No, I cannot tolerate it any more.”Just look around at life and try to see the humorous side of things. Every event that is happening has its own humorous side; you just need a sense of humor. No religion has accepted sense of humor as a quality. I want a sense of humor to be a fundamental quality of a good man, of a moral man, of a religious man. And it does not need much looking for; just try to see it, and everywhere…Once I was traveling in a bus when I was a student. The bus conductor was in trouble because there were thirty-one passengers and he had taken money only for thirty tickets. So he was asking, “Who is the fellow who has not given his money?”Nobody would speak.He said, “This is strange; now how am I going to find out?”I said to him, “Do one thing: tell the driver to stop the bus, and tell the people that unless the person who has not given the money confesses, the bus will not move.”He said, “That’s right.”The bus was stopped. Everybody looked at each other – now what to do? Nobody knew who the person was…Finally one man stood up and said, “Forgive me, I am the person who has not given the money. Here it is.”The bus conductor asked, “What is your name?”He said, “My name is Achchelal.” Achchelal means “a good man.”And I was surprised that out of thirty people, nobody laughed! When he said Achchelal, I could not believe it – a good man doing such a thing, and nobody seemed to see the humor in it.Seriousness has become almost part of our bones and blood. You will have to make some effort to get rid of seriousness, and you will have to be on the lookout – wherever you can find something humorous happening, don’t miss the opportunity.Everywhere there are people who are slipping on banana peels, just nobody is looking at them. In fact, it is thought to be ungentlemanly. It is not, because only bananas slip on banana peels. Laughter needs a great learning, and laughter is a great medicine. It can cure many of your tensions, anxieties, worries; the whole energy can flow into laughter.And there is no need that there should be some occasion, some cause. In my meditation camps I used to have a laughing meditation – for no reason, people would sit and just start laughing. At first they would feel a little awkward that there was no reason, but when everybody was doing it, they would also start. Soon, everybody was in such a great laughter, people were rolling on the ground. They were laughing at the very fact that so many people were laughing for no reason at all; there was nothing, not even a joke had been told. And it went on like waves.So there is no harm. Even just sitting in your room, close the doors and have one hour of simple laughter. Laugh at yourself. But learn to laugh. Seriousness is a sin, and it is a disease. Laughter has tremendous beauty, lightness. It will bring lightness to you, and it will give you wings to fly.And life is so full of opportunities. You just need the sensitivity. And create chances for other people to laugh. Laughter should be one of the most valued, cherished qualities of human beings, because only man can laugh, no animals are capable of it. Because it is human, it must be of the highest order. To repress it is to destroy a human quality.